Charlotte's web: A Middlesex University resource spinning Charlotte Mew's life with her words
"The most detailed and hyperlinked author site that I have ever seen" (Dirty Laundry blog 9.5.2007)
"No soul can breathe buried alive beneath the weight of all these tabulated facts." (Charlotte Mew)

Charlotte Mew Chronology

with mental, historical and geographical connections
linking with her own words, and listing her essays, stories, poems and friends
.
Charlotte Mew in her own words

Introduction: life - inference - intensity - history - science - Chicks - evolution - dissolution - sensual - God - language - madness - faerie - spirit

Charlotte Mew was born in 1869. Her father was an architect and her mother the daughter and granddaughter of architects. Charlotte was the second of four children who survived early childhood. Their nursery and their childhood was watched over by Elizabeth Goodman, the servant who stirred their imaginations even though she did not value their writings. Charlotte wrote about her in An Old Servant (1913). Charlotte's first published work was a short story, Passed in 1894. The journey in Passed was through Clerkenwell. The Country Sunday , published before The London Sunday, in 1905, has been interpreted as an account of her childhood holidays on the Isle of Wight. Charlotte's best known work is a collection of poems, The Farmers Bride, in 1916. This includes the poem In a Nunhead Cemetery relating to her brother, Henry Herne Mew, who died in an asylum in 1901. Her sister, Freda, was also a patient in an asylum. On the Asylum Road and Ken are two of Charlotte's poems that explore her thoughts and feelings about insanity and asylums. Charlotte died from swallowing disinfectant in 1928. Freda lived in the mental hospital until she died in 1958.

Inference: Charlotte Mew published stories, essays and poems. She was very determined not to provide anyone with even the briefest of autobiography. I think we should be cautious about inferring her life from her writing. Even the most biographical of her essays could, in theory, be complete fiction; and poetry has a structure and content of its own, unconstrained by any relation to the life that generated it. One of the reasons for constructing a life and works of Charlotte Mew in this inter-linked web form, is to allow any speculation about the relation of her writing to her life to be tested against other sources of information. Her writing in Passed (fiction), An Old Servant and The Hay Market (New Statesman articles) reveal close links to the life of Elizabeth Goodman and the geography of Clerkenwell and Cumberland Market and this may be grounds for inferring links in other works where relationships cannot be so firmly established. It is not, however, intended to obscure the creative insight of Charlotte's art by reading it as a diary. Ken, for example, is a poem, and should not be read as a description of Freda Mew - Anymore than the old town with its nuns and priests is a description of Carisbrooke - Knowing about Freda, however, does allow us to think more about the issues on which Ken gives us insight. Without, in any way, distorting the internal unity of the art, we can say that Charlotte's writing maintains a remarkable relationship to her life and experience. This is so much so that Mary Davidow was convinced that E.V. Knox's parody of Charlotte's poetry revealed an insider's information about Charlotte's secrets. I do not think it does. Without his knowing it, the one short book of poems had revealed to him the architecture of the poet's life. No wonder Charlotte was upset.

Intensity: There is a concentrated intensity to Charlotte's perception. Twice, she suggests she shares her vision with the blind. (See The Country Sunday and Men and Trees). It is sight that hears and feels and smells every dimension of the immediate, imminent, reality and all its passion and energy. Her essay The Wheat, first published in 1954 shows how the soul of a bank worker is revealed in one delirious utterance. In this essay, she writes about "the throb in the breasts of things that ought to be flying". A few years before her suicide, she wrote in Domus Caedet Arborem about the city crouching, waiting to spring on living things. In her poem Madeleine in Church Charlotte describes how (from childhood?) Madeleine suffered an intensity of being and seeing that was, at once, mystical and sensual.
I could hardly bear
The dreams upon the eyes of white geraniums in the dusk,
The thick, close voice of musk,
The jessamine music on the thin night air,
Or, sometimes, my own hands about me anywhere -
The sight of my own face (for it was lovely then) even the scent of my own hair

In A Country Book she explains, quoting Richard Jefferies, that there are no words to describe the colours of a dandelion - But quoting Byron she exclaims "Oh that my words were colours". How she conveys the immediacy of her perception, naming but not describing the colours, can be seen in her description of the flowers In the Curé's Garden.This, like much of Charlotte's writing, from Passed onwards, is about a dialogue between a spiritual and material reality: "God's parle with dust". In Passed she had discovered in a kiss "a page of gospel" that the priest facing the spiritual, with his back to the material, "might never read". In The Forest Road, the intensity of love is too much for her. She hears her soul singing amongst the trees, and escapes.

History: Usually quietly, many of Charlotte Mew's writings explore issues of the history she lived through. Her first publication, Passed reflects on her journeys into the slums of London, in the late 19th century, at the time when sociologists and religious leaders were making the same exploration. The significance of the century's turning is recorded in her poems on the death and funeral of Queen Victoria. In Notes in a Brittany Convent (1901) the new sciences approach old religion. Mary Stuart in Fiction, written during the miltant suffragette protests, argues her passion for victory. Men and Trees is not quiet comment. It attacks the destruction of the Congo, the Amazon and the people who live there, and defends the "barbarian" against the "culte du moi". Her censored poem Ken picks up on the theme of relations with people of "poor wits" that she raises in Passed, and may be her personal protest against the ideas behind the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. The Great War for Civilisation is commemorated in two 1915 poems, and reflected on in The Cenotaph in 1919. She is present at the birth of Labour, with the article on the life of Elizabeth Goodman and on the life in Cumberland Market, published in The New Statesman in 1913 and 1914, (possibly) reviews in the Daily Herald in 1919, and her poem "Old Shepherd's Prayer" in the first edition of The New Leader in 1922. As she herself approches death, she sees in the destruction of the trees by her home, to make room for more buildings, something symbolic.

Science: Charlotte Mew's prose and poetry has in it reflections of the development of natural and social sciences. Natural scientists figure prominently amongst her circle of friends: notably Harriette Chick, the Tansleys, the Brownes and Francis Wall Oliver. In 1901, when Charlotte's brother died of tuberculosis, the new science bacteriology, that Harriette Chick had made her speciality, was reflected in Charlotte's writing. The germ theory of disease, applied to cancer, may even have been an element in the ideas that led to Charlotte's suicide. Brittany, where Charlotte stayed and whose mythologies she studied, was also the location of Francis Wall Oliver's pioneer field trips in the even newer science of ecology. Charlotte's interest in what we might now call "green issues" is evident throughout her writing, but reaches a manifesto peak in her (1913) Men and Trees essays. Charlotte regarded herself as an urban being, but with nature beneath her, in what we might call her subconscious. The Society for Psychical Research would have called it her subliminal self. This duality of being is reflected in many of her poems, including The Changeling, where the fairy call of nature draws the child away from the noise and urbanity of the nursery. This occupation with another consciousness is present in Charlotte's writing from the beginning and may partly explain the new interest in her work that appears to coincide with the interest in psychoanalysis and associated ideas that developed about the time of the first world war. The complexity of levels of consciousness may be strongest in her unfinished story Aglaë about the passions of a spinster aunt.

Chicks In the world that Charlotte Mew wrote about, science was not isolated from art and literature: And sociology was related to the natural sciences in a way that it no longer is. To recognise Charlotte's world we must recover these relationships. We are helped to do so by her friendship with the Chick sisters. The Chick sisters, and their descendants, were active in the arts and the sciences and it is clear from Harriette's diary that conversation flowed easily across all areas. The science of evolution was embedded in literature in the bookplate that Arthur Tansley (Edith's husband) designed. Similarly, Tansley's friend botanist Frederick Frost Blackman (Elsie's husband) was a patron of the Fitzwilliam Museum. Tansley's ecology might be regarded as a development of the biology of Herbert Spencer. Spencer sought the most general laws with the widest application and his evolutionary biology lay at the heart of his social science.

Evolution Before Herbert Spencer's evolutionary biology there was Georg Friedrich Hegel - Henri Saint Simon and Auguste Comte - with the concept of the evolution of mind in history that Comte formulated as a progress from religion (theology) through philosophy (metaphysics) to science (positivism). Edward Burnett Tylor's application of these ideas to the development of empirical anthropology in Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom (1871) was published when Charlotte Mew was one or two years old. William Robertson Smith's application of anthropological thought to the Bible had been published by the time she was twenty one and James Frazer's application of anthropological thinking to the crucifixion of Christ was published when she was thirty. Her detailed analysis of these ideas, in Men and Trees, was published when she was in her early 40s. Men and Trees is an anthropological study that makes full use of Tylor's concept that present culture incorporates survivals of the past. The sacrifice of Christ on a tree, as analysed by Frazer, is central to Charlotte Mew's moral commentary on her times.

Dissolution The first part of Charlotte Mew's life was shaped by her family's objective of perpetuating itself. She and her brothers and sisters carried forward the names of relatives that would otherwise have been lost, and, with the names, endowments. The rest of her life, and that of her sister Anne, was shaped by their decision to extinguish the family line, to exterminate its taint. Whilst accepting the constraint that she should not have children, Charlotte took issue with other implications of the dominant sciences of evolution and dissolution; eugenics and social hygiene. Those sciences she leaves unnamed, but she battles explicitly with the related philosophy of the cult of selfishness and the omnipresence and omniscience of the market place. In Men and Trees, she argues that civilisation has replaced the old gods and devils by the worship of self. Civilisation is shocked by the blood sacrifices of the old religions, but it has its own blood sacrifices in the commercial exploitation of the rubber trees of the equatorial forests and the destruction of the barbarian cultures of their inhabitants. In Herbert Spencer's language of science, evolution is fuelled by the survival of the fittest and civilisation is the victory of the individual. Its opposite is dissolution, the degeneration of races and individuals - a dissolution that includes insanity in the individual as well as the degeneration of races. In Passed, in Ken and in On the Asylum Road, Charlotte describes the degenerate in terms that discover virtues in their being. In The Cenotaph, the empty tomb of the son or lover testifies against the cult of selfishness. It stands in the market place asking who will buy and sell those things that should not be bought and sold.

Sensual Charlotte's world is sensual. It is her sensuality that unites materialism with spirit. Like William Blake, who she much resembles, she sees [the] world in a grain of sand. Some of her writing pivots on death. Through death, she brings life to life. This is apparent in her comparison of this life with the idea of heaven in her poem In the Fields
Can I believe there is a heavenlier world than this?
And if there is
Will the heart of any everlasting thing
Bring me these dreams that take my breath away?

Two other striking death images are materialist ones. The first is one of death being like a candle going out. It is taught her by Miss Bolt, the agnostic needlewoman whose worldly wisdom tutored her childhood. As a young woman, in her poem An Ending, Charlotte uses the same metaphor to confront the religious judge (Samuel Chick?) who thinks she has missed her way. Her soul is "just a spark alight for her". In death it goes out. But the beauty of the sensual is heaven you would go to hell to experience again: A golden street? Give me the yellow wheat!. But this is not a spiritless or irreligious materialism, nor is it the materialism of the culte du moi. The golden wheat of her youth is the same experience of the spirit of sensual reality that enlightens grieving lovers and mothers at The Cenotaph and the delirious bank worker in The Wheat

The second death image is of a body rotting to a skeleton, whilst the hair continues to grow. This can be seen as part of Charlotte's exploration of the phenomena, the experience, of life and death. It is an image in her "mad-woman" poem The Forest Road in which the soul or spirit of the woman struggles with her body. In In Nunhead Cemetery the experienced contrast is emphasised by the word THAT:
There is something horrible about a flower;
This, broken in my hand, is one of those
He threw it in just now: it will not live another hour;
There are thousands more: you do not miss a rose.
One of the children hanging about
Pointed at the whole dreadful heap and smiled
This morning after THAT was carried out;
There is something terrible about a child.
We were like children last week, in the Strand;
That was the day you laughed at me ...
Life and death are experiences for the living. Requiescat says it would be "strange" if the dead had memories. In the experience of the living, however, life penetrates death (as in the growing hair) and death penetrates life (as in the living becoming something terrible in the face of the clay of death). Blake's Innocence and Experience comes into my mind as I read these images. The child becomes experienced by death, as Charlotte had. In The Fête, where only a woman's hair belongs to God, the adolescent becomes experienced through sex. In this poem, sex experience is not only development, it is also has elements of dying.
There is something new in the old heavenly air of Spring -
The smell of beasts, the smell of dust - The Enchanted Thing!
All my life long I shall see moonlight on the fern
And the black trunks of trees. Only the hair
Of any woman can belong to God.
The stalks are cruelly broken where we trod,
There had been violets there,
I shall not care
As I used to do when I see the bracken burn.

God In Charlotte Mew's writing, making one (atonement) appears more of a problem than even our all-knowing - all-suffering - all loving creator fathoms. Fallen flesh has questions that God does not answer. His arms are full of broken things. The world is fractured and, in its fracturing, we see, not only its cruelty, but its beauty. The trees murdered to make way for the Quaker temple, recall that even a rat should be alive in the spring. And heaven cannot equal the beauty that passes as the shadows of leaves on growing grass. The gift of Charlotte's writing is its problems. Even as she writes that only a woman's hair belongs to God, one realises that her hair has become the centre of sensual desire.

Language The language of Charlotte Mew's writing frequently includes the combined use of French and English, usually in dialogue; sometimes just in titles. There is occasional use of Latin and Spanish, but no German. At times, dialect is also used (English and French - See Pêcheresse). These features can be related to her analysis of culture and its relation to social relations and the nature of being. It is not just that she speaks more than one language at once, she also explores more than one world at once.......... In 1921, Punch depicted Charlotte as a precocious English school girl adding simple French phrases to her poems. One poems that it appears to parody, uses French to capture a children's street game. "'Tiens! que veux-tu acheter?' Renée cries, 'Mais, pour quat'sous, des oignons,' , Jean replies. And one pays down with pebbles from the shore." (The Narrow Door)

Madness E.V. Knox's parody of Charlotte Mew's poetry begins
The moonlight drips on the parlour floor;
I shall go mad if no one wipes it up.
When I was one year old Nurse used to say,
"It's no more use to cry when milk is spilt
Than cry about the moon." There were big bars
Across the nursery window

Knox conveys the image of a writer threatened with madness, and confinement, whose poetry uses the experience. Her poems also communicate to him that her visions are fashioned by her life and her family. To steal words from Freda Mew's casenotes, the "predisposing cause" of Charlotte's "madness", and her poetry, is "probably heredity", but not in the biological sense. In the sense that it is steeped in the experience of her family, her childhood, and her intimate relations. Madness in Charlotte's writing is softened or romanticised: She seeks to "obscure the tragic side by a gentleness of treatment". As is common for her time, her image combines elements of mental illness and retardation or learning disability. There are also similarities of form between her pictures of madmen (for example, Ken) and her pictures of fairies (for example, The Changeling), and between her pictures of these and her depicting people and cultures in contact with nature (for example Arracombe Wood). Madness is sometimes another world cut of from sanity by clouded glass, but sometimes her own being. More often, sanity and madness are two worlds between which we pass as in the same way that we pass from the nursery floor to fairyland.

Faerie - The word faerie can be used for the mythical land of fays (fairies), its inhabitants, and its enchantment. When Charlotte Mew was writing, the theosophists were drawing on many religions and mythologies to create their own world vision. Their sources including belief in elementals, faerie forces or spirits of the elements, from which races of humans and gods could have evolved. Charlotte was sufficiently close to theosophist circles in 1914 to have a story about a woman with supernatural communication published in The Theosophist. The death in 1895 of Bridget Cleary, an Irish labourer's wife , illustrates the relation in (some) popular cultures of the world of faerie and changes in human personality. I have argued that this theme of changing being and changing consciousness runs through much of Charlotte's writing. It is what Baring- Gould would have called a "radical" (motif) to her stories. The word and the motif that symbolises this most effectively, in relation to fairies, is changeling. The Farmer's Bride (1911/1912) is a fay, or fairy - The Changeling, a children's poem, (1912/1913) was published at the same time as Men and Trees, which finishes with Joan of Arc, as a child, dancing round a fairy tree. In The Smile, the child (then woman) who can see the enchanting smile without climbing to the enchantress, as others have to, had, as a baby, the characteristics that might have been interpreted as indicating a changeling.

In Men and Trees, Charlotte partly explains the significance of fairies to the twentieth century. She says

"The Renaissance revered the ancient world, the nineteenth century was moved and lit by the Renaissance; we have no patience even with the nineteenth century. The past is a stupid corpse. The inspiration of the woods, the forest voices, the fairy dancers ... these are 'of old time' ... We must not speak in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest, says Hawthorne - [nowadays] Everything happens in the market-place. Where else? But the market-place is not real: the real things are happening in the forest still."

Spirit The spirit that animates Charlotte Mew's writings appears accesible to agnostic and believer alike, and disturbing to the proconceptions of all of us. Siegried Sasson wrote to, and of, Charlotte that poets "carry the world on their shoulders... And in their eyes the future of civilisation struggles to survive". Charlotte, he said, was "intensely" aware of her "responsibility" and sustained it "nobly". The world that is carried in Charlotte's writing is the material world of flesh and death, of life and grief, of desire and reverence. The spirit that animates it is "Everything there is to hear in the heart of hidden things".

 

eighth century AD Dream of the Rood carved in runes on a cross in Ruthwell churchyard in Scotland. Used by Charlotte Mew in Men and Trees (1913)

24.9.1541 Death of Paracelsus. His Liber de nymphis, sylphis, pygmaeis et salamandris et de caeteris spiritibus [Latin title, but German text] was published after his death. In it he associated sprit people with air, earth, fire and water. Nymphis, nymph, undina or undine is the water spirit. Sylphis, sylph, or sylvestris is the air spirit. Pygmaeis, pygmy, gnomus or gnome is the earth spirit. Salamandris, salamander or vulcanus is the fire spirit. This is the main source of the idea of "elementals", linking science and fairie in the theories of theosophists and others (late 19th century onwards). African pygmies were perceived by some as real descendants of the earth elementals in an evolutionary process. Charlotte Mew published one story in The Theosophist (1914) and drew on the idea of elemental races in Men and Trees (1913).

1648

6.9.1648 - 30.11.1648 the "Treaty of Newport" between Parliament and King Charles

"During the negotiations the king and his friends occupied the grammar school and the Parliamentary Commissioners the Bull Inn, while the meetings took place in the town hall. The subject of the negotiations related chiefly to the governance of the church and the militia, but the treaty led to no satisfactory results." From: 'Parishes: Newport', A History of the County of Hampshire: Volume 5 (1912), pp. 253-65. available at British History Online

In Isle of Wight dialect, a young or wild bull is a "bugle". The Bull Inn of 1648 is the Bugle Inn that the Mew family acquired.

 

1650

Son-Days
by
Henry Vaughan

Bright shadows of true rest! some shoots of bliss;
Heaven once a week;
The next world's gladness preposses'd in this;
A day to seek
Eternity in time; the steps by which
We climb above all ages; lamps that light
Man through his heap of dark days; and the rich
And full redemption of the whole week's flight!

The pulleys unto headlong man; Time's bower;
The narrow way;
Transplanted Paradise; God's walking hour,
The cool o' th' day!
The creature's jubilee; God's parle with dust;
Heaven here; man on those hills of myrrh, and flowers;
Angels descending; the returns of trust;
A gleam of glory after six-days-showers!

The Church's love-feasts; Time's prerogative,
And interest
Deducted from the whole; the combs, and hive,
And home of rest.
The milky way chalk'd out with suns; a clue
That guides through erring hours; and in full story
A taste of heav'n on earth; the pledge and cue
Of a full feast; and the out-Courts of glory.

 

The London Plane: Platanus x acerifolia (Aiton) Willdenow is a hybrid of the oriental and occidental planes, possibly originating in Britain in the Oxford Physic Garden [Later Oxford Botanical Gardens] in 1670. The London Planes were important to Charlotte Mew throughout her life. See Doughty Street - Gordon Street Map - Men and Trees - 1922. For some other planes in London see Bunhill and Wick Woodlands.

In her poems, the house sparrow Passer domesticus:, lives in the trees, the London pigeon sits on the houses and seagulls visit the town.

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About 1731 Thomas Mew of Newport, Hampsire, born. He married Elizabeth Hains (born about 1735, of Newport) on 16.10.1756. Their (14?) children included Thomas christened 23.3.1757 - William christened 17.12.1758 - John christened 14.1.1761 - James christened 25.1.1763 - Richard (born 1764), a great grandfather of Charlotte Mew - Mary christened 27.1.1769, died 31.12.1770 - Mark christened 15.3.1771, died 7.5.1810 - Mary christened 14.7.1773 - George (baptised 1775), from whom Charlotte's grandfather took over the Bugle Inn in 1829, Anne, born about 1777, died 8.4.1781 - Joseph Haynes christened 20.5.1782 - William christened 2.1.1784 - and Benjamin (baptised 19.10.1786), who founded Mew's brewery. The evidence suggests to me that the whole Mew family were involved with one another and that the various businesses in the Isle of Wight and Lymington were family concerns, at least whilst fathers survived to hold the unit together.

1754 William Borlase (1695-1772) Antiquities of Cornwall published at Oxford. Used by Charlotte Mew in Men and Trees (1913)

1.10.1764: Richard Mew, the son of Thomas, christened Newport, Isle of Wight. He married Ann Coleman on 31.7.1787. One of their sons was Henry Mew, paternal grandfather of Charlotte Mew, and licencee of the Bugle Inn, in Newport.

All but one of Richard and Ann's known children were born in Newport. The children are: Edward born about 1789, died 26.4.1789 - Henry and Edward both christened 28.12.1792 - Richard christened 19.3.1794, died 9.2.1821 - Charles born 17.4.1795, christened 28.6.1795, died 24.1.1796 - Sarah, born 19.7.1797, christened 19.12.1797, married Robert Yele of Newchurch 3.1.1822 (no children traced) - Stephen born (Carisbooke) about 1804, died 23.1.1806.

Richard died at Newchurch on 25.5.1830, aged 63, and was buried at Newport. Ann died 28.1.183something, aged 71 and was buried at Newport

25.8.1775 George Mew (son of Thomas and Elizabeth) christened Newport. He may have married Christian Ceser in Newport on 10.11.1799. Alfed Ceser Mew was born 21.11.1802 in Newport and christened 25.9.1803 - Kate Mew born 1.11.1807, Christened 13.1.1808

23.3.1776 Henry Edward Kendall (senior), one of Charlotte Mew's maternal great- grandfathers, born. Although he is said to have been born York (Colvin, H.M. 1995), the census for 1841, 1861 and 1871 shows him as born in Middlesex (Marylebone - 1861, 1871). Colvin says that he married twice and had a son and two daughters. It seems probable that he actually married three times. The eldest son is Henry Edward Kendall (junior) (born 1805). A daughter is Sophia Kendall (later Cubitt) (born 1811) - These are the two mentioned by Colvin. I do not know who his wife at this time was. Both Henry Edwards were architects. In 1822 Henry Edward senior married Ann(e) Lyon (see 1841) . They had a son Charles Kendall, born 1829. Anne died in 1863 and Henry Edward senior married Matilda Alice Clowser in 1866. Henry Edward senior died in 1875.

Mary Herne, Charlotte Mew's maternal great-grandmother on her grandmother's side, was born about 1784. She married Thomas Cobham in 1801. She was living with Kendalls in 1841 and died in 1855. The Cobham and Herne names reappear in children's names and inheritances. See Edward Herne Kendall, Thomas Cobham Kendall Henry Herne Mew, Richard Cobham Mew, will of 17.4.1883 and Caroline and James Herne and T.A. Cobham.

The Mew brewery business was established by Benjamin (died 1850), whose son William Baron Mew lived at Polars, close to the Barton village church.

1786 Benjamin Mew (son of Thomas) born. The Mew/Cull brewery in Crocker Street was established about 1814 (about age 28). Benjamin married Mary Ann Parker on 11.11.1818, in Norwood, London. Their children included - Thomas Parker Mew, christened 6.10.1819, who may have married Mary Julia Willslead, in Newport, in the October/December quarter of 1837 - William Baron Mew, christened 7.11.1820, Newport. - Mary Ann Mew, born 30.9.1821, christened: 23.1.1822 Newport - George Owen Mew, born 3.3.1824, christened 2.4.1824 Newport - James Alfred Mew, born 13.2.1826, christened 15.3.1826 Newport. He married Mariane Hooper at Alderbury, in Wiltshire, about 1852 - Ann Agnes Mew, born 3.9.1827, christened 3.10.1827 Newport - Joseph Parker Mew, born 2.4.1829, christened 29.4.1829 Newport - Sarah Jane Mew, born 29.4.1831, christened 1.6.1831 - Arthur Parker Mew, christened 9.1.1833 Newport. Benjamin Mew died 1850

Kevin Mitchell's website says that in the later part of the eighteenth century, Benjamin "apparently" began to collect inns and formed a partnership with his brother [which?] under the name of Mew and co., Brewers of Newport and Lymington. But Benjamin was only 14 in 1800 and the Lymington brewary appears to be after 1828].

26.3.1790 Henry Mew (son of Richard), paternal grandfather of Charlotte Mew, born. The son of Richard and Ann Mew. Henry and his younger brother, Edward (born 1.3.1792), were both baptised on 28.12.1792 at Newport. Sometime married Ann Norris of Lymington. In 1828, Henry Mew was licencee of the Anchor and Hope in Lymington. In 1852 (See also 1851) this was run by Henry Ackland, but the Angel Hotel, 108 High Street, Lymington was run by William Bay Norris

Their children (survivors highlighted) were:
Ann Mew, born about 1821, who died, aged 11, on 8.1.1832
Henry Mew born Lymington 5.7.1824 who died 15.5.1881 at Newport
Richard Mew, born Lymington about 1826
Frances Mew, born Lymington 1827?, who married Daniel Barnes, Proprietor (1859 or earlier) of Pier Hotel, Ryde, Isle of Wight. One of their children was Walter Mew Barnes.
Edward Mew, born about 1829, who died, aged 11, on 4.4.1840
Frederick Mew born Newport 1832: See 1843 for character.
Walter Mew, born 7.7.1834 in Newport

They appear to have lived in Lymington until becoming licensee of the Bugle Inn in Newport about 1829. Frederick Mew (Charlotte's father) was born in 1832. Henry Mew died in 1859. His wife, Ann, lived to 1878

About 1793 Birth of Anne Esther Lyon, who became the second wife (1822) of Henry Edward Kendall senior ( Charlotte Mew's maternal great- grandfather). See 1841 - 1861 - 1871. The year of birth is suggested by the 1861 and 1871 data (between about 1792 and 1794). I do not know the name of the first wife - One can guess her first name was Sophia. Ann(e) Kendall's son was Charles Kendall.

About 1796 Ann Norris (who married Henry Mew) paternal grandmother of Charlotte Mew, born Lymington. Following the death of Henry Mew (November 1858) Ann Mew was living with Richard Mew in Newport in 1861. In 1871 she ("Anne Mew") was living as a lodger in Ryde. With her was Maria Anne Norris, unmarried, age 29, no occupation, born Lymington. Relationship not shown, but possibly a niece. Maria Anne was the daughter of William B. and Henrietta Norris who (1861) ran the Angel Hotel, 108 High Street, Lymington. Ann Mew died in October 1878.

About 1800 Birth in Lymington of William Bay (or Benjamin) Norris, who married Henrietta. See 1851 Census - 1861 Census - 1871 Census -

1801

With the consent of her father (Thomas Herne) Mary Herne, a minor, married Thomas Cobham, of St Mary le Bone, at Whitechapel.

July/August 1805 Henry Edward Kendall (junior), Charlotte Mew's maternal grandfather, born Westminster (died 1885) [Dates in RIBA archive. Years in Colvin, H.M. 1995. The 1881 online Census calculates 1811 as his date of birth, but this is inconsistent with the 1841 census.] He trained as an architect in his father's office. By 1841, they had separate practices. Kendall junior's practice built three lunatic asylums - Essex in Tudor style, Sussex in the Italian style and a new one for Dorset. He married Mary Cobham in 1836. Charlotte Mew's mother seems to have been their oldest child. [See family listing 1861] He died in 1885

1811: Sophia Kendall, Henry Edward (junior)'s sister, born at Suffolk St, Westminster. In 1830 she married Lewis Cubitt, one of her father's architecture pupils. She died in 1879.

Suffolk Street was the Kendall senior address from 1811 or earlier until 1852, or later. By 1861 they had moved to Spring Gardens, by 1871 to Dean Street.

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A sprig of Chick lace - probably late 19th century - from a photograph in Margaret Tomlinson's book

See 1863 - 1867 - 1887 -

See dialect

17.6.1811 Samuel Chick, grandfather in the Chick family Charlotte Mew knew, was born in Branscombe, Devon. He was christened on 7.7.1811. His father, also Samuel, had married Abigail Tutcher. Abigail Chick founded the Chick's Honiton Lace business in the early nineteenth century. She set up a shop in Dean (now called Street - north west of Branscombe) where the sprigs of lace were collected from the cottage workers, made into finished items and marketed in Sidmouth and elsewhere. (External link Branscombe Parish. Lace Industry - map). Charlotte Mew gave a poem in dialect called An Ending to Edith Chick. The scenery seems relevant to this part of Devon and the dialect is the same as that in The China Bowl. The poem was not published until Margaret Chick sent it to Mary Davidow in 1958 - But it is said to have been written in the early 1890s and is, therefore, one of the earliest, if not the earliest, Charlotte Mew poem we have.

[Although "mazed" is in a Cornish dialect list, and in the BBC's Devon list, John Weyell, from Sidmouth, says "Mazed was in common use for daft 'Er be mazed' - he's daft". when he was a child (he is now retired). On the same page: Richard Longridge from Starcross, Exeter "My maid be prapper 'mazed" Translation: "My daughter is off her head/confused/silly". See also Edmund Forte "Ee Bee Proper Mazed = He is really daft", in relation to Dawlish Warren (south of Exmouth) and Exeter]

Honiton Lace Museum

About 1812 Mary Cobham [Kendall] Charlotte Mew's maternal grandmother, born St Pancras. She married Henry Edward Kendall (junior) in Sussex in 1836. Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 calls her "Maria Kendall". See 1841 - 1861 (fullest view of family) - 1871 - 1881 and 1891 Census. Her will was written in 1883 and she died in Brighton in 1892. Anna Maria Kendall, Charlotte's mother, was born in 1837 and Mary Leonora Kendall (Charlotte's maternal aunt) about 1847.

The Mew Brewery

An Isle of Wight Records Office summary of the Mew Brewery History says "The connection of the Mew family with Crocker Street dates at least from 1814, when Benjamin Mew and his partner James Cull, brewers, were jointly occupying premises there." [The partnership with James Cull was over by 1816]

The Records Office summary also says that "Small scale brewing and malting were carried out at various premises in Crocker Street, Newport by a succession of individuals and partnerships from the 17th century down to Regency times". Kevin Mitchell's web story that breweries are recorded in Crocker Street from 1643.

See Bugle Inn 1816 - New Fairlee Farm 1816 - Mew family business 1828 (my earliest original reference to the Crocker Street brewery - Benjamin brewer) - 1841 Census (Thomas brewer in Sea Street, Newport, Benjamin brewer in Brading) -

Benjamin Mew died in 1850. The Kevin Mitchell website says that Lymington Brewery was left to Thomas and the Newport business to William.

In the 1851 Census Thomas is shown as both a wine and spirit merchant and a brewer in Lymington. [Also in an 1852 Trade Directory] - William is the brewer at Crocker Street. -

The Records Office summary says that in 1854 the Newport interests William Baron Mew (including the Crocker Street brewery) and the Lymington, interests of Thomas Parker Mew, were combined.

In the 1861 Census, both William (newly widowed) and Thomas are brewers in Newport. The birth places of Thomas's children suggest he had been in Newport for at least seven years

The Kevin Mitchell website says that (at some date) William bought out the Lymington business from Thomas.

The 1865 Trade Directory has W. B. Mew and Co. Brewers to Her Majesty, Crocker Street, and at Esplanade, Ryde" [No mention of Lymington] and "W.B. Mew and Co., wine and spirit merchants, Crocker street, and at West Cowes, Ryde and Lymington" -

At the 1871 Census William Mew is at Crocker Street and Thomas Mew at Medham Farm, near Cowes. At 68 Sea Street, Newport, Joseph Parker Mew is "Brewer's Manager" - In 1861 he was a "Brass and Iron Founder" in Cowes. -

The Records Office summary says that Walter Langton, late of Lambeth, injected £20,000 capital into the business in 1873 which then became W. B. Mew, Langton & Co. - William Baron Mew, Joseph Parker Mew and Charles Edward Templeman Mew of Newport, brewers, maltsters and spirit merchants, traded in partnership as W. B. Mew, Langton & Co.

At the 1881 Census William Baron Mew was living at Polars. Thomas, age 61, was at Wallhampton, outside Lymington, Brewer "retired". Joseph Parker Mew was the brewer at Crocker Street and at St James Street his son Herbert Mew (Brewer) is living with William Baron Mew's brewer son, Charles. -

[1887?] Fourteen years after W. B. Mew, Langton & Co. was formed it became W. B. Mew, Langton & Co. Ltd. The death of William Baron Mew was registered in the January/March quarter of 1887. His brother and son continued trading under the name "W.B. Mew [etc]"

1891 Census -

The death of Joseph Parker Mew (age 66, born about 1829) was registered Alderbury, Wiltshire in the January/March quarter of 1895

"Control of the new company remained in the hands of the Mew family throughout its life. It passed to William Baron Mew's son, Francis Templeman Mew and, after the latter's death in 1922, to his son Francis Joseph Templeman Mew. By 1965 two hundred public houses and twenty off- licences on the Isle of Wight, around Lymington and in Southampton and Portsmouth were controlled and annual sales amounted to more than œ1.5 million. In that year, however, a take-over by Strong & Co. of Romsey was accepted and Mew, Langton's independent existence came to an end. In 1968 Strong's itself was bought out by Whitbread. Part of the Crocker Street brewery site is still used by Whitbreads as a depot but the major part, including most of the buildings, has been adapted and redeveloped as sheltered housing."

Ryde Pier 1814: Opening of the pier at Ryde, Isle of Wight. (external link) - Ryde addresses related to the Mews are the Royal Pier Hotel (below) - 9 Barfield (Barfield Lodge) and 75 Union Street

In 1828 no "Pier" hotel is listed in the Trade Directory - but Daniel Hale is at the Bugle, Ryde. The "Royal Pier Hotel", Pier Street is in the 1841 Census, with George Rendall, age about 30, Hotel Keeper, not born in Hampshire, and his wife, Caroline, age about 25, born in Hampshire - It is the "Pier Hotel" (a posting inn) in an 1844 Trade Directory. - The 1851 Census has the "Pier Hotel", with Caroline Rendell, wife (no husband shown) age 38, born Ryde, as Hotel Keeper. She is living with Martha Hale, mother, widow, age 67, Annuitant, born Kingston? Dorset (died December quarter 1852?) and Daniel Barnes, nephew, unmarried, age 29, clerk, born Somerset - 1852 Directory: Royal Pier Hotel, Pier Street, posting and family, George Rendell - 1859 Royal Pier Hotel, Pier Gates, Daniel Barnes. - The 1861 Census - The 1871 Census - The 1881 Census - The 1881 Census - 1898 Trade Directory: Royal Pier, The Gordon Hotels Limited, (Louis Henry Claridge, Manager) Pier Street - The 1901 Census - The Royal Pier Hotel Ryde was demolished in the early 1930's to allow better traffic access from the bottom of Union Street onto the Esplanade. (external link)

1815

Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge founded by a bequest. (museum web) - Sydney Carlyle Cockerell (1867-1962) was the Director from 1908 to 1937. He took this post following his marriage in 1907. Arthur Tansley had lectured at Cambridge from 1906. Frederick Frost Blackman "was for many years a syndic of the Fitzwilliam Museum during Cockerell's long directorship". The Syndic is appointed by the University to manage the museum. A copy of a Psalter, printed at the Chiswick Press in 1905, has the inscription "To F.F. Blackman with S.C. Cockerell's thanks, Christmas 1913". Blackman married Elsie Chick in 1917. Sydney Cockerell went to the Poetry Bookshop in the hope of meeting Charlotte Mew, who sent him a manuscript of a poem in 1918. At this time, he lived at 3 Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge. Sydney Cockerell wrote an obituary for Charlotte Mew, which Elsie Blackman thanked him for. Our two major sources of manuscript archives relating to Charlotte Mew are Alida Monro and the Poetry Bookshop and Sydney Cockerell and the people he introduced Charlotte to. Alida Monro and Sydney Cockerell are also the two people who did the most to preserve and promote Charlotte's literary heritage after her death. [ Sydney Cockerell biography, Exeter

1816

26.11.1816 "Bargain and sale" - reference JER/OSBORNE/2 "New Fairlee Farm with barns, stables and outhouses lately erected on Fairlee Common and Fairlee Common Fourgrounds (18 acres 1 rood 7 perches), lying together near road from Newport, towards East Cowes, with Middle Field (18 acres) and close on west side of it (12 acres), both part of Fairlee Common Lower Ground. Also Barn Ground Closes: the Thirteen Acre Close (13 acres), the Ten Acres (10½ acres), the Seven Acres (7½ acres), Ilems and Tilsons Close (5 acres), one close (17 acres), parcel of Heathy Ground (42 acres), parcel of lands called Blakes Heath (above) lying on east side of highway leading to East Cowes, together with so much ground, part of Brick Kiln Close (alias Sixteen Acres), part of the said Blakes Heath as shall be marked out for a way from Lower Blakes Heath to pond in or near Brick Kiln Close." (Isle of Wight Record Office - Deeds and Documents of Osborne Estate: Catalogue Ref. JER/OSBORNE. Creator(s): Blachford family of Osborne) - See 1841 Census New Fairlee Farm 1843 - Newport 1865 - Isle of Wight Holidays - 1881 South Fairlee Farm - 4.2.1899 - 1901 New Fairlee Farm (and South Fairlee Farm distinct) - 1936 Fairlee House and South Fairlee Farm - 1963 change of ownership - 2006 New Fairlee Farm.

1819: Birth of Victoria who was to become Queen. Elizabeth Goodman was born about five years later and may have celebrated 25 years of domestic service about the time that Victoria celebrated 50 years of being Queen.

6.10.1819 Thomas Parker Mew, son of Benjamin, christened

1820

Sometime about here, Henry Mew married Ann Norris of Lymington. Their first child, Ann, was born about 1821. This is the earliest connection I have for the Mew family and Lymington.

Lymington connections:

I do not know where Ann Mew was born, but her older siblings, Henry, Florence and Richard, were born in Lymington. Henry (the father) was landlord of the Anchor and Hope, Lymington, in 1828, at a time when the brewery business appears to have been limited to Newport. Thomas Parker Mew was a brewer in Newport in 1841, but appears to have moved to Lymington between the biths of a child in 1843 and 1845. In 1851 he is listed as a a Wine and Spirit Merchant on the Quay at Lymington. In 1865 the Trade Directory has "W.B. Mew and Co., wine and spirit merchants, Crocker street, and at West Cowes, Ryde and Lymington", but the brewery is only at Crocker street and Ryde.

7.11.1820 Christening of William Baron Mew, who inherited the Newport brewery and bought the Lymington one (see his father). He is shown (unmarried) as Maltster and Brewer in Crocker Street in the 1851 Census. He married Frances Mary Templeman in the April/June quarter of 1854, at Chard in Somerset. Charles Edward Templeman Mew (birth registered Isle of Wight July/September quarter 1856) was William Baron Mew's eldest son. Francis (Frank) Templeman Mew (birth registered Isle of Wight October/December quarter 1857) was his second son. Henrietta Bernard Mew's birth was registered Isle of Wight in the April/June quarter or 1859. The birth of Amy Bernard Mew and the death of her mother, Frances Mary Mew, were both registered on the isle of Wight in the October/December quarter of 1860.

[Charles became a partner in the brewery whilst William trained as an architect in London and Paris. In 1884, F. Templeman Mew was an architect practising at 3 Mitre Court, Fleet Street, EC. When Charles had an accident, Frank was brought into the brewery management and turned it into a Limited Company in 1887. Frank died 1921] (Kevin Mitchell's website) and another) ].

1821

1822

about 1822 Daniel Barnes born Somerset - marrried Frances Mew - died 1881

Henry Edward Kendall senior married his second wife, Anne Esther Lyon, at St Andrew's church, Holborn. He already had two children: Henry Edward Kendall junior (17) and Sophia (11). Ann(e) and Henry's son, Charles Kendall, was born in 1829. The death of an Anne Kendall was recorded in the spring of 1863 in St Martin (in the Fields), Middlesex.

7.5.1822 Dedication of the new church, St Pancras. Links to: church website with history - map to new church - Notes on old and new on GenUKI pages - map to old church References to St Pancras Old Church are an anomaly of the online 1881 Census and other LDS sources "The LDS rather confusingly continues to call the registers for St.Pancras New, St Pancras Old" (GenUKI) - [See 1837 example]
So St Pancras New Church appears to have been the parish church of Henry Edward Kendal Junior and his family (see 1841) and Frederick Mew and his family (see 1863) -

1823 Henry Edward Kendall (senior), Charlotte Mew's maternal great- grandfather, became District Surveyor for the Parishes of St Martins in the Fields and St Anne's, Soho. He had previously worked for the Barrack Department of the War Office. He was about 47 years old, and held the post of District Surveyor for over 50 years.

Her head hung down, and her long hair in stooping
Conceal'd her features better than a veil;
And one hand o'er the ottoman lay drooping,
White, waxen, and as alabaster pale:
Would that I were a painter! to be grouping
All that a poet drags into detail
Oh that my words were colours! but their tints
May serve perhaps as outlines or slight hints.
(Byron, 6th Canto of Don Juan)

5.7.1824: Henry Mew, son of Henry and Ann, and a paternal uncle of Charlotte, born. In 1841 (aged 15) he was with a group of men in St James, Westminster (I do not think it is a school) being looked after by mainly female servants. In 1851 he is shown as "Wine Merchant" living with his parents at the Bugle Inn. He married Mary Toward in 1854. Henry succeeded his father at the Bugle Inn/Hotel. He was the mayor of Newport three times: in 1864, 1865 and 1870. The Bugle Hotel. is still a Mew family business in the 1875 Trade Directory, but, by 1881, Henry and Mary were living in Ventnor. He died 13.5.1881. The Bugle Hotel may have left the Mew family when Henry and Mary left.

click for In 1824-1826, A Sessions House and a House of Corrections were built at Spilsby. They were designed by Henry Edward Kendall (senior). ["The stately Sessions House of 1826, where quarter sessions for the area of Lindsey were held until 1878, is now home to the Spilsby Theatre"] [The House of Correction occupied about two acres. It was enlarged in 1869 to accommodate 85 cells]

About 1825: Birth of Elizabeth Goodman, the "Old Servant" of Charlotte's essay, born at Barton On Humber, Lincolnshire. (link to GENUKI website). The life story of the real Elizabeth Goodman, traced through the censuses, is very close to that of the Old Servant described by Charlotte. "That grey remote village on the hillside" does not describe Barton, which is a market town on the Lincolnshire bank of the river. It could be a village outside Barton in the Yorkshire Wolds. Charlotte wrote that it as a village none of the Mew children ever saw, but "all the ways of which we knew so well by hearsay". The census descriptions show the Goodman's district (from 1841) as mixed farms, brickworks and potteries. Their street, "Newport", appears to have been on the edge of Barton in an area that was being absorbed - The "new road" (Queen Street) was opened "in 1827... It cuts across the former gardens of the great house which stood on the site of the present police station. Its grounds originally occupied most of the area bordered by High Street, Finkle Lane, Newport, Catherine Street and Marsh lane" (Barton on Humber virtual Victorian Walk). Elizabeth's mother, also Elizabeth Goodman, was born at Horkstow in Lincolnshire about 1782. She was a widow by 1841. In the 1861 census she is shown as a "farmer's widow". Living with her in 1841 were William Goodman, age 20, an agricultural labourer, and our Elizabeth, age 16, shown as a female servant. By inference from Charlotte Mew's story, Elizabeth came to London in 1845, 20 years old, and became a servant in the Kendall grandparent's house. In the 1851 census she is shown (26) as the children's nurse. The Kendall household had high care needs. There were three nurses in 1851: a "nurse" who may have cared for Mary Cobham, Charlotte's great grandmother, Elizabeth, who is the "children's nurse" and a "children's nursemaid". It seems likely that the nursemaid cared for Arthur (2) and Mary (4) and that Elizabeth cared for Anna Maria (14), Thomas (10) and Edward (6). There was no live-in governess. By 1861 Elizabeth had returned to her mother's residence in Barton. Her profession as "quilter" suggests this is more than a visit. Perhaps she stayed with her mother until her death in 1866. If so, this means she was not with the Mew family until after their marriage, in 1863, and after the birth of Henry Herne Mew in 1865. But, this is not the impression given by Charlotte's story, which says [Elizabeth] was "chosen to follow her young mistress on her marriage". In the 1871 census Elizabeth is shown as "cook". But she was the kind of cook that takes care of children when they are ill: She recorded the deaths of baby Frederick in 1867, and Christopher and Richard in 1876. See 1841 census - 1845 - 1851 census - 1861 census - 1865 - 1866 - 1867 - 1871 - 1874 (Chapel) - 1875 - holidays - 1876 - 1881 census - 1891 census - 1892 - 1893.

The Every-Day Book by William Hone appeared in weekly instalments in 1825 and 1826. Bound volumes appeared in 1826 and 1827. Kyle Grimes has created an online version. The blessing of the apple tree takes place on January 5th (see index)

Here's to thee, old apple-tree,
hence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow!
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats full! caps full!
Bushel-bushel-sacks full,
And my pockets full too! Huzza!"

A very similar "jolly couplet" is quoted by Charlotte Mew in Men and Trees

About 1826: Birth of Richard Mew, Charlotte's paternal uncle (older than her father) who was to farm New Fairlee Farm. He was born in Lymington, as was his sister, Frances. Their father, Henry Mew was ran the Anchor and Hope Inn in Lymington in 1828, before moving to the Bugle Inn about 1829. In 1841, Richard appears to be in charge of New Fairlee Farm. (Charlotte's father, Frederick, and uncle Walter are also there). A letter Richard wrote in 1843 survives. At this time, Frederick had just returned from a trip to London. In 1851 Richard is shown as "bailiff for his father". In 1861, Richard Mew is shown as a wine merchant living with his widowed mother, Ann Mew (aged 65, born Lymington), plus a female general servant and a groom, in Lugley Street, Newport (external link) and Walter was in charge of the farm. An 1865 trade directory shows Richard as the farmer and also lists the family business as Henry Mew, farmer - and sons, Bugle Inn. and wine importers. Richard married Fanny Read in 1866. He is shown as the farmer in subsequent censuses. Charlotte Mew spent time, as a child, with Richard's family on the Isle of Wight and Fanny's family in Somerset. Richard acted in the place of father to Freda Mew after the death of her father in 1898. He died in 1903, but I suspect his family would have continued with some responsibility for Freda in the Isle of Wight Asylum. Charlotte remained in contact with this part of the family throughout her life and they were a major source of information for Mary Davidow's biography.

About 1827: Birth, in Lymington, of Frances (known as Fanny) Mew, Charlotte's paternal aunt (older than her father). In 1841, "Fanny Mew", age 14, was living with fifteen other girls ("pupils") of about the same age, in a house on the south side of Neport High St - In 1851 she is shown as "housekeeper" at New Fairlee Farm - She married Daniel Barnes of Ryde in 1853 - see 1861 - 1871 - 1881 - She may have died on the Isle of Wight in the April/June quarter of 1911, but that Frances Mew as age 87

23.10.1827 The consecration of St George the Martyr, Ramsgate. Designed by Henry Hemsley and H E Kendall and constucted between 1824 and 1827, it seats 1,300 people and has a lantern tower (placed at the request of Trinity House) as a navigational aid to passing ships. Described as one of the two "most architechturally distinguished" Kent churches in the first half of the nineteenth century. However it is in a "free versions of Gothic". This style became "unacceptable" after the launching of the Cambridge Camden Society and ecclesiology in the 1840s. "The ecclesiologists wanted to return the Church of England to an idealised version of the Middle Ages, both for the architecture of its buildings and the arrangements for public worship." [Detailed discussion in Jonathan Smith's (1994) Architecture and Induction: Whewell and Ruskin on Gothic ]

1828-1829 Henry Edward Kendall senior and junior were the architects of the esplanade and tunnel for Kemp Town, the fashionable new eastern extension to Brighton.

"the principal feature is an extensive crescent and square, the opening between the wings of which is 840 feet, and the wings, each 350 feet in extent, present a frontage towards the sea of 1,540 feet: the glacis is terminated by an esplanade commanding a beautiful and sheltered prospect of the ocean: beneath this, at the base of the cliff on which Kemp Town stands, a road is carried to the west end of the Marine-parade and is united with the gardens and lawns in the centre of the crescent by a tunnel." (Kelly's 1867 Directory - GenUKI website)

Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.14 says that during the development of Kemp Town, the Kendalls became a Brighton family of distinction. They had a seaside house in Brighton at 6 Codrington Place

The Mew family business about 1828 - 1829

Piggots Commercial Directory 1828

I think this list includes all the Mews listed (Hampshire, including the Isle of Wight). The Morris and Richard Mew may not be related to our Mews

Lymington

Of three "Inns and Hotels" (distinct from "Taverns and Public Houses"), the "Anchor and Hope (and commercial hotel)" is owned by "H. Mew". The Anchor Inn (hotel and posting house) is owned by M. Butcher - Mary Butcher is a wine merchant.

The Brewers are William Best and William Hebberd

Linking Lymington to the Isle of Wight, a "Packet" sailed every day between Yarmouth, on the island, and Lymington, carrying passengers and mail.

Newport

The Brewers are William Cooke and son, Sea Street - Thomas Self, Lugley Street - George Linington, Sea Street - Benjamin Mew, Croker Street - Wise and Co. Quay Street.

There are seven "Inns and Hotels", one of which is Bugle (and posting house) George Mew, High Street.

There are 38 "Taverns and Public Houses". Only the Waggon and Horses in Crocker Street has a Mew: Morris Mew

There is a Richard Mew in the High Street under Cabinet Makers and Upholsterers

About 1829: Birth of Edward Mew who died, aged 11, on 4.4.1840

Alehouse Licences for Newport show George Mew at the Bugle Inn for 1816, 1822 and 1826. In 1829 the licensee is Henry Mew (IOW 18.1.2005).

"By 1804 the Bugle was said to be "the best and chief hosteirie in Newport" and was the chief departure point for coaches to all parts of the Island." Gay Baldwin - Whitewash - Summer Issue 2002
The Bugle was the Newport "posting house". I think this means it was the inn where stage coaches stopped overnight. Horses would be kept to provide fresh horse when needed. I believe posting inns also kept horse for hire. The New Fairlee Farm may have provided provisions for the horses as well as the guests at the inn, and may have been somewhere to quarter and possibly breed horses.

I think the Bugle Inn became the Bugle Hotel under the second Henry Mew. See Bugle Hotel sign. The Bugle Hotel was closed in the 1960s or later

Frederick Mew born at the Bugle Inn in 1832 - 1841 Census - Death of Henry Mew senior 1859

1829 Christening at St Martin in the Fields of "Chas" (Charles) Kendall, son of Henry Edward and Anne. Architect.

About 1829 Lydia Rous (aged 10) began at Friends School Croydon. "All individuality was sternly repressed; the children were known...by numbers and wore a uniform of the plainest description... Organised games were... unknown in all girl's schools at that time. Education consisted of reading, writing, sewing, the four rules of arithmetic, the drawing of maps for the boys, and the making of samplers for the girls... these subjects were studied to perfection... She, one of her brothers, and six sisters, each headed the school in turn. 'No great credit to us', she said... 'What a little we knew when we left' (Rous 1967 page 2). [See Quaker policies on education from the 1834 Book of Discipline]. Lydia's biography describes her education as "narrow though solid". She went on to teach and "by self-study and in intervals of teaching, to work at Algebra, Geometry, Logic and Latin... She read widely, making a special study of English language and literature and took a keen interest in all that was going on in the political world and in the realm of thought" (Rous 1967 page 2).

Baby Wek

Alida Monro's estimate of the age of Charlotte Mew's parrot, would place his birth a little earlier than 1830. She calls him "Willie". Charlotte's letters speak of "Wek". Wek first appears in the letters Mary Davidow reproduces on 14.7.1909, when Charlotte wonders if he is to be trusted on the floor. Ninety years would be an extreme old age for a parrot. Given his longevity, Wek would have been one of the larger parrots, such as an Amazon Green. They were (and are) an expensive pet to buy. About 1880, the prices of parrots were: grey African from £1.5/- to £2 - Amazon Green from £1 to £2; Australian parakeets (budgerigars) 5/- to £1. "The parrots most in favour as pets are the grey and green varieties". A good cage for a grey would cost 14/- to 25/-. A parrot that could talk would cost £5 to £10. Macaws (£5) and cockatoos (£3 to £5) were also more expensive. Cassell's Household Guide (about 1880), volume 4, pages 248 "Cage-Birds - 14: Parrots).

If Wek was a family heirloom (so to speak), he may have entered the Mew family on the death of aunt Mary Kendall in 1902

23.1.1830 Marriage of Sophia Kendall to Lewis Cubitt (29.9.1799 - 9.6.1883), the younger brother of Thomas Cubitt. At Saint Nicholas Church, Brighton. Lewis had been a pupil of her father. He designed many of the housing developments constructed by Thomas. Lewis also designed Kings Cross Railway Station. Their son, Lewis Cubitt, was born 5.12.1834 and christened at Old Church, St Pancras, London. Their daughter, Ada, was born about 1841 and was a witness at the marriage of Frederick Mew and Anna Kendall in 1863. Sophia died in London in 1879. In 1881, her widower and Ada were living in Lewes Crescent, Brighton, where he died.

Building of first houses of what was to become Rosherville New Town

14.3.1832 Frederick Mew, Charlotte's father, born Newport, Isle of Wight. Penelope Fitzgerald's supposition (1988 p.3) that he was born in the Bugle Inn seems reasonable. He was baptised 13.4.1832. His parents were Henry and Ann Mew (born Norris). In 1841 (9 years old) he was living with his older brother, Richard (15), on New Fairlee Farm. In 1843, however, he had been in London, possibly at school - By 1851 he was an "architect" (19 years old) living in lodgings at 5 Sidmouth Street, just north of Mecklenburgh Square, where Charlotte was to be born 18 years later. - He worked with Michael Prendergast Manning (1832- ), a young architect his own age, on the design for the Sheffield School of Design. The plans were exhibited in 1856 and the college opened in 1857. The office address they used was Frederick's (new) lodgings in 2 Great James Street. In 1859 he became an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects. By 1860, when he again exhibited at the Royal Academy, he was using the address of Henry Kendall, architect, his future father in law, at 33 Brunswick Square. He was still living at 2 Great James Street at the time of the 1861 census. Frederick's lodgings in 1851 and 1861 are in easy walking distance of 33 Brunswick Square. He may have joined the firm between 1856 and 1860, or have been working for Henry Kendall earlier and used his own address for the Sheffield Design School exhibit. Frederick joined the firm at a time when Henry Mew was designing some of the new county asylums - Warley - Haywards Heath and Dorset. His father-in-law provided design books for schools and homes in a variety of styles, but specialised in the Italianate. The utilitarian aspect of this, illustrated by Kings Cross Station, designed by Cubit, may be related, in some way, to Frederick's ability to design the Sheffield Design School on a small budget. But there was a fantasy element to Henry Kendall's work manifest in his exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1856, which inspired Baudelaire; in the asylum architecture of Warley; and in the domestic architecture of Farnborough Hill, which Henry was designing as Frederick and Anna prepared to marry. - In May 1863 Frederick was named as (an?) executer in Henry Kendall's will. The provisions meant he would become a trustee of a fund to care for Mrs Kendall after Henry's death. In December 1863 he married Henry Kendall's oldest daughter, Anna, at a fashionable Bloomsbury church. One of the witnesses to their wedding was the sister (or mother) of Henry Gillum Webb who (later?) was co-trustee with Frederick of the funds to care for Mrs Kendall and her children. - Frederick and Anna moved into their new home at Doughty Street. Their children's "second mother", Elizabeth Goodman, previously Anna's nurse, may have moved in with them, or joined them shortly after. Between 1864 (after the marriage) and the 1871 census, Henry and Mrs Kendall, and the architect's firm, moved from Brunswick Square to Paddington, a move possibly facilitated by the opening of the first underground railway in 1863. The Trade Directories I have looked at do not show Frederick Mew as an architect until after Henry Kendall's death. Doughty Street (nor Brunswick Square after the move) does not appear to have been used as an architect's office before Henry's death. Frederick Mew appears to have worked as part of his father-in-law's firm until Henry died. In 1876, the year that two of Charlotte's brothers died, the Kendall firm submitted plans for a new Vestry Hall at Hampstead. The Hall, by "Kendall and Mew", may have opened in 1878 (or it may have opened later) - 1881 - Henry Kendall died in June 1885. In February 1890 the Mew's moved from Doughty Street to Gordon Street. This does appear to have acted as an architect's office. - 1891 - Frederick died in 1898, probably of stomach cancer.

about 1833: Birth in Somerset of Fanny Read who married Richard Mew in 1866. They farmed South Fairlee Farm. She died in 1891

1834

A committee formed to bring into existence the (Royal) Institute of British Architects. (RIBA - Link to its website). Some of its committee meetings were held in the house of Henry Edward Kendall senior in Suffolk Street

7.7.1834 Birth of Walter Mew, Charlotte's paternal uncle (younger than her father) who married Georgina Selby (born about 1839), the daughter of a farmer, on the Isle of Wight in the April/June quarter of 1860. Walter and Georgina were farming South Fairlee Farm in 1861, when Frederick was in London and Richard was a Newport wine merchant. However, by 1871, they were running a hotel in Sandown (Isle of Wight) and Richard and Fanny Mew were at South Fairlee Farm. In the July/August quarter of 1869, Georgina's sister, Ellen Anne, married the Newport grocer, Broadley Wilson Way (born about 1832). It was his second marriage. Their daughter, Georgina Selby Way (born October/September quarter 1871) was living with Walter and Georgina in 1881. Broadley Wilson Way died (age 42) in the January/March quarter of 1874. Ellen Anne Way moved to Sandown to run another hotel. Georgina died (age 43) in the October/December quarter of 1881. Walter moved to Abingdon, Berkshire, and died there (age 66) in the July/September quarter of 1900. Georgina Selby Way (niece - barmaid) was living with him in 1891.

In 1834, the headmaster of Friends Boys School, York, founded The Natural History, Literary and Polytechnic Society (external link). Francis Oliver was a scholar at the school in the 1880s. The school opened in 1823 on land leased from the Quaker asylum (Retreat). It was burnt down in 1899 when a natural history experiment was left unattended - (External link to Bootham School website. Friends Girls School, York opened in 1831 - although it is considered a development from a school founded by Esther Tuke in 1785, that had closed in 1814. Winifred and Ethel Oliver were scholars at the school in the 1880s. - (External links to Mount School website and archives)] See Some helpful people

1835

August 1835: Rosherville. Particulars of land, situate at Northfleet, in the county of Kent, to be let, on building leases 4 pages with a lithograph illustration. Printed for H.E. Kendall and William Rosher in London. Library of RIBA

18.5.1835: Marriage of Sophia Charlwood (born about 1820, Summerhill, Berkshire) to Stephen Gillum Webb (born Hampstead, about 1799 "Gentleman") in Old Church, Saint Pancras. Their children include Sophia Ellen Webb, born 20.6.1840 and christened 30.8.1840 at Saint Peter, Walworth, Surrey, and Henry Gillum Webb, born 18.9.1842 and christened on 4.12.1842, also at Saint Peter, Walworth. In 1861, Sophia [Ellen], aged 20, and Henry [Gillum], aged 18, were with their aunt, Julia Webb, aged 55, at 34 Cadogan Place, Chelsea St Luke Middlesex. I have not been able to trace their parents in this census. Sophia Ellen Webb (or her mother) may be the Sophia Webb who witnessed the marriage of Frederick Mew and Anna Maria Kendall in 1863. Henry Gillum Webb became a soldier in the Worcestershire Regiment (with which his family may have had a long standing connection), retiring with the rank of Colonel. He was the co-trustee with Frederick Mew of the trust set up to provide for Anna Maria Mew and her children. He married Florence Atlay on 23.5.1878, and died (aged 61) in the March quarter of 1904.

1836

About 1836, the existing St Catherine's Lighthouse was built to warn ships off the Needles on the western tip of the isle of Wight (opposite Swanage). A light for this purpose dates back to 1312

23.1.1836 Mary Cobham married Henry Edward Kendall (junior) (of St Martins in the Fields, Middlesex) at Uckfield, East Sussex. Her mother was also Mary Cobham and was living with the Kendalls in 1841 and 1851. [Cobham is a largely Lancashire name. In the 1861 census there is only one Cobham (a servant) in the whole of Sussex. The Lancashire Cobhams, in 1861 and later, were mainly basketmakers. There is a Cobham family in Devon (in 1851 and 1861/1871) who have money, and another in Hertfordshire with land.]

1837

Anna Maria Mardon Kendall, Charlotte's mother, born St Pancras.

Various figures have been given for Anna Maria's age but, not only was she was four in 1841 and 24 in 1861, but her christening at St Pancras is recorded (1837) in Pallot's Baptism Index. From this, the date of her parents' marriage, and the 1861 family list, it seems reasonable to conclude that Anna Maria was the eldest child and born in 1837.

The shade of insanity (and possibly other shadows) on Charlotte's life appear to have come from the Kendall side of the family. Anna Maria's own character is outlined later.

Her brother, Henry (born 1839), probably died as a child. Her brother Thomas (born 1840) died, aged 33, in 1873, in circumstances suggesting other shadows on the Kendall family apart from insanity. Her brother Edward (born 1844) lived the longest, but information of his life between childhood and death seems to have escaped record. Anna Maria's sister, Mary Leonora (born about 1847), lived at home all her life and died of "nervous debility and inanition 12 years" in 1902. Her death was within three years of Freda Mew's admission to the Isle of Wight asylum and Henry Herne Mew's death in Peckham asylum. The youngest child, Arthur, born about 1849, was a sailor in 1871.

Anna Maria married Frederick Mew in 1863 She died in 1923.

For brief descriptions of Anna Maria, see family 1915-1923 and recollections of the 1880s.

Mary Davidow (1960) (pages 20) says "Mrs Mew is remembered by two of Charlotte and Anne's contemporaries", at Lucy Harrison's School, "as a 'silly' person and not at all what one might call 'intellectual'". She says Anna Mew "believed all her life that in marrying Frederick Mew she had lowered her social rank". She also says Anna was never taught to manage the household finances and regarded "domestic tasks" as the sole responsibility of hired help". Davidow suggests that Anna Mew was never "head" of the household. On her husband's death (after Elizabeth Goodman), that role passed to Charlotte. Later (pages 74-75) she says that Anna Mew was "an extremely dependent person" and "had to have a companion provided for her" if her daughters went on holiday. If she was displeased with the companion, she would dismiss her and send a "dispatch" to Charlotte demanding her return. Alida Monro (1953 page ix) says that "mother... was treated very much as if she was a naughty child, and on the evenings that I went there she was always told to go up to bed". Margaret Jarman expressed suprise that, when she and her husband visited Charlotte and Anne Mew, "their mother... didn't appear at dinner".

In disused chalk pits at Gravesend, covering 17 acres, George Jones established the Kent Zoological and Botanical Gardens Institution. At Rosherville, Northfleet, Kent, Henry Edward Kendall senior, with junior, designed the hotel, pier and gardens "Their designs for development were too grandiose for realisation and it eventually degenerated into an amusement park" Colvin, H.M. 1995 and F.W. Leakey 1956

1838

Melksham Union workhouse at Semington, Wiltshire built. The architect was Henry Edward Kendall (senior), Charlotte Mew's maternal great- grandfather. (Peter Higginbotham's website has several photographs). He also designed the workhouse at Uckfield in Sussex which was built in 1838/1839. (Peter Higginbotham's website). Both were built to the Poor Law Commission's standard design.

A 1838 print (lithograph, with watercolour) in the Wellcome Library shows "Schools of the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read, Avenue Road, - Regent's Park". The architect is "H. E. Kendall, Junr. Archt. F.S.A" who published it from 33 Brunswick Square

1839

Auguste Comte used the term sociology for the new science of society - See History - Science and Chicks

1.2.1839 Henry Robert John Edmonds Kendall born to Mary Kendall and Henry Edward Kendall. He was christened at Old Church, Saint Pancras on 28.8.1839. See 1841. Possibly their eldest boy child. I have not found any further reference to him. He may have died young. See 1851 and 1861.

October/December 1839 Birth of Maria Anne Norris registered Lymington, Hampshire

10.11.1839 Birth of Gertrude Mary Dalby, daughter of John Watson and Anne Dalby. John Watson Dalby was a poet and story teller who wrote a memoir of Charles Lamb. Through her father, she was a friend of Barry Cornwall and Leigh Hunt. (The 1894 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, under her husband, says she was "a great favourite with Leigh Hunt and B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall)". The marriage of Gertrude Mary Mayer to Samuel Ralph Townshend Mayer (born August 1841) was registered Strand in the July/August quarter of 1867 (no 1868 as in DNB). Mayer was an editor and writer, a Conservative and an Anglican who campaigned for the abolition of pew rents and argued about the origins of sunday schools. He had published a short novel, Amy Fairfax: or, Bearing and forbearing, the lesson of life in 1859. He may have been associated in some way with Richard Bentley and Son. Gertrude Mary published Sir Hubert's Marriage, a three volume novel, in 1876 (Richard Bentley and Son) - The Fatal Inheritance and other Stories in 1878 (Moxon's popular novels) - Belmore in 1880 (Illustrated by J. Moyr Smith - only 80 pages - No 2 in Moxon's select novelettes). Her husband died on 28.5.1880 at their home in Crown Terrace, Mortlake Road, Richmond, Surrey (He was buried in Gloucester). Mrs Mayer was still living in Crown Terrace in 1881 [1881 Census]. Her parents, John Watson and Anne Dalby, lived next door. John Watson Dalby's death (aged 85) was registered Richmond in the April/June quarter of 1885. Mr and Mrs Mayer were both contributors to Temple Bar. Starting in 1887, Gertrude contributed a series of biographies of women writers. These were expanded as a two volume book in 1894. Mrs Mayer became the editor of Temple Bar in September 1898, at about the time that Charlotte Mew's first contribution was published in the magazine. It is not clear how long she remained editor. However, Charlotte and she appear to have been friends (and mutual friends with Catherine Amy Dawson Scott): Charlotte Mew broke into Mrs Mayer's house in March 1913, and found her ill. In May 1914 Mrs Mayer gave her a eulogy about Mrs Scott's unpublished novel and Mrs Mayer was still keeping Charlotte informed about Mrs Scott's literary affairs in February 1917. Gertrude Mayer died in 1932.

During the 1840s, University College London purpose-built a chemistry laboratory.

1440- 1840 Contrasts The pictures below are from Contrasts, the architectural challenge published by Augustus Welby Pugin in 1836. It shows the losses and gains over 400 years.

click to go back to the 15th century

Victorian architecture was self-consciously significant - Seeking to integrate modern power and plumbing with a restoration of beauty and community. Pugin's contrasts showed the architects what the issues were - But they did not all adopt one solution.

click to look closer at the 1840s

The building at the front that has replaced the half-timbered house is the gas storage for the town. Gas lights can be seen on the bridge. The bridge, a free community facility in the medieval picture, has become a toll-bridge in the 1840 picture. The building at the front that has replaced the green [outside a church, which I have not included] where children played with their parents is a Panopticon - The all purpose institution of the utilitarian Bentham that could serve as school, workhouse, prison, or even factory. The cathedral is a ruin, the warehouses crowd out the spires of the churches, there is nowhere shown for the workers to live and the smoke from the factory chimneys has blackened everything. Pugin illustrates this last point in his illustration of the church - not shown. Finally, the town smothers nature. Town and countryside become separate worlds that do not seem to communicate with one another. In much of her work, Charlotte Mew explores and compares the rhythms of the two worlds.

Architects responded differently to the challenge of the age. The response of Charlotte Mew's family was not the gothic revival adopted by Gilbert Scott. They drew on Early English, Tudor and Italian inspiration, used local materials, and favoured creative fantasy in the integration of elements in buildings. The familys' use of styles (at least, its use of Italianate) does not attempt to disguise the function of the building in the way that Gilbert Scott did at St Pancras Station, and in this sense they are more modern.

about October 1840: Birth of Thomas Cobham J. Kendall (see 1841), architect uncle of Charlotte, who died when she was about three years old

2.10.1840 Birth of Thomas Hardy (external link - Macmillan guide). He married his second wife, Florence Emily Dugdale (1881-1937), at St. Andrew's Church, Enfield, on 10.2.1914. Charlotte Mew's correspondence with Florence dates from September 1918.

1841

1841 Post Office London Directory - Architects:
Kendall, Edwd. Henry, 33 Brunswick Square
+Kendall Hen. E. 17
Suffolk Street , Pall Mall 1830 map
Marked thus + are surveyors

1841 Census: (6.6.1841/7.6.1841)
Brunswick Square: (modern map)
Henry Kendall aged 38 Architect
Henry Kendall 2 years
Thomas Kendall 8 months
Mary Kendall 26 years
Anna Kendall 4 years
Mary Cobham 55 Independent means
Henry Cox 17 Pupil
Thomas Parker 17 Pupil
Elizabeth Church 35 Servant
Susan Hankey 30 Servant
Elizabeth Davies 35 Servant
Sarah Apps 17 Servant
[Everyone in the house born in Middlesex]
Brunswick Square index:
Other censuses: 1851 - 1861 and 1871
Description, including trees
1838 - 1846 - 1852 -
1857 (Frederick Mew's start) -
1860 -

Brunswick Square Clinic (1913-)

Suffolk Street:
Henry Kendall aged about 60 Architect
Ann Kendall aged about 50
Harriet Geedings aged about 25 Female Servant
Francis Morris aged about 25 Female Servant
[The Kendalls are shown as born in Middlesex - The servants as not]. Names (especially servants) indistinct in original.]

Scott and Moffatt (Architects) had their offices in nearby Spring Gardens. Whilst Suffolk Square appears a very high class residential area, Spring Gardens was being occupied by governnment offices. [The history of the Lunacy Commission gives some background on this area].

1841 census, Isle of Wight

The 1841 Census shows Henry Mew, aged 50 and Ann Mew, aged 47, in the High Street, Newport. Henry is described as an innkeeper. (IOW 18.1.2005)

New Fairlee
Richard Mew 15
Frederic Mew 9
Walter Mew 7
Fanny Gale 30 Female servant
John Read 30 Male servant
Ann Read 35 Female servant
John Fry 15 Male servant
William Fry Male servant
Henry Fry Male servant

Sea Street, Newport
Thomas Mew aged 20 Brewer
Ann Mew age 15

Sandown, Brading
Benj- Mew age 55 Brewer
Mary Mew age 45
William Mew age 20
Joseph Mew age 12
Nathan Mew age 8
Emily Nunn age 16
Three servants

St Mary's, Barton upon Humber - Newport Strret
District includes two farms (Eddie's and Sawyer's) and two brickyards (Union and Winship's) and a pottery (Himbrough's)

Elizabeth Goodman age 55
William Goodman age 20 agricultural labourer
Elizabeth Goodman 16 female servant

1842:

Henry Edward Kendall (junior or senior) designed additions to Wimpole Hall (archive), near Cambridge, which were removed as ugly in the mid-20th century. An large ornate porch entrance was removed in the early 1940s and added on eastern and western service wings with "Italianate towers" in 1953.
click for 1905 photograph (loaned by Mr and Mrs John Proctor) from Steve Odell's website. It shows one of Kendall's service wings clearly to the left of the trees, and also the ornate porch. Kendall may have also built a stable (Peter Evans' website)

1843:

"The families I've had,' said Mrs Gamp, 'if all was knowd and credit done where credit's doo, would take a week to chris'en at Saint Polge's fontin!'" (Charles Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit)

Note in Isle of Wight Record Office: "(New Fairlee Farm held by Henry Mew 1843 = 173 acres 3 roods 18 perches)".

Island and London: [In 1841] Nos 5 and 6 Love Lane, (St Mary) Aldermanbury, in the City of London were the premises of Spence, Begallay, Westall and Co., wholesale haberdashers. [1841 Trade Directury]]. 29 people lived there: five clerks, 20 journeymen warehousemen (there are no apprentices listed) and three female and one male domestic servant. One of the warehousemen was James Bull, aged 15 (indexed as Rull) - The recipient of the following letter in 1843. In 1861, at Staplers Toll Gate, just down the road from Fairlee Farm, a James Bull "Storekeeper", aged 29, born Whippingham, was living with his wife and children. There is a six (or more) year discrepancy in the age of the 1841 and 1861 James. The 1841 age could have been anywhere between 15 and 19 - So we cannot identify the two Jameses.

From "Rd. Mew - Fairlee" [Wednesday] 4.10.1843 to Mr James Bull, 5 Love Lane, Aldermanbury, London. Dear James, Not feeling inclined to go out this evening, I thought I would let you know how things are with us in the Island. It would be useless telling you things prior to H. Wadmore's departure for town, as you must have had everything over and over again by this time. By the bye, Fred is not much altered by his stay in London. He is just as droll as ever - The next time you see him ask him whether he will take a "little more of the Patent" "Lovely night"... click for

I take this to be from Frederick Mew's brother Richard. Richard would be about 18 and Fred eleven. If Fred is Charlotte's father to be, this is one of the few glimpses we have of his character. Another is from letters he wrote in 1894 and another the description by Alida Monro, purporting to reflect what she had heard from Charlotte.

1844

Henry Edward Kendall (junior) appointed District Surveyor for Hampstead. (F.W. Leakey 1956 page 55). Sometime around here (spring 1844?), Edward Herne Kendall, Henry and Mary's fourth? child was born. He was Charlotte's longest surviving? Kendall uncle, dying just before she did. He is in the 1851 and 1861 census, but I have not traced him in subsequent ones.

Littell's Living Age (also known as The Living Age) was an American general magazine largely consisting of selections from various English and American magazines and newspapers. It was published weekly, for the most part. 11.5.1844 to August 1941. (Serial Archives Listings) - Reproduced some of Charlotte Mew's writings

Daniel and Smith Harrison, Quaker brothers, formed "Harrisons and Crosfield", in Liverpool, to trade in tea and coffee. In the same year, Daniel Harrison's wife, Anna, gave birth to Lucy Harrison. The firm later moved its headquarters to London, the world centre of capital and commercial information. It was primarily a tea and coffee trader until the early twentieth century, when it diversified into rubber and many other products.

1845

Richard Wagner's opera Tannhauser was first performed (in Dresden) in 1845. Wagner revived it for Paris in 1861. Charlotte Mew (1904) compares conflicting voices within Emily Brontë to the different voices of instruments in the overture to the opera. (External link describing overture)

By inference from An Old Servant, about 1845: Elizabeth Goodman came to London to become a servant to Charlotte's maternal grandparents. The real Elizabeth Goodman (16) was in Barton, Lincolnshire in 1841 and a children's nurse (age 26) with Charlotte's maternal grandparents in 1851. The 1861 census shows her (36) back at Barton On Humber. She may have returned to London soon after her mother died in the winter of 1866. She was working for the Mews by September 1867 (about 42). She was their cook in 1871 (46). In 1846: The Believer's Daily Remembrancer: or, Pastor's Morning Visit by James Smith 1802-1862), a Baptist Minister, was published in London by S. Marshall & co. Over 380 pages of meditations. Editions published in 1864, 1871 and 1911. It may have been Elizabeth who pleged Charlotte Mew to read the book "at night and morning"

The architecture of St John The Evangelist, Kensal Green, designed by Henry Edward Kendall (junior) in 1843, and opened in 1845 has been "much criticised". It is a building of white and yellow brick with black flint dressings in Romanesque style, seating 600 (300 free). It had a shallow apse, nave, twin west towers with pinnacles and short spires flanking a three-order portal. In 1903 a chancel in Gothic style, replaced the apse. (Paddington: Churches in A History of the County of Middlesex Volume 9

In 1845, Victoria and Albert bought Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. With the assistance of Thomas Cubitt, a new building in the "Italianate Style" was built over the next few years. (External link to Osborne House website). In 1850, the Mew brewaries were granted a Royal Warrant to supply Queen Victoria when she was in residence at Osborne

  click for Messrs. Kendall and Pope, architects
clicking on the brickwork will take you to the full colour photograph on Simon Cornwall's website
1846

From 1846 to 1853, Kendall and Pope, architects, were constructing the new Essex County Asylum, required by the 1845 County Lunatic Asylums Act. Kendall was Henry Edward Kendall (junior), Charlotte Mew's maternal grandfather. (Not his father - See below). The firm was Kendall and Pope, Architects, 33 Brunswick Square, Bloomsbury. Mr Pope was Robert Philip Pope and the partnesrhip continued until at least the mid 1850s. Churches they designed include Holy Trinity, New Hythe, Kent (1852-1855) and St. Laurence [Lawrence], Skellingthorpe, Lincolnshire (1854-1856)

The asylum was built in red brick, as was Farnborough Hill (below). See "that red brick barn upon the hill"

At University College Hospital Robert Lister performed the first ever operation under anaesthetic in Europe. (Some time in 1846)

about 1847 Mary Leonora Kendall, Charlotte Mew's maternal aunt, born St Pancras. She lived with her parents throughout their lives. She died early in 1902.

12.5.1847 Grafton Street Chapel, St Anne's Soho - Kendall, district surveyor: Metropolitan Archives reference MBO/PLANS/98

October 1847: "Jayne Eyre was a forbidden book: we doubt however if it was a closed one...many a young mentor... pored over it in secret, burning her candle low over its pages..." (The Governess in Fiction 1899)
December 1847: Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey published. "It is mainly upon Wuthering Heights that Emily Brontë's reputation as a great artist and a repulsive woman has been built" (The Poems of Emily Brontë 1904).
see poems - 1850 - 1883 - 1899 - 1903? and 1904 - 1909
Brontë weblinks

1848

After 1848

Hampstead Workhouse built by H.E. Kendall. (external link)
"Messrs. Kendall and Pope, architects" on an archive (Hampstead Workhouse board room - ref. MBO/PLANS/6 - date: 1845-53? Elliptic beam Messrs. Kendall and Pope, architects]

The Victorian Education by Deb Taft (Massachsetts 1999) - British History Online: Private Education in the reign of Victoria - Queen's College, Harley Street - The North London Collegiate School - Queen's College web.
Queen's College was started in 1848 by Frederick Dennison Maurice, the Christian Socialist lecturer of King's College, under the auspices of the Governesses Benevolent Institution. The college was open to girls and women over twelve years old. There were preparatory classes for younger girls, and evening classes for girls already governesses. Llewellyn Davies, brother of Emily Davies, was involved in Queen's College. (Margaret Forster 1984) Female teachers who studied at Queens included Dorothea Beale and Frances Mary Buss

"The following year Bedford College had opened on much the same lines. Both schools quickly drew to themselves all the intelligent, middle-class girls in London whose thwarted ambition to learn was recognised and approved by liberal parents" (Margaret Forster 1984) - However, Mary Cathcart Borer (1975/1976) contrasts the success of Queen's with the initial near failure of Bedford.

1849

Montague House, the old British Museum, was demolished between 1842 and 1845. The first phase of the new building was largely completed by 1852, when the idea was put forward of a domed heaven of learning in the central quadrangle - the new reading room that opened in 1857. In 1850, Karl Marx, started to use the old, and now forgotten, library. Next door to the museum, at 47 Bedford Square, some wives and daughters of the rich were beginning their own cultural revolution:

"Bedford College" (external link)
The Ladies College at 47 Bedford Square was founded in 1849 by Mrs Elizabeth Jesser Reid (born Sturch 25.12.1789 - died 1.4.1866), a rich widow who had been "in contact with leading figures in the revolutions in France and Germany in 1848" . (Quote may be from Margaret Forster 1984) Elizabeth Reid leased the house, gave £1,500 to three (male) trustees, and persuaded friends serve on the management committees and act as teaching professors. It was to provide a broad and non-sectarian education for women - much as London University did for men. It opened in October 1849. At the end of 1851 Mrs Reid wrote "Can anyone explain the failure of this college? or tell how it is that where one might reasonably expect several hundreds, the number who seem to look for Education here is somewhat under nineteen?" (Borer 1975/1976 p.266)

In 1853 a school was opened on the premises to provide a better standard of entry to the classes in the College.

Some college students became resident when "The Residence" was opened in Grenville Street (see 1861). Later 48 Bedford Square became the residence. [In the 1861 Census, 47 Bedford Square has only two people living in it: John Dawson, aged 37, born Ipswich, the Hall Porter - and Ann, his wife, born Vauxhall, the House Keeper. Number 46 has a family (including servants) of fourteen people. In 1871, 47 Bedford Square is occupied by a retired merchant (Mosco Joseph) whose large family were mostly born in Australia. Number 48 has only three people living in it: Elizabeth Barclay? aged 55, Resident of Bedford College? born Teddington - Janet Barclay, aged 46, something Visitor, also born Teddington - Harriet Liddard, servant, aged 57, Cook, born London. Number 49 also has only three people living in it: Ann Bradd, aged 27, Parlour Maid - M.A. Marshall, aged 30, House Maid - Elizabeth A. Bostook, aged 53, Boarder "Interest of Money", born Liverpool who is, like the others listed, unmarried. The census was taken seven days before Easter, so 49 could be the residential unit with only one boarder due to a vacation.

The preparatory school was, at some stage, run by Miss Frances Martin, who retired in 1868. The school was then given up by the college, but Caroline Bolton - Mary Dixon and Lucy Harrison continued a school in Gower Street. This may have moved (over time) from a school to prepare women for college to a girls' day school, some of whose pupils may have gone on to boarding school (the Olivers?), others to college (Ann Mew?), others straight into life (perhaps with part time college classes) Charlotte Mew?.
Bedford College moved to York Place in 1874.

See The Cambridge History... Literature (1907-19221) on The education of women, which concludes: "No doubt, girls' schools, at the beginning, voluntarily handicapped themselves by trying to teach most of the things taught in boys' schools, as well as those things which women either need to know, or are conventionally expected to know, or to be skilled in. But this mistake was not slow to disclose itself and be corrected. On the other hand, they were not handicapped by traditional methods; and the professional bent encouraged by the advocates of a better education for girls gave the teachers a critical attitude towards educational principles and their own work."

About 1849 Arthur Kendall born: See 1851 - 1861 and 1871

school in the Old Kent Road: Mary Davidow (1960 pages 5-6) says "In due time Frederick Mew followed his brothers to London to attend Mr Wotton's School in the Old Kent Road." (Footnote, "from letters and papers in the possession of the family of Mr Richard Percy Mew, Charlotte Mew's first cousin"). On 11.11.1982, Southwark Local Studies Library advised Penelope Fitzgerald that they could not find a school of that ("Wootton's") name. "However, the Post Office London Directory for 1849 lists a Mr T. Walton at the Albany House Academy, in the Old Kent Road."

Mary Davidow continues:Since an apprenticeship in architecture generally commenced at the age of sixteen, lasting for five or six years (Colvin, H.M. 1954 page 4), one may assume that Frederick Mew, upon reaching that age" [that would be 1848] "received his training in the office of some established architect.

In March 1849, Frederick would have been seventeen. It is possible that Frederick's stay in London in 1843 refers to his first weeks at school.

An architect in the 1851 census

Mary Davidow continues: "In 1856 he exhibited a design for the "School of Art, Sheffield" at the Royal Academy from the office of Manning and Mew at 2 Great James Street, London" (reference Royal Academy dictionary, 1905, volume 5) ["Manning and Mew" designed the new block for the Sheffield School of Design (opened 1857) - "in 1853 the emphasis of the school was changed from the education of designers to the teaching of fine arts. In order to meet increased demand for places a new block was designed by architects Manning and Mew, these plans were in a simple style due to a restrictive budget" web information]. "The school of design, founded in 1841, now occupies a building erected in 1857 at a cost of above £7,000" (The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland 1868)

In 1852 (Trade Directory), 2 Great James Street was the office of Armstrong and Westbrook, solicitors. There were several solicitors in Great James Street, but no architects. There was no architect under Manning or Mew. However, the 1861 Census shows Frederick Mew in lodgings at 2 Great James Street and Michael Prendergast Manning (below) living with his parents in St Pancras.

Michael Prendergast Manning (born St Pancras, 1832 - so the same age as Frederick) was active as a London architect between 1851 and 1902. [Not in an 1852 London Directory] In 1861 ("architect") he was living with his parents at 3 Holmes Terrace, St Pancras. He designed some churches after 1870. Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 pp 263-264 says he became an associate of the RIBA in 1866, and retired in 1902. In 1881 ("surveyor and architect") he was married, with several children, living at 5 Provost Road, Hampstead. His widowed father ("retired tradesman") was living with them. In 1884 "Manning and Simpson" were at 6 Mitre Court Chambers, Fleet Street and "Mew F. Templeman" was at 3 Mitre Court, Fleet Street. In 1891 ("architect"), the family were at Pounds Farm, Higham, Suffolk.

"In 1859 Frederick Mew became an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects".

In 1860, he exhibited at the Royal Academy "from the office of Kendall and Mew at 33 Brunswick Square".

1850

Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey. By Ellis and Acton Bell [respectively]. A new edition revised, with a biographical notice of the authors, a selection from their literary remains, and a preface, by Currer Bell [i.e. Charlotte Brontë]. Publisher: London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1850. Contained further poems by Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë

4.4.1850 The North London Collegiate School for Ladies opened in the Buss family home in Camden Street with 38 pupils and Frances Mary Buss as head. (archive link)

15.11.1850 Death of Benjamin Mew, the brewer. The inscription beneath the memorial windows in the parish church reads

In memory of Benjamin Mew who departrd this life 15th Nov 1850 aged LXV

Also said to be in 1850 that a Royal Warrent was granted to Mew's Brewery - Although the earliest original evidence I have for this is 1865.

1851

1851-1852 Lewis Cubitt's design for the Kings Cross Railway Terminus erected by William Cubitt (see termini in Looking at Buildings). The parish church of St Pancras is along the road opposite the Euston terminus. (1838 - external weblink). The church had ionic columns and Euston station a doric arch, but both were in the Greek classical style. Kings Cross was self-consciously modern, utilitarian in its structure, although "recognisably in the Italianate style then in favour". By contrast, the neighbouring St Pancras Station (1868-1878) hides its utilitarian terminus behind a hotel built in an "advanced medieval style" by Gilbert Scott. (See Looking at Buildings)

1851 is one date usually given for the birth of Ella D'Arcy. Another is either 1856 or 1857. Her death is given as either 1937 or 1939. She appears untraceable in British censuses, under that name. There is a photograph of her on The Victoriam Web. Penelope Fitzgerald says she was born in 1857 and that Ella D'Arcy was her real name "though her publishers wouldn't believe it". Charlotte Mew may have met her in 1894. She visited her ("E. D'A") in Paris in 1902.

James Fleming says that Ella d'Arcy was the daughter of Anthony Bryne D'Arcy and Sophia Anne. The marriage of Sophia Anne Sutherland to Anthony D'Arcy took place at Gravesend in the October/December quarter of 1863. Anthony was a corn merchant. He was born in Ireland about 1820. Sophia was born in Kent about 1823. She may have died in Kensington in the January/March quarter of 1892. She is shown as a widow in the 1881 census. Ella d'Arcy is not shown on the census records of this family that I have traced.

James Fleming says that Ella D'Arcy was educated in France and Germany and that she studied at the Slade School of Art from 1880 to 1881. She moved to literature because her eyesight began to fail.

30.3.1851/31.3.1851 census:

Frederick Mew, architect, aged 19, born Newport, Isle of Wight was lodging at 5 Sidmouth Street, St Pancras (This is just north of Mecklenburgh Square). It is not clear if he has a completely separate apartment or is one of several lodgers with Edward Thurlow, age 53, pattern maker, and his wife, Elizabeth, age 52.

33 Brunswick Square:
Henry E. Kendall, junior ("architect" age 45) and his wife, Mary (age 35).
[No Henry Kendal son]
[Anna Maria Kendal elsewhere]
[No Thomas Kendal]
Edward Kendall, son, age 6
Mary Kendall, daughter, age 4
Arthur Kendall, son, age 2
Mary Cobham Mother-in-Law - Widow, age 70, Annuitant, born Marylebone
Sarah Tomlin servant age 38 nurse
Mary Endicot servant age 42 cook
Elizabeth Goodman servant age 26 children's nurse, born Barton upon Humber, Lincolnshire
Jane Beedle servant age 24 housemaid
Mary Ann Cook servant age 14 children's nursmaid

23 Wilton something. St George's, Hanover Square
William H[enry] Covey 47 General Practitioner, MRCS and LAC, born Basingstoke, Hampshire.
Emma S[arah] Covey 40 his wife
Emma Covey 20 daughter
Fanny C Covey 17 daughter
Charles Covey 16 son
Myra J Covey 14 daughter
Francis Day 21 visitor
Anna M Kendall 14 visitor, born Middlesex
Elizabeth Lunn 25 servant
Ellen Barton 26 servant
Arthur Gardener 17 servant

William Henry Covey, born about 1804, death registered April June quarter of 1878, age 74, St George Hanover Square

1851 census, Isle of Wight
and 1851 Trade Directory

Bugle Inn, 195 High Street, Newport
Henry Mew, age 61, Inn Keeper, born Newport
Ann Mew, age 55, wife, born Lymington
Henry Mew, age 26, son, Wine Merchant, born Lymington
Jane James, servant, unmarried, age 40, Barmaid
Henry Holloway, visitor, married, age 42, Nail Maker?
William Newham, servant, unmarried, age 20, Porter
Harriet Blanchard, servant, unmarried, age 34, Chambermaid
Mary Mackell, servant, unmarried, age 36, Cook
Eliza Woods, servant, unmarried, age 20, Chambermaid
Jane Prince, servant, unmarried, age 23, Cook

New Fairlee Farm
[No head of household shown]
Richard Mew, son, age 25 Bailiff for his father, born Lymington, Hampshire
Fanny Mew, daughter, age 23 Housekeeper, born Lymington, Hampshire
Walter Mew, son, age 17, Agricultural Labourer, born Newport
Frances Goodall 48 servant
John Croad 42
Keziat Croad 50
John Cooke 17
Mark Morris 13

Crocker Street
William Baron Mew, unmarried, age 30, Malster employing 9 men, Brewer employing 17 men.
Ann Agnes Mew, sister, unmarried, age 23, born Newport
Joseph Parker Mew, brother, unmarried, age 22, Brewery Assistant [?] Manager of Brig Harriet [?], Cowes. Coal Trade

Lymington - Hampshire
Trade Directory: Parish of Lymington: 4,164 inhabitants

Quay
Thomas P. Mew age 31 Wine and Spirit Merchant born Newport
Mary J. Mew wife age 28 born Portsmouth
Julia Mew daughter age 10 born Scholar Portsmouth
Mary E.E. Mew daughter age 9 Scholar born Newport
Frances N. Mew daughter age 8 Scholar born Newport
Benjamin P. N. Mew son age 6 Scholar born Lymington
Ellen Mew daughter age six months born Lymington
Maria Hooper, visitor unmarried, age 20, born Downham, Wiltshire
Three House Servants

Trade Directory: Thomas P. Mew, Quay shown as Wine and Spirit Merchant "spirit only" and also (Thomas Parker Mew, Quay) as one of the towns five Brewers

Angel Hotel - High Street
Willam Norris age 50 Hotel Keeper born Lymington
Henrietta Norris, wife, age 31 born Exbury
Georgina Norris, daughter, age 8, scholar, born Exbury
Willam Norris, son, age 7, scholar, born Exbury,
Thomas Norris, son, age 6, scholar, born Exbury
Four servants

Trade Directory: Anchor and Hope, High Street (commercial and posting) Elizabeth and Henry Ackland
Angel Inn, High Street (family and posting) William Benjamin Norris
Introduction on Lymington says "Concerts, balls and other amusements occasionally take place at the Assembly Rooms at the Angel Hotel"

Trade Directory: Mary and Sarah Peress (school) High Street. One that took boarders. Pupils (census) include:

Maria Norris, age 11, pupil, born Lymington

St Mary's, Barton upon Humber - Newport Strret

William Carlile age 75 agricultural labourer
Sarah Carlile age 75 his wife
Elizabeth Goodman age 67 lodger, widow, annuitant

1.5.1851 Queen Victoria opened the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park where the Great Exhibition was held for the next five months. It made over 100% profit, some of which established fellowships and scholarships for science and engineering graduates: The "1851 Exhibition Scholarships". One of these enabled Harriette Chick to study bacteria in Germany. (external link)

1852
click for Holy Trinity, New Hythe, Kent (1852-1855) was designed by Robert Philip Pope, the partner in the Kendall's firm. It is built of the native ragstone. "The edifice is small, capable of seating about 300 persons. Its architectural style is early English, plain but imposing from its massive simplicity". Click on the bell-tower to visit.

1852 Post Office London Directory -

Kendall and Pope, architects and surveyors, 33 Brunswick Square
Kendall, Henry Edward, architect, 17 Suffolk Street , Pall Mall East
Kendall, Henry Edward junior, architect and district surveyor, 33 Brunswick Square and Holly Cottage, Heath Street, Hampstead (1862 map)

1853 Designs for schools and school houses, parochial and national. By H.E. Kendall [Junior] 11 pages, 21 plates. Printed by Atchley & Co.... [National Art Library Shelfmark: 62.C.57 Fiche Number: 4.2.1606] The British Library catalogues the same title published 1847.

Said it was possible to build an "artistic and tasty village school" for £300. It would be cheaper if the casements had wrought iron frames and the gargoyles and parapets were made in cement. (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p. 284)

Jayne Eyre was a revelation, but Villette [January 1853]... Happy the critic when Villette was young." (The Governess in Fiction 1899)

Daniel Barnes, who became the proprietor of the Royal Pier Hotel, Ryde, married Frances Mew, on the Isle of Wight, in the October/December quarter of 1853. Their children included:
Walter Mew Barnes birth registered July/September 1856
Marian Barnes, birth registered January/February 1862
Edward Daniel Barnes birth registered July/September 1863
George Frederick Barnes birth registered October/December 1866
The names Walter and Frederick were names of Frances' brothers. In 1875 the names Daniel and Barnes were used for one of Charlotte's brothers. At this time, the Barnes children lived (in Ryde) away from the hotel with a governess, and the grandmother of the Mew and Barnes children lived with an aunt in Ryde. It seems reasonable to assume that the Mew children sometimes visited. Walter Mew Barnes had a role with respect to the Mew family trusts (See letter 20.12.1892).

1854

George Bentham (1800-1884) (nephew of Jeremy Bentham offered his herbarium and library to the government on the understanding that they should be used for research in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. (1911 Encyclopedia) Daniel Oliver began working at Kew in 1858 - It would appear, as Bentham's assistant in sorting specimens as they came in from explorers. When Daniel Oliver, "author of various botanical papers in the Transactions and Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London etc" was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (4.6.1863) his first two proposers were William Jackson Hooker (Kew biography), the then Director of Kew, and George Bentham.

April/June quarter 1854: Marriage of Henry Mew to Mary Toward, daughter of Andrew Toward (born Scotland about 1796, died Isle of Wight 1881) who was the land agent for Barton's Farm, Whippingham.

5.7.1854 Death of the French novelist Emile Souvestre (born 1806). In Derniers Bretons (4 volumes 1835-1837) and Foyer Breton (1844) the folk-lore and natural features of Brittany were worked up into story form. (1911 Encyclopedia). A fully revised and corrected edition of Derniers Bretons was published in 1854, which Charlotte Mew references in her discussion of the midsummer fires at Guingamp

1855

31.3.1855 The death of Charlotte Brontë. Matthew Arnold wrote his poem Haworth Churchyard in April 1855. It was published in Fraser's Magazine in May 1855. - (external link to a copy) - See Charlotte Mew 1904

The death of a Mary Cobham was registered in St Giles (Bloomsbury) in the June quarter of 1855. (volume 1b, page 228)

1856: The Universal Exposition Paris: Henry Edward Kendall (junior) exhibited his Composition architecturale. F.W. Leakey 1956 page 56 says this seems to be the only dessin "libre" that Kendall published. [A free drawing as distinct from an architect's drawing?]. It is now lost but may once have hung above Charlotte Mew's mantlepiece. Alida Monro wrote "I have a faint recollection of the Architectural Composition... I feel sure Charlotte showed it to me on one of my first visits to her. I think it hung over her mantlepiece... I remember an airy lightness in the picture..." (F.W. Leakey 1956 page 62)

France: Language - 1859 - school? - her earlier days - 1889 - automile - 1901 (Brittany) - April 1902 (Paris) - June/July 1902 (Brittany?) - 1904 Mademoiselle - cinematograph - 1909 (Brittany) - 1911 (Boulogne) - 1913 (Dieppe) - Frazer - 1914 (Dieppe) - 1926 Aglaë (set in Normandy) -
The study of architectural style would presumably have taken the architects in the Kendal/Mew family to the continent. Charlotte may have had childhood holidays abroad and may have had a period at school in Paris. She became bi-cultural English/French and mentally lived on both sides of the Channel.

Charlotte Mew included French in Some Ways of Love and Notes in a Brittany Convent in 1901 - In the Curé's Garden in 1902 - Mademoiselle in 1904 - The Fête in 1913 - Madeleine in Church (1915?) - Â Quoi Bon Dire and Jour des Morts (just the titles) - Le Sacre Coeur - Monsieur Qui Passe and Fin de féte (1923) (just the titles) - and Aglaë -

Alida Monro (1953 page x) says "In her earlier days, while her father was alive and money was plentiful, she made several sojourns in northern France, and always had a great nostalgia for that country. She read French fluently and introduced many interesting books to her acquaintances. She always had a French book going at the same time as an English one and was an indefatigable reader."

In 1856 Friends School Croydon began to use names instead of numbers for its pupils. One of students under the old regime was Lydia Rous (1819- 1896) who became Superintendent of Friends Girls School, York in 1866. She was a pupil of the Croydon School from about 1829

1856: Modern Architecture by Henry Edward Kendall. [junior] 2 volumes, 36 plates. [National Art Library Shelfmark: F.17.38,39 Fiche Number: 4.2.1719] The British Library catalogues the same title "By H. E. K.?" published 1846.

(Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 pp 4-5 describes this as having "handsome illustrations" which showed clients "exactly what to expect". A variety of styles are shown, which can be mixed. She lists Greek, Early English, Gothic, Italian Renaissance, Tudor, Jacobean and Queen Anne. She says the firm "specialised in private houses from villa to mansion, Board Schools and lunatic asylums".

detail from the architect's original drawing for Sussex Asylum, Haywards Heath built between 1856 and 1859 to the design of H.E. Kendall, Junior "a structure of brick, in the Italianate Lombardo-Venetian style" (Kelly's Directory 1891) - [See external link Lombardo]

"Ruskin... jumped to the conclusion that only a Gothic church was worthy of worship and that Renaissance architecture was pagan in spirit. The reason for this is plain. The total impression of a typical Renaissance building upon Ruskin's sensibility was the antithesis of the naturalistic detail he loved so much in Gothic architecture. Lombardo's church, Santa Maria dei Miracoli, a prime example of Renaissance architecture in Venice, became one of Ruskin's betes noires simply because it substituted for Venetian Gothic a harmonious order of parts which offended Ruskin's proclivity for a semblance of wildness and rudeness in architecture. When Lombardo based his blueprint upon a symmetrical design of circles and rectangles, he was only following an ideal of beauty codified in the 1450s by Leon Battista Alberti. But such an ideal was anathema to Ruskin. It was his assumption that "Whatever is in architecture fair or beautiful, is imitated from natural forms." And natural forms are antipodal to the Renaissance ideal. Natural forms flow, blossom and grow, as the craftsmen of medieval Venice recognized when they preferred to carve the leaf and the flower rather than the square and the triangle upon the rich facades and capitals of San Marco. It is not difficult to understand why Ruskin, who cherished the "look of mountain brotherhood between cathedral and the Alp", found the Euclidean order of Lombardo's church both sterile and inhuman. Ruskin was unable to appreciate almost any Renaissance edifice because its governing ideal of harmonic proportion, which through all the vicissitudes of the Baroque and Rococo periods dominated European architecture until the last century, was unequivocally hostile to the Gothic imitation of natural forms." (Richard Titlebaum "John Ruskin and the Italian Renaissance")

click to go to start of asylum information click to go to information about the church
Sussex County Lunatic Asylum, opened 1859, and Our Holy Redeemer in Clerkenwell, opened in 1888, were designed by different architects in a similar style. The asylum was designed by Charlotte Mew's grandfather. In her first published short story, Charlotte writes of the Church of the Holy Redeemer as "a church in the district, newly built by an infallible architect, which I had been directed to seek at leisure". - Compare Basilica di San Francesco di Assisi

"In 1856 Octavia Hill became secretary to the classes for women at the Working Men's College in Great Ormond Street" (external link)

July/September quarter 1856 The birth of Walter Mew Barnes, son of Daniel Barnes and Frances Mew registered. In 1871, aged 14, he was at school in Sherbourne, Dorset. He went to Oxford University. Simon Blackwell (email 13.10.2006) has a two-volume edition of Forster's The Life of Charles Dickens that belonged to Walter Mew Barnes when he was a student at Brasenose College in Oxford. - He is in the 1895 Post Office London Directory (under Barristers) as a Special Pleader at 4 Harcourt Buildings, Temple EC. His area being the Western Circuit: Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton and Winchester Sessions. He appears to have lived in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight. He was staying with his (newly) widowed mother in Ryde in 1881 - and also in 1891 and 1901. A letter to Walter from Charlotte's father on 20.12.1892 shows that he had a role with respect to the family trusts.

Penelope Fitzgerald 1988, pp 2-3 says it was about 1857 that Frederick Mew (Charlotte Mew's father) became architectural assistant to H.E. Kendell Junior. She says this was Spring Gardens, Trafalger Square. This is a reasonable guess at when Frederick joined the firm, but may differ by a few years either way. However, I think Frederick would have started at 33 Brunswick Square. The address Penelope Fitzgerald gives is that of H.E. Kendell senior who, in 1861, lived at Spring Gardens, which is near Suffolk Street, where he previously lived.

1857

16.5.1857 The Builder page 275: A wood engraving: Lettering "Essex County Lunatic Asylum, Brentwood. - Mr. H.E. Kendall, Jun. architect". A birds-eye view of the asylum. click for

Some time after 1857, Emily Davies was introduced to the writing of Mary Wollstonecraft

1858

2.3.1858 Det gamle Egetraees sidste Drom - [The Old Oak Tree's Last Dream] by Hans Christian Anderson, published in Denmark. It was discussed by Charlotte Mew in Men and Trees (1913)

1859

Spring: Le Salon de 1859. Review by Charles Baudelaire regrets the absence of the English, including a visionary dreamer of an architect (whose name escapes him) who builds on paper towns whose bridges have the legs of elephants under which pass gigantic three- masted ships. (In "L'Artiste Moderne")

14.11.1859 Death of Henry Mew, Charlotte Mew's paternal grandfather, licensee of the Bugle Inn and owner of New Fairlee Farm, at Whippingham, aged 69. His wife, Ann, lived to 1878. I seems that after Henry senior's death the family business was divided amongst (at least two of) his sons with Henry junior taking control of the Bugle and Richard the farm and wine merchant's. The business still had entries as [Henry] Mew and Sons in the 1865 Trade Directory. (Henry Mew junior did not have sons).

Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, tipping the balance of scientific credibility in favour of evolution - See Chicks

Charminster (second Dorset county asylum) built between 1859 and 1863 to the design of H.E. Kendall, Junior

Society for Promoting the Employment of Women founded in 1859

1860

1861

Temple Bar: a London magazine for town and country readers [monthly 1/-] first published. (external link). From 1866 to 1898 this was owned by Richard Bentley and Son (London publishers from 1829 to 1898) and edited by the "sons" George Bentley, (born 1828, died 1895) and Richard Bentley junior (born 1854, died 1936). See October 1893. Their previous Bentley's Miscellany was first edited (1837) by Charles Dickens, who left because he wanted more editorial freedom than Richard Bentley senior would give him. Bentley's Miscellany was discontinued when they took over Temple Bar. Temple Bar was published by Macmillan and Co. from 1898. It continued to 1906 Its first contribution from Charlotte Mew was The China Bowl in 1899. During the next six years it published several contributions from her each year. [See Lane Library Early British list]

7.4.1861/8.4.1861 census:

Frederick Mew, architect, aged 29, born Newport, Isle of Wight was lodging at 2 Great James Street, Finsbury, with Abraham Bateman (45), coach wheelwright, his wife, Unity (46), and Leah Astley, the housekeeper, aged 60. This is close to Doughty Street, Brunswick Square and St George's Church, Bloomsbury

33 Brunswick Square:
Henry E. Kendall, junior ("architect and surveyor" aged 55) and his wife, Mary (aged 45).
[No Henry Kendal son]
Anna Maria Kendall aged 24
Thomas C. Kendall, son, aged 21, "architect and surveyor"
Edward H. Kendall, son, aged 16, scholar
Mary L. Kendall, daughter, aged 14, scholar
Arthur Kendall, son, aged 12, scholar
Elizabeth Johnson, "nurse", aged 34
Laura Rowe, "housemaid", aged 33
Emily Howard, "cook", aged 25

15 Spring Gardens
Henry Kendall aged 81 Architect
Ann Kendall aged 67
Charles Kendall, son, aged 31, Clerk to Defense Committee: Horse Guards.
Emily Sills, house servant aged 25
Sarah Taylor house servant aged 26

93 Euston Road, Islington
Leonora
Herne, aged 64, born Middlesex and her sister, Caroline Herne, aged 62 "Independent Lady" (both unmarried) living with a servant. The death of Leonora Herne (age 80) was registered Islington, in the October/December quarter of 1870. The death of Caroline Parr Herne (age 75) was registered (volume 1b, page 178), Islington, in the January/March quarter of 1874. This may be the "Caroline F. Herne" (Aunt Caroline) whose £500 was included in the trust for Anna Maria Kendall and her children. Charlotte's sister was christened Caroline in the autumn of 1873. In 1851, Leonora Herne (age 50) was living in the home of her widowed sister in law, Mariane Herne (age 60, born Plymouth, Devon) at 38 Beumont Street, Marylebone. In 1841 she was living at 39 Beumont Street with her husband, Robert, (age 55), independant means, born Middlesex). In 1851, Caroline (age 54) was living at 11 Tonbridge Place St Pancras, with her sister, Charlotte Herne (age 52). Both were unmarried and "fundholders". Both were born in St George's, Hanover Square. The death of Charlotte Henrietta Herne was registered St Pancras in the July/September quarter of 1851.

1861 census, Isle of Wight

Bugle Hotel, High Street, Newport
Henry Mew 36
Mary Mew 30
Thomas Toward, visitor, age 20
Samuel Cooper, visitor, age 60
James W Turner, visitor, age 24
James Fullford, visitor, age 36
John Goode, visitor, age 32
Chas Wm Cooke, visitor, age 38
John Erves, visitor, age 71
Caroline Mills, servant, unmarried, age 29, Barmaid
Alfred Hathway, servant, married, age 32, Waiter
Emma Dennett, servant, unmarried, age 25, Chambermaid
Charlotte Dore, servant, unmarried, age 21, Chambermaid
Mary Gallop, servant, unmarried, age 17, Kitchenmaid
Sarah Salter, servant, unmarried, age 15, Scullerymaid
William Denton, servant, married, age 30, Poeter

Lugley Street (Newport, Isle of Wight?)
Anne Mew, widow, head of household, age 65, retired hotel keeper, born Lymington, Hampshire
Richard Mew, son, unmarried, age 65, wine merchant, born Lymington, Hampshire
Mary Beaumot? servant, unmarried, age 20, general servant, born Clareton?, Hampshire
George Beaumot? servant, unmarried, age 20, groom, born Whippingham,

New Fairlee Farm
Walter Mew, age 27, Farmer, born Newport
Georgina Mew, wife, age 22, born Hamsters? Hampshire
Sarrah I. Slippens, servant, unmarried, age 19, House Servant, born Rookley
John Croad?, servant, age 52, Agricultural Labourer, born Arreton
Kesiah? Croad?, servant, age 60, Dairy Woman, born Northwood

Crocker Street
William Baron Mew, widow, aged 40. "Alderman. Brewer employing about 35 servants"
Elizabeth Constance? Bishop, Governess, unmarried, age 40, born Maidenhead, Berkshire
No children shown
Five house servants

88 High Street, Newport
Thomas P. Mew, age 41, Brewer
Mary J. Mew, wife, age 38
Julia Mew, daughter, age 21
Frances P. Mew, daughter, age 18
Benjamin T.P. Mew, son, age 16, scholar, born Lymington
Agnes G. Mew, daughter, age 13, scholar, born Lymington
Ellen Mew, daughter, age 10, scholar, born Lymington
William C. Mew, son, age 7 scholar, born Isle of Wight
Two house servants

Royal Pier Hotel, Ryde
Daniel Barnes, Hotel keeper, age 39, born Somerset
Frances Barnes, wife, age 32, born Lymington, Hampshire
Frances E Barnes, daughter, age 6, born Ryde
Walter M. Barnes, son, age 4, born Ryde
Arthur Henry Barnes, son, age 3, born Ryde
Anna Barnes 32 - sister

Barton on Humber, Lincolnshire - April 1861
28 Newport Street, St Mary's, Elizabeth Goodman, farmer's widow, aged 79, born Howstow, and
Elizabeth Goodman, her daughter, quilter?, aged 35, born Barton.
The death of an Elizabeth Goodman, aged 84, was recorded in the December quarter of 1866 in Glanford Brigg (which includes Barton) volume 7a, page 385. If Elizabeth Goodman born Barton about 1825, came to London as a cook in 1867, she would have celebrated 25 years of domestic service in 1892.

In March 1857, Charles Darwin took a fortnight's water treatment at the Moor Park spa run by Dr Edward Lane. In April 1861, two of Edward W. Lane's visitor's were Anna M. Harrison, aged 34, born Liverpool, and Emma L. Harrison, aged 17, born Birkenhead. - (External link with picture). For two years (1861-1862) Lucy and Annie Harrison studied at Bedford College. They boarded at College House in Grenville Street. Lucy "studied... Latin, History, and English Literature. She regretted in later life that she had not given serious thought to the study of Science and Mathematics" (Mary Davidow 1960 pages 33-34)

1862

Committee for obtaining the admission of women to university examinations established with Emily Davies (1830-1921) as Secretary from 1862 to 1869. In 1865 (1863?) girls were admitted to the Cambridge senior and junior local examinations. Degree examinations of the University of London were opened to women in 1878. See also London Association of Schoolmistresses

In 1862 Octavia Hill and her sisters started a school at 14 Nottingham Place. (Nottingham Street?). Octavia was effectively the headmistress. She continued a connection until the school closed in 1891. She taught drawing and bookkeeping. "On Saturday evenings _ every child had to submit the account of her week's pocket money to Octavia, and it had to be absolutely accurate" (see Stephen Walker)

1862 Herbert Spencer's First Principles include the principles of evolution and dissolution.

1863

In 1863, Anna Kendall's architect father was designing Farnborough Hill in Hampshire as a house for the publisher, Sir Thomas Longman. This is now a school (Farnborough Hill Convent College) (archive with history)
click for A grade one listed building. Recently described as "Stockbroker/ baronial fantasy style, two storeys with five-storey tower. Red brick, stone dressings, steep tiled roof, turrets, pinnacles, ornate carved bargeboards." and "turrets, towers and many gables. Steep pitch roofs in plain and patterned tiles. Once owned by the widowed Empress of Napoleon 3rd".

10.1.1863 The Metropolitan Railway opened the world's first underground railway from Paddington (Bishop's Road), via Euston and Kings Cross, to Farringdon Street. Paddington, the overground terminus for the Great Western Railway, was linked to Euston, St Pancras and King's Cross, termini for the north. The line was extended west from Paddington, through Westbourne Park, to Hammersmith (opening 13.6.1864), and south to Kensington (opening 1.7.1864?) and, later, South Kensington (opening 24.12.1868). What is now the circle line was completed in 1884 - making underground travel all round London possible. [But the name circle line did not arrive until after the second world war. It was 'Metropolitan Railway Company' until nationalisation in July 1933, and then 'Metropolitan line'] This was a shallow level underground, with trains drawn by steam engines until 1905, when the line was electrified. (external link). (external link). See 1900 to 1908.

The Metropolitan Railway would have enabled commuting between Doughty Street and Burlington Road.

13.5.1863 Will of Henry Edward Kendall (junior) signed. This made Frederick Mew his executer. The residue of his estate was bequeathed to his wife and Frederick jointly, but it as to be invested in Government or real securities in England and Mrs Kendall was to get the income. After her death, the capital was to be divided between [her?] children equally. (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 pages 5 and 264)

19.12.1863 Marriage of Frederick Mew and Anna Kendall at St George's Church, Bloomsbury. The witnesses being Henry Kendell, Anna's cousin Ada Cubitt (aged about 22) [Not her mother Mrs Lewis Cubitt] and Sophia Webb (probably aged 23). I would guess that the witnesses were the father of the bride and her two bridesmaids. [Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 (p.6) says Sophia Webb was "wife of the proprietor of the Fountain Inn,West Cowes" - but this does not appear to be correct].

Penelope Fitzgerald also says that the newly-weds moved into 30 Doughty Street [Not 10 Doughty Street as sometimes stated]. They were at 30 Doughty Street in 1871. They lived there until about January 1890.

Doughty Street: map on this page - "At the time of writing this house has been taken by Camden Borough Council for restoration" (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 pages 7 and 264) external map - another showing Mecklenburgh Square.

Penelope Fitzgerald says the house was "at the end of the street, overlooking the airy trees of Mecklenburgh Square" In fact, Number 30 is further south than the square. But, as the pictures suggest, the children should be able to see north to the square from the nursery window
The privet hedge around Mecklenburgh Square is now very high. From a side street one can peer in on the private playground under the trees that the Mew children shared with the other children of their houses.

This is where Freda and her Isle of Wight cousins spent a joyous afternoon getting hot and sweaty and dirty.

This and the other pictures around the house were taken by Andrea Nagy on Sunday 26.8.2007

Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street. He and his new family lived there from April 1837 to December 1839. From February 1837 to March 1839 Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress was published in Bentley's Miscellany as a monthly serial. He called this his "first novel". By the summer of 1837, his "second [planned] novel" had a subject and draft title. This became Barnaby Rudge, not published until 1841. Its London settings include Clerkenwell, which appears to be the setting of Charlotte's fictional walk in Passed. (1881 Census)

Doughty Street is on the other side of Coram's Fields from Brunswick Square. The Georgian Houses in Doughty Street were erected between 1792 and 1810. Mecklenbourgh Square and Brunswick Square were laid out in 1794.
The London plane trees in Brunswick Square are about the same size as those in Lincolns Inn, which are believed to have been planted about 1820 (external link). The oldest in central London may be those in Berkley Square, thought to have been planted in 1789. (external link)

The 1868 Gazetteer for St Pancras, on the GenUKI site, describes the Foundling Hospital (not the present one) as between Mecklenburgh Square and Brunswick Square. This area is now Corams Fields.


This 1950s map has Doughty Street and Mecklenburgh Square on the eastern edge, then Brunswick Square to the west and Gordon Square and Gordon Street on the far west. St Pancras Church is north east of Gordon Square. St George's Church, Bloomsbury is south of the British Museum. [Click on the map to go to the key map]

click for
See 1811 - 1867 - 1887
In 1863, Samuel Chick the father (to be) established the London office for the firm's lace at 5 Newman Street. This remained his London business centre, and became his family home. Newman Street is not shown on the above map. It is just to the west of Tottenham Court Road (south west corner of map). Samuel Chick's ledger of business letters from 1863 to 1865 provides the material for chapter eleven ("Early Days at Newman Street") of Margaret Tomlinson's history.

Newman Street: See
1867 - 1887 - 1924 - 1952 - 1956

December 1863 Eighty three girls sat the Cambridge Local Examinations. Twenty five were from North London Collegiate - twenty from Queen's College - twenty from school like Octavia Hill's. The results were encouraging, except for arithmetic. It has been said that these were the first public examinations to which girls were admitted, but, according to Richard Willis, the first were in the early 1850s.

1864

"La priere d'une vierge - A maiden's prayer - composee pour le piano par Thecla Badarzewska" 1864 - 1866 (4 pages)
(Sheet music cover at National Library of Australia) -
It is possible that this was only available in French until the 1920s. The "vocalist" parodies it in Charlotte Mew's Notes in a Brittany Convent

1864 Birth of Florence Mary [Wilson?] Poole (died 1934) in Cambridge where she lived until 1891 or later. She married Clement Valantino Parsons, Leather Merchant of Paddington, London, in September 1893. [The marriage of Clement Valentine Parsons and Florence Mary Wilson was regustered Paddington in the July/September quarter of 1893 - The birth of Sylvia Parsons was registered in Paddington in the July/September quarter of 1894.] They and Sylvia, their six year old daughter, were at 72 Warwick Road, Paddington in 1901. She is entered as a "writer", working from home at times. In 1899 she was a speaker at the International Congress of Women 1899 . Penelope Fitzgerald says that (about this time) "Mrs Clement Parsons" recommended Temple Bar to Charlotte Mew as an outlet for her writing. In 1913 she appears in Catherine Amy Dawson Scott's diaries [as I read Penelope Fitzgerald, page 111] as one of the small group who met at her house. She told Catherine Scott that she would cancel every other appointment if Charlotte was going to read, it was the "heart of life to her", Sylvia Parsons died in 1919

1864 Birth of Arthur St. John Adcock. He was acting or co-editor of the (London) Bookman by 1913. One source says that he was (sole?) editor from 1923 to his death. - See 9.10.1920 - 1923 - 7.9.1925 - 1928 - Died 1930.

Daniel and Anna Harrison's home from 1864 was Beckenham (Bromley) in Kent. Mary Davidow says that new friends here included Mrs Craik, author of John Halfax, Gentleman - William de Morgan - Professor S.R. Gardiner, Holman Hunt, Albert Godwin and Arthur Hughes. During 1865-1866 Lucy Harrison went into town to read Latin with Miss Octavia Hill and to attend lectures at Bedford College. [External link: mentions "Latin class at home" (November 1870) in connection with Octavia Hill]. It was this period of attending lectures that led to her involvement in what became the Gower Street School. Emily Davies started the London Association of Schoolmistresses in 1866.

Octavia Hill links Philanthropic women and accounting. Octavia Hill and the exercise of `quiet power and sympathy' by Stephen P. Walker, Cardiff: (html) (pdf)

July/September 1864 Death of James Herne registered Islington (See 1861) This may be James Herne, master auctioneer of Shadwell (born St George's, Hanover Square, about 1790).

1865

Henry Herne Mew (1865- 1901), Charlotte's oldest sibling, born. If the age given on his death certificate is correct, he was born after 23.3.1865. This is consistent with his age on the 1871 and 1881 census forms: placing his birth after early April 1865. His birth was registered in St Pancras in the April-June quarter of 1865.

see name Herne. The death of James Herne just before the birth of Henry Herne, and his money to Henry Herne's mother, suggest a bequest conditional on her son bearing the name of Herne. The names Charlotte and Caroline are also Herne names.

The known children of Frederick and Anna Mew are Henry Herne Mew - Frederick Mew - Charlotte Mew - Richard Cobham Mew - Caroline (Anne) Mew - Daniel Kendall Mew (Christopher Barnes) - Freda Kendall Mew

Twenty six years of Elizabeth Goodman's life between "the attic nursery and the basement kitchen... planning for us small treats and great careers" would fit with Henry Herne's birth if years are counted from January 1866 to January 1892 - The real Elizabeth Goodman died in January 1893. Freda Mew (the youngest) would have been thirteen, approaching fourteen, when Elizabeth Goodman died. See below. [The number "twenty-six" may have been in Charlotte's mind because Elizabeth Goodman received a certificate for twenty-five year's service a year before she died]

Harrod & Co.'s Directory of Hampshire & Isle of Wight, 1865

Richard Mew, farmer, New Fairlea. This is in Cowes (East) and Whippingham - The most illustrious resident of which is Queen Victoria. [Re New Fairlea, however, see Henry Mew below]

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Newport

Newport Corporation: Mayor Henry Mew esquire. Justices headed by William Baron Mew esquire - Who was also an Alderman. Councillors for North Ward included Henry Mew and Thomas Parker Mew.

Posting Houses in Newport: Bugle Hotel in the High Street - Mew and Sons.

The Clergy, Gentry section includes Thomas Parker Mew, esquire in Crocker Street and William Baron Mew esquire of Polars.

In the Commercial section for Newport:

Emily Mew. registrar office for servants, High Street

Henry Mew, farmer, New Fairlee Farm

Henry Mew and sons, importers and bonders of foreign wines and spirits, merchants, St James Street,

Henry Mew and sons, Bugle Hotel, Commercial inn and posting house, High Street

James Tucker Mew, professor of music, Westminster

W. B. Mew and Co. Brewers to Her Majesty, Crocker Street, and at Esplanade, Ryde

W.B. Mew and Co., wine and spirit merchants, Crocker street, and at West Cowes, Ryde and Lymington

Sometime in 1865 birth, in Ireland, of James George O'Keeffe (sometimes spelt O'Keefe). He was educated at University College, Dublin. He was a civil servant. In 1891 he was a boarder at 39 Rossiter Road, Steatham, aged 24, a clerk in the War Office. In 1902 he published A Hand-book of Irish Dances - He married Elsie Millard in 1902. In November 1913, Charlotte proposed introducing him to Mrs Scott as an expert in Old Irish. It was in 1913 that he published Buile Suibhne: (The frenzy of Suibhne) being the adventures of Subhne Geilt, a Middle Irish Romance - Edited, with a translation into English, introduction, notes and glossary. This was done for the Irish Text Society. Mary Davidow, (1960) page 44, says this may have influenced T.S. Eliot in the creation of Sweeney - (external link: Patricia Sloane - Notes on Sweeney). An online version is provided by CyberScotia Books. James was financial representative in the USA and Canada during the first world war and in the Far East and then Baghdad until 1926, when he retired. James George O'Keeffe was one of Charlotte Mew's two executers in 1928. J.G. O'Keeffe, 1 Dynevor Road. Richmond 3845 is in the London telephone directory from 1927 to 1935). He is indexed as J.O. O'Keeffe. He died 1937.

August 1865 Catherine Amy Dawson born Dulwich. Her father, Ebenezer Dawson, was a brick manufacturer. (Information from censuses). She was given the same name as her mother, which may be the reason she was known as Amy. Her sister, Ellen M. Dawson (known as Nellie), was born about 1868. Henry Dawson Lowry (Cornwall) was her cousin. Catherine Dawson, Any's mother, died in January 1877, when Amy was 11 and Nellie 7. In 1878, her father married another Catherine, who was known as Kate. In 1881, Catherine (Kate) Amy and Ellen were living or staying with Kate's widowed mother, Sarah Ancell, in Camberwell. "Catherine A. Dawson" in the 1871 census is now "Amy Dawson". Amy Dawson was educated at the Anglo German College, Camberwell. She began earning her living at 18 as a secretary. Charades For Home Acting (44 pages) by C.A. Dawson was published by Woodford Fawcett and Co. in 1888 - Sapho an epic poem of 210 pages, was published by Kegan Paul, Trench and Co. in 1889, at Amy Dawson's own expense. I have not traced Amy in the 1891 census. Her Idylls of Womanhood, a collection of poems, was published by William Heinemann in 1892. The marriage of Catharine Amy Dawson to Horatio Francis N. Scott was registered in Lambeth in the April-June quarter of 1896. The birth Marjorie Catharine W. Scott was registered in St George, Hanover Square in the January-March quarter of 1899. Christopher Scott was born in March 1901. His birth (Horatio Christopher L. Scott) was registered in St George, Hanover Square in the April-June quarter of 1901. In the 1901 census, Catherine A. Scott is living with her husband, Horatio F.N. Scott (physician, surgeon, born Australia about 1865) and new born son (Horatio C.L. Scott) at 2 Bennett Street, St George, Hanover Square. The family moved to West Cowes on the Isle of Wight in the summer of 1902. They lived there for seven years. Walter Scott, nicknamed Toby, was born in June 1904. Dawson Scott then published novels: The Story of Anna Beames in 1906 - The Burden in 1908 - Treasure Trove in 1909 - The Agony Column in 1909 and Madcap Jane (which Charlotte Mew read) in 1910 - Mrs Noakes, An Ordinary Woman and a guide (with map) called Nooks And Corners of Cornwall in 1911. Mrs Scott met Charlotte Mew in 1912. At the time, she was engaged in, or had just finished, editing the poems of her deceased cousin, and writing her own poems. Charlotte particularly valued her relation with Marjorie, Christopher and Toby Scott, the children. - See also 1913. 1914 - In 1914, Mrs Scott moved to Cornwall for some time with her sick son. Known correspondence with Charlotte was briefly resumed in 1917. See also 1926 - 1927 - October 1929 - 1932 - 1934 - She died 4.11.1934. See also 1982 - 1987

1866

Edward Thomas Browne (1866- 1937) born Hammersmith. He was the husband (not the father) of Margaret Robinson (died 1938), who was called "Maggie" in correspondence. (See external link). "During the session 1891-92 Browne attended a full course of lectures and practical work in Zoology under Prof. W.F.R. Weldon at University College, London. In the autumn of 1892 he began investigations on coelenterates in the old research laboratory... In this narrow space tables were provided for six research workers [including] Miss Margaret Robinson, a former Newnham student, who seventeen years later became Browne's wife". Margaret Robinson (zoologist) was at University College London from 1886 to 1889 and then re-entered 1903-1904 (Address 60 York Terrace, Regents Park, NW). She left in 1908-1909. In 1901, Edward T. Browne, aged 34, "zoologist (student)" was living at 141 Uxbridge Road, Hammersmith, with his father and sister. E.T. Browne and Margaret Robinson married in the Hampstead district in 1909 and set up home at "Anglefield", Berkhamsted [various spellings], Hertfordshire. (map). - Berkhampsted is mentioned in Charlotte Mew's letter to Mrs Hill of 24.7.1913, and again on 4.1.1915. Penelope Fitzgerald identifies "Maggie Browne" as the Zoologist in Charlotte Mew's 1901 story and suggests that she was at school with Charlotte. Professor Browne appears to have supported the Mews in their illnesses in the 1920s. E.T. Browne, Anglefield, Berkhamsted 588, was in the telephone directory 1935-1937

1.3.1866 Henry Edward Kendall Matilda Alice Clowser when he was 89 and Matilda was 27.

1866 Fanny Read married Richard Mew at Crewkerne in Somerset. Her mother, Elizabeth Read (born about 1811), was the widow of John Read (born about 1801), a farmer. In 1841, the family consisted of John, Elizabeth, Robert Rendall Read, aged 3 and Mary Ann Read, aged 1. In 1861 (Turlands? Farm, Crewkerne) it was Elizabeth, widow aged 50, Farmer of 270 (? 27?) acres employing eight men and five boys, born Mernott, Somerset - Robert R. Read, aged 22, Farmer's son, born Crewkerne - Fanny Read, aged 27, Farmer's daughter, born Crewkerne - Mary Anna Read, aged 21, Farmer's daughter, born Crewkerne - Louisa Read, aged nine, Farmer's daughter, born Crewkerne, plus a visitor and servant. Elizabeth and Fanny's sisters are probably the Somerset aunts whose garden taught Charlotte her love of flowers. At the 1871 census (when Fanny was 37), Louisa Read aged 19, sister-in-law of Richard Mew, occupation "companion" was staying at South Fairlee Farm, whilst four year old Fanny Mew was staying with Elizabeth Read (aged 59) and her daughter Mary Anna Read (aged 30) in Bath and Wells.

11.11.1866 Fanny Mew of South Fairlee Farm, eldest daughter of Richard and Fanny Mew, born. [I did have the date as "about 1867"] The birth of a Fanny Mew was registered Isle of Wight vol.2b page 567 in the September-December quarter of 1873. In 1901 Fanny Mew, aged 34, born Newport Isle of Wight was living in Whippingham Isle of Wight. The memorial to her in St Pauls Church gives her date of birth and death.

Foundation of an anglican religious community, the Sisters of Bethany, in Lloyd Square, Clerkenwell - (external history website)

Emily Davies held a gathering of 50 governesses in Elizabeth Garrett's house in 1866 that led to the formation of the London Association of Schoolmistresses. (external link). Activities of this Association included the publication of a series of pamphlets on the part that different subjects should play in the curriculum. Lucy Harrison contributed the one on History. Early publications of the Association included a lecture on teaching arithmetic by Joshua Girling Fitch (1869) and discussion on the relation of headmistresses to their assistants (1870). In 1870 a meeting discussed if members should be asked about reducing the time and work pupils spent on various subjects. In 1877 there was a pamphlet on Physical exercises and recreation for girls, followed by one by Emily Davies on Home and the Higher Education (1878). A single sided leaflet on the Association (1878) survives at Cambridge and its 12 page report and rules for 1883 at the University of London. Subject pamphlets included Memory (1878) - Mathematics (J. Westlake, 1879) - Geography (Jane Agnes Chessar, 1879) - School Honour (Sophie Bryant, 1879) - History (Lucy Harrison, 1880) - Translation (L. J. Menzies, 1880) - Latin ( Edwin Abbott Abbott, 1884) - English Literature (Anna Buckland, 1885) - Natural Science (Catherine A. Raisin, 1885). M. H. Sharpe made A plea for the extended study of works of imagination in the school course in 1882, Agnes Ward contributed The principles and practice of thrift among teachers in 1883. The Association was dissolved, and its final meeting held on 21.3.1888. Emily Davies was Secretary throughout. (Emily Davies archives - also)

Lydia Rous became Superintendent of Friends Girls School, York. In 1867 "there were only 43 girls...of which eleven were teacher trainees, girls only a little older than the scholars... who had stayed on after their schooling." Staff and student were all Quakers. The girls came from all over the country (including Ireland). "The duration of school life was much shorter then - three years at the most, and more often just a year or two, with a yearly summer holiday" [Compare 1881]. The curriculum did not include music, singing or dancing. It did include history, arithmetic, geography and English literature.

Elizabeth Goodman's mother (also Elizabeth Goodman) died in Barton?, Lincolnshire in the last quarter of 1866. It may have been shortly after this that Elizabeth (aged about 43) returned to London and became the "cook" in the Mew household. She was a member of the household by September 1867

1867

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See 1811 - 1863 - 1887

In April, May or June of 1867, Samuel Chick, the father (to be) - (see Newman Street) married Ema Hooley in Macclesfield. (volume 8a page 209). All their children were born at Newman Street. Samuel and Alice were born on 31.3.1868. Edith was born sometime in October 1869, not long before Charlotte Mew. The other Chicks were younger than Charlotte. Margaret Tomlinson's chapter starting with the marriage is Called "Lace and London Property" because, with the decline in the Honiton lace business, Samuel Chick diversified, first into trading foreign laces and then into buying and developing property. It may be that the Chicks became family friends of the Mews (architects) through the property development. It may also be that Charlotte and Anne were involved in producing designs for the Chick lace makers. New designs helped to sell. Designs "after nature" and copies of antique designs were particularly popular. However, art students tended to make too make designs that were too complex and people who could draw but understand the practicalities of the material were difficult to find. It is via the Chicks that Charlotte's needlework and designs were preserved.

16.7.1867 Birth of "Frederick George Webb" [presumably Mew] at 30 Doughty Street. Registered by Frederick Mew, Architect on 23.8.1867 at the Grays Inn Lane sub-district office of Pancras. Mother's name "Anna Maria Mardon Mew, formerly Kendall" (Frederick and Anna's, second? child)

7.9.1867 Death of Frederick Mew (Son of Frederick Mew an architect) aged 7 [not 2] months, at 3 York Place, Broadstairs. Cause of death: "Diarrhoea, 48 hours, Certified" (no name)". [Comment: diarrhoea, probably following on a holiday infection, would be the actual cause of death as it removed body salts] "Death notified (Ramsgate district of Thanet, Kent) by "Elizabeth Goodman: Present at the death" on 9.9.1867. Her address given as 30 Doughty Street, Mecklenburgh Square, London, WC.

["Frederick George Webb Mew": Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.9, "died on an outing to Broadstairs, aged two months". The certificates are typed copies made for Mary Davidow in 1958. The death of a George Frederick Mew, aged 0, was registered "Westminster St. M." vol.1a page 233 in the July-September quarter of 1869.]

1868 The (ex-Bedford College) school that Charlotte Mew would later attend, moved to Gower Street in, or after, 1868. The 1871 census shows, at 78 Gower Street: Caroline Bolton, Unmarried, 30 (could be 39), School Mistress - Mary Dixon Unmarried 23? Governess, born Liverpool - Dora Arthur, Boarder, Unmarried, 20, Scholar - Lucy Harrison, age 27? (very unclear) School Teacher, Birkenhead - Madeleine? Earle, Boarder, Unmarried, 16, Scholar, birth place: N.K. - Ethel Harrison, Boarder, 11, Scholar, born Bayswater (1881 census) - Edith Harrison, Boarder, 13, Scholar - Marianne Mathers, Boarder, 17 (12?), London - Annie Jewell, servant, unmarried, 20, cook, born Clare? North Devon - Kate Gregory, servant, unmarried, 19, House Maid, born London.

The Royal Commission on Education Given in Schools in England, appointed 1864 to discover measures "for the improvement of secondary education", reported in 1868. (21 volumes). Argued that no scheme of education was complete without science: "the study of natural science develops better than any other studies the observing faculties, disciplines the intellect by teaching induction as well as deduction". It "supplies a useful balance to the studies of language and mathematics". It found the study of science more prevalent in girls' schools than in boys'. It argued that English literature should be taught to "kindle a living interest in the learner's mind, to make him feel the force and beauty of which the language is capable, to refine and elevate his taste" rather than "to find material with which to teach English grammar". The mathematics taught should vary, with upper classes being taught Euclidian theory, other classes practical arithmetic. The subject range of the London Association of Schoolmistresses' booklets may give an indication of the range of Charlotte Mew's secondary education.

31.3.1868 Samuel Chick., the oldest Chick child, born. Edith Chick was born just before Charlotte Mew. The rest of the Chick children were younger than Charlotte

Ethel Oliver, born 12.10.1868 at Kew. Her immediate family are:

Daniel Oliver (father) (6.2.1830-21.12.1916) librarian of the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1860-1890 and Professor of Botany at University College, London from 1861-1888. Archives - FRS. Although born Newcastle, his father, was not "old Daniel Oliver", who lived with his family in "Paradise, Newcastle", a house by the river as suggested by this external link. He was the son of Andrew and Jane Oliver of Benwell Hills, Quakers. He went to the Society of Friends' School, Brookfield, Wigton. Northumberland. (external link). He began working at Kew Gardens in 1858. In 1861 he is shown as "Professor Botany. Librarian Royal Gardens Kew", and is living alone with a female servant. He married Hannah Wall on 18.4.1861. They are at "10 Kew Gardens Road" in the 1891 and 1901 Census, which appears to have been their retirement home. After his retirement, Daniel Oliver painted and drew landscapes. Some of these were given to the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle in 1919, a larger number in 1947 (catalogue). Daniel Oliver was awarded the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society in 1893.

Hannah Hobson Oliver (mother) (born about 1835). The entry in the online 1881 Census which shows her as also Keeper of the Herbarium is, unfortunately, a transcription error. She was born Hannah Wall, daughter of James and Jane Hall of Sheffield. From August 1844 to June 1851 she attended Friends' School for Girls in York. The death of a Hannah H Oliver, aged 68, was registered in the Hexham district of Northumberland in the October-December quarter of 1911. (Estimated birth year: about 1843)

Francis W. [Wall] Oliver, born 10.5.1864 at Richmond, Surrey. Died 14.9.1951. The family had moved to Kew by the time Winifred was born. About 1873 (aged 9), Francis was sent to the Friend's School at Kendal (See guide to Quaker schools) where he developed his "passion and skill for mountaineering". He was then a scholar at Friend's Boy School, 20 Bootham, St Giles, Bootham, York. He is shown there (aged 16) on the 1881 census. (external link to history). At York he was given charge of their 4 and a half inch telescope. An "enthusiast developed in him a predilection for botany". He studied for a year at University College, London, and then went to Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating 1885/1886. "In 1888" (aged about 24) "Oliver took his father's place... first as lecturer, then in 1890 as Quain professor". From "early 1889 until the summer of 1890", Arthur Tansley was one of his students - [before moving on to Cambridge where he was a friend of Frederick Frost Blackman] In 1891, Francis Oliver, "Professor of Botany", was staying on a Westmoreland farm (in Rydal and Loughrigg - Wordsworth country - map) as a "boarder" with Winifred Oliver ("Art Student"), Ethel Oliver (no occupation shown), Frederick E. Weiss ("Demonstrator in a Botany School") and others. Frederick Weiss (in 1901) was a Professor of Botany in Manchester. In 1892, Arthur Tansley became Oliver's assistant - probably on fossil botany, which Edith Chick appears to have been developing an interest in at this time. The marriage of Francis Wall Oliver was registered Sevenoaks, Kent in the September Quarter of 1896. He married Mildred Alice Thompson, born about 1869, died 1932, the daughter of Charles Robert (surgeon) and Emma Thompson, District Visitor. He had met the Thompsons "when climbing in the Alps". "They had one daughter and two sons both of whom attained distinction in the navy". I cannot find them in 1901. He was working with Arthur Tansley in 1904. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society on 11.5.1905 when his botanical knowledge and researches "especially" included "ecology and fossil botany". He may have been know as Frank within the family. Charlotte Mew calls his wife "Mrs Frank" (1909). From 1929 to 1950 he was in Egypt. - (Archives) -

Winifred Oliver, born 3.5.1866 in Kew. She became a scholar at Friends' School for Girls, Driffield Terrace, York in January 1881 (aged 14, almost 15) and is shown on the census (see for more details). She left in December 1883. (aged 17). She was an art student in 1891 (above). She and Ethel were single women in their parents' house in 1901. In Charlotte Mew's 1909 letters to Ethel Oliver there is a reference to Winifred sympathising with an artist who is painting outdoors. The same letters contain a passage suggesting Ethel was also an artist: But one who painted portraits.

Ethel Oliver, born 12.10.1868, was living (age 2) in her parents' house at Kew in 1871. Daniel Oliver sent an 1871 photograph of her to John Ruskin on 4.3.1873. (Ruskin collection). In 1881, Ethel was living at home, but was living with Lucy Harrison (London) soon after. Charlotte Mew may have met her in 1879 or earlier, was living with her about 1884. Ethel went to Friend's School, York, in January 1885 (aged 16. She left in June 1896, aged 17, almost 18). Ethel went to York about the same time that Lucy Harrison left the Gower Street School and went to Yorkshire (although not at first to Friends School). See above for 1891, when Ethel was in the Lake District. She was with her parents at Kew in 1901. Ethel may have gone to France with Charlotte in 1901. Charlotte wrote letters to Ethel Oliver ("My dear") (all from France) in 1902 - 1909 and 1911 and Ethel was Charlotte's executer

Ethel is sometimes called Edith Oliver by Penelope Fitzgerald.

Mary Davidow 1960, page 38 "While their parents were alive Ethel and Winifred lived with them at 10 Kew Gardens where Ruskin was a frequent visitor. Arthur Hughes was a family friend, and some of his paintings hung in their parlour... When Ethel left Miss Harrison's School she travelled with Winifred to Italy where they studied painting and music. Before returning to England they spent some time in France, developing a preference for Brittany. When their tour ended they settled down to a routine of volunteer social work, weekly "At Homes" for their friends when they discussed literature and art, and regular visits to the galleries and occasional attendance at concerts. Winifred and Ethel painted, but not professionally. Ethel, a good musician, was deputy organist for St Mary's (Church of England) in Isleworth for years)" [Presumably St Mary, Spring Grove, built 1856 for the Spring Grove Estate. It is in the evangelical anglican tradition. St Mary the Virgin, Worton Road was built 1952/1954 in the high anglican tradition. (See Isleworth Churches in British History online]

When the burden of grief became close to unbearable, Charlotte Mew turned to her friends at 2 The Grove in Isleworth where Winifred and Ethel lived after the death of their parents. Here, in the "true quiet of a Quaker household," the distraught Charlotte frequently found rest" [The quote is referenced to a letter in the Berg Collection 18.1.1923


October/December quarter 1868 Birth of Richard Percy Mew registered Isle of Wight. (See New Fairlee) He was sent to Cranleigh School for Farmers' Sons and eventually took over the management of New Fairlee Farm (see 1901). Richard Percy Mew and his wife gave information to Mary Davidow about their cousin (Charlotte) in 1958. From 1927 to 1963 "Mew, R.P. Farmer, New Fairlee" was in the Isle of Wight telephone directory. However, a "Richd. P Mew" appears in the Hillingdon telephone directory from 1963 to 1981 - which would make him impossibly old if it was the same person.

1869

In connection with University College London, the first series of `lectures for ladies' was given, under the auspices of the London Ladies' Educational Association. The courses were given outside the College premises, by Carey Foster, Professor of Physics, and Henry Morley, Professor of English and the prime mover in the extension of university education to women. Later that year, women were allowed to attend classes within the College in the Physics and Chemistry laboratories.

The RIBA archives contain five letters from Charlotte's great grandfather, Henry Edward Kendall senior, written between 1869 and 1873, saying that, as he is now very deaf and semi-retired, he wishes to transfer from being a Fellow of the RIBA to being an Honorary Member. Having taken a prominent part in the foundation of the Institute it pleased him that it had "risen to its present eminent position"

July/September quarter 1869 Birth of Katherine Herberta Righton registered Reading, Berkshire. Her father was a merchant. Her mother died before she was eleven years old. Her sister, Winifred Righton, was two years younger than her. The birth of Winifred Sabin Righton was registered Reading, Berkshire in the October/December quarter of 1871.In 1901, she and her sister were living at 16 John Street, Holborn. Her occupation is shown as "art" something. In the April-June quarter of 1901, the marriage of Winifred Sabin Righton was registered in Holborn. She married (one of) John Michael Kellard or Stanley Fred East. Katherine Righton, as a "figure artist", and a friend of Anne Mew and Charlotte Mew appears in their story in the 1920s. Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 (p.221) says that Charlotte spent the Christmas before she died with her. In 1943 and 1946 a "K. H. Righton" was at 45 Heath Hurst Road, NW3 - Telephone Hampstead 2706. (map)

29.10.1869 Birth at 5 Newman Street of Edith Chick, the oldest Chick daughter to survive infancy,

1869
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Charlotte Mew was born 15.11.1869, almost certainly at 30 Doughty Street, near Mecklenburgh Square, London. Her father, Frederick Mew, was an architect. Her mother, Anna Kendall. was the daughter and granddaughter of architects. Frederick Mew worked in the Kendall business. Charlotte's older brother, Henry Herne Mew, was born in the early summer of 1865. Their nursery and their childhood was watched over by the servant Elizabeth Goodman, who Charlotte later described as a second mother.
 

Monday 15.11.1869 Charlotte Mary Mew born Doughty Street. She lived there until about February 1890 when her family moved to 9 Gordon Street, Gordon Square, where Charlotte lived for most of her life.

" Her article [An Old Servant. 1913], about her old nurse, Elizabeth Goodman, gives an account of the Mew nursery..." [Val Warner, 1981, page ix]

The birth of Charlotte Mary Mew was registered in the Pancras district of London in the October/December quarter of 1869

1870 Charlotte -1
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Autumn: Cousin Ethel born on the Isle of Wight. Six months later, the census shows her youngest Somerset aunt (19) staying with the Isle of Wight family, whilst Ethel's four year old sister, Fanny is cared for in Somerset. Although we cannot ascribe many dates, Charlotte's stories and memories show that her childhood also included staying with her Isle of Wight and Somerset relatives, and that the Isle of Wight children stayed in London.

18.7.1870 The definition of occasions on which pronouncements of the Pope are "infallible". The "infallible architect" may have reference to God, who freemasons speak of as the Great Architect of the Universe. Gladstone, who laid the foundation stone of the church, wrote a pamphlet (1874) against papal infallibility.

The Sisters of the Church (high anglican), commonly called the Kilburn Sisters, were established in 1870 by Miss Emily Ayckbourn, who became mother superior for life. They were associated with Saint Augustine, Kilburn Park Road and had premises (with a chapel) in Randolph Gardens. The chapel is said to have been designed by H.R. Kendall junior Frederick Mew, and to have been disliked by Charlotte Mew.

October/December quarter 1870 Birth of Ethel Louisa Mew of South Fairlee Farm registered.
In 1901, "Ethel Mew", aged 30, an "Art Teacher", born Newport Isle of Wight, was staying with Claire Murrell (I think it is rr), an Artist/Painter on her own account, aged 37, born Brixton, at 102 Burwood Park Road, Walton On Thames, Surrey (map). The other person there was Pauline Eliza Peters (?), aged 18, a general servant born Weybridge, Surrey. (Possible 1881 Census entry for Claire/Clara Murrell). Mary Davidow says she met Margaret Chick at Notting Hill High School.
Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 (p.156) says that in 1915 she was working as an art teacher at Notting Hill High School . As an "elderly teacher... "on the verge of retiring" she visited Anne Mew when she was dying (1927). She was concerned that Charlotte might kill herself, and visited her just before her death. (pages 214-215 and 225)

1871 Charlotte 1-2
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Late summer: brother Richard born

At University College London, the first mixed classes for men and women were held. Until then, women were always taught separately from men, and used separate entrances to the College. See 1878

2.4.1871/3.4.1871 census:

The inhabitants of 30 Doughty Street were Frederick and Anna M. Mew, their children Henry H. (aged 5) and Charlotte M. (aged 1) and the servants: Elizabeth Goodman (cook) and Sarah A. Basiome? (housemaid aged 21) [So Richard Cobham Mew (below) was born between April and September 1871]

33 Brunswick Square was no longer occupied by Kendalls [or Mews, or architects]. Instead, at 34 Burlington Road, Paddington: Henry E. Kendall (65) Surveyor, Mary Kendall (59), Arthur Kendall (unmarried son) Sailor, Ann Perkins (servant aged 32) and Sarah Mitcham (servant aged 28). In South London, Mary Kendall (unmarried, aged 24, born Bloomsbury) was staying with Robert William Billings [1813-1874], "architect and author of works on architecture" and his wife, "Landowners". Thomas C. Kendall (Architect, born "London", aged 31) was living with "Mrs Kendall" (aged 23, born London) as lodgers in the house of Edwin Baker, housepainter, and his family at 15 Desborough Terrace, Paddington. Thomas died two years later.

70 Dean Street, St Anne, Soho Henry E Kendell, Architect and District Surveyor, aged 91, born London, Middlesex, living with Matilda A. Kendell, his wife, born Hampstead, aged 26. Also a servant, Susannah Nedchld (?), domestic servant, aged 55, born Southwark, Surrey,

Mistakes like Kendell may suggest there are other mistakes: Notably the age [should it be 76?] and name of his wife. The death of an Ann "Matthew" [Matilda?] Kendall, aged 78, was recorded in the Kensington District December 1871, volume 1a, page 141

Isle of Wight

117 High Street (Bugle Hotel)
Henry Mew 46
Mary Mew 40
Caroline Mills 39
Henry Cohen 22
Charles Muck 46
Oliver S Bishopp 22
Ben Mew 28
Edwin M Leal 12
Edward Shaw 22
Ellen Stallard 18
Elizabeth Baker 21
Annie Corke 27
Mary Ann Cooper 24
Edward Blanchard 40

New Fairlee Farm
Richard Mew - age 46 - Farmer
Fanny Mew - age 37 - wife
Richard P? Mew - age 2 - son
Ethel L. Mew - age 6 months - daughter
Louisa Read, Sister in Law - age 19 - occupation "companion"
[Five servants

70 Crocker Street, Newport
William Baron Mew age 50, Brewer Master employing 65 hands.
Henrietta B. Mew, daughter, age 12
Amy B. Mew, daughter, age 10
Servants

68 Sea Street, Newport
Joseph Parker Mew, age 41, Brewer's Manager
Euphemia Mew, age 34, wife, born Kent
Marion E. Mew, daughter, age 9, scholar, born Newport
Agnes M. Mew, daughter, age 7, scholar, born Newport
Joseph M.P. Mew, son, age 5, scholar, born Newport
Leonard Mew, son, age 3, born Newport
Servants

Medham Farm, near Cowes
Thomas Parker Mew, age 51, Brewer etc..
Mary Julia Mew, age 48
Benjamin T.P. Mew, son, age 26. Brewer
Agnes Alice Mew, daughter, age 23
Ellen Mew, daughter, age 20
Three servants

Royal Pier Hotel, Ryde
Daniel Barnes 49
Frances Barnes 42

No 9 Barfield - Ryde
Persis Friend 28 unmarried Governess born Kidderminster.
Bracketed note to following three entries "Children of Daniel Barnes of Ryde Pier Hotel. This house is a nursery expressly for his children"
Marian Barnes 9
Edward Daniel Barnes 7
George Frederick Barnes 4
Martha Williams 28 servant
Ellen Brell 21 servant

75 Union Street
Anne Mew, Lodger, widow, age 75, no occupation, born Lymington
Maria Anne Norris, Lodger, unmarried, age 29, no occupation, born Lymington

Millbrook, Hampshire

1 Moselle Villa, Millbrook Road
William Norris, age 72, Retired Hotel Keeper, born Lymington
Herrietta Norris, age 55, wife, born Exbury

I cannot trace William and Henrietta Norris in the Census for 1881, but the deaths of both Henrietta Norris, age 71 and William Bay Norris, age 86, were registered in Upton, Worcestershire in the January March quarter of 1885

Bath and Wells
Elizabeth Read - age 59
Mary Anna Read - age 30
Fanny Mew - age four

The birth of Richard Cobham Mew was registered Pancras vol.1b page 62 in the July-September quarter of 1871. Frederick and Anna's fourth? child. He died in December 1876. Age on death certificate indicates his birth was before 9.12.1871.

Occasional help

"To outsiders she was simply an unusually incompetent little needle-woman. Twice a week and on occasions of domestic pressure or festivity, she used to mount the creaky stairs... I see her now, seated within the charmed circle of a white drugget, in our low nursery, filling up the gaps in our pinafores and budding intelligences... (Miss Bolt)

"Servants of the House - Part 13: Occasional Help: Charwomen, Needlewomen, Sweeps, Dustmen, etc. The greater the amount of work that can be done at home without occasional assistance... the better... Superior to the charwoman in social position... is that large class of women who go out for a day's work at the needle. The blessed invention of the sewing- machine has reduced this class of workers considerably... The best have sewing-machines of their own, and have plenty of employment at full pay at home... The chief economy in having dresses made up at home lies in making use of old materials.." Cassell's Household Guide (about 1880), volume 3, page 27.

In 1814, Mary Lamb, a professional needlewoman who had escaped her work, wrote an article that argued women should never needle-work unless paid

July/September quarter 1871 Birth of Elsie Maud Millard registered Lewisham. Her parents were Emily Millard (born Holborn about 1849) and John Millard, a teacher of elocution (at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music) born Clerkenwell about 1833. Her older sister, Evelyn Millard, was born in Kensington on 18.9.1869. (external link). Her younger sister, Vera, was born about 1874. In 1881, they lived in Hammersmith, where the children were born. She met Anne Mew at Art School. Evelyn also studied at the Female School of Art, 43 Queen Square, Bloomsbury. In 1891, Evelyn (21 years. Student of elocution) and Elsie (19 years. Student of drawing) were living with both parents at 63 Lancaster Road, Kensington. In February 1895, Evelyn played the part of Cecily Cardew in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. Evelyn Mary Millard (by now a famous actress) married Robert Porter Coulter in the July/September quarter of 1900 (St George Hanover Square district). In 1901 he (merchant woollens) and Evelyn were living with a cook and three maids at 33 Park Lane. In 1901, Elsie Millard, aged 29, "Miniature Painter and Teacher" working on her own account "at home", was living with their widowed mother and a servant at 25 Edwards Square, Kensington. Their neighbour was the artist William Clarke Wontner (1857-1930). Elsie Millard married in 1902 (becoming Elsie O'Keefe, and may have gone to Brittany with Charlotte in 1909. The death (aged 52) of Robert Porter Coulter, Evelyn Coulter's husband, was registered in the Hanover Square district in the April/June quarter of 1915. Evelyn's stage career finished about the same time. Elsie's husband was one of Charlotte Mew's executers. He died in 1937. Mrs Evelyn M. Coulter 67a West Cromwell Road, SW5 Frobisher 1314 was in the telephone book from 1926 to 1928. Mrs E.M. Coulter, 17 Crestway, SW15 Putney 3367 in 1937. Evelyn Coulter (Millard) died 9.3.1941. I do not know when Elsie died. Margaret Jarman (1959) mentions Elsie O'Keefe as a friend of the Mews, and links her (indirectly) to T.S. Eliot.

1872 Charlotte 2-3
next previous
Governess in fact and fiction
"A very cursory glance into the advertisement columns of the daily press will prove to any one that if there be one branch more overstocked than another, it is that of daily governesses in London. The prices asked and paid are so small as to render it astonishing how body and soul can be kept together on such a pittance. Instruction in music, French, or German - in fact, in any foreign language - can be obtained in London at the cost of one shilling per lesson; in some cases from natives of the various respective countries, as well as from English women." Cassell's Household Guide (about 1880), volume 1, page 206. The article goes on to recommend young women to train as elementary school teachers instead of becoming resident or daily governesses.

Education outside the home did not begin for the Mew children when they were five, [See under Gower Street School] and no resident governess is shown on census returns. It seems reasonable to suppose some teachers came in on an arranged basis.

In her essay The Governess in Fiction (1899), Charlotte wrote

"Mr Kenneth Grahame, in his Golden Age, in the few pages headed 'Exit Tyrannus', has portrayed in his own delicate fashion the mixture of regret and bravado with which his children watch their governess depart. And it is chiefly in such slight sketches that for us our governess reappears. In fact, perhaps she has become our tyrant; in fancy assuredly she has been our friend. Is she in both, in life as in literature, becoming obsolete with the three-volume novel? If so be, so be it."

October/December quarter 1872 Birth of Florence Kate Kingsford (died 1949) registered Lewisham. Family in 1881 Census. She was trained as an artist at Royal Academy Schools (only girl student in her day). She married Sydney Cockerell at Headington on 4.11.1907. They had three children: Margaret Kate Cockerell's birth was registered (Chesterton, Cambridge) in the October-December quarter of 1908 - Christopher Sydney Cockerell was born Wayside, Cavendish Avenue, Cambridge, on 4.6.1910, and died 1.6.1999 - Katharine O Kingsford Cockerell's birth was registered (Chesterton, Cambridge) in the July-September quarter of 1911. (External pdf) - Letters in the Berg collection - The Adams collection also has letters. There is a letter to Katharine (aged 13) 3.1.1924.

1873 Charlotte 3-4
next previous
Autumn: sister Anne born

The death Thomas Cobham J. Kendall (aged 33) was recorded Kensington vol.1a page 7 in the January March quarter of 1873. This is Charlotte Mew's architect uncle who was living as a lodger with a "Mrs Kendall" in working class lodgings in April 1871. Perhaps there were secret shadows other than insanity over the lives of the Mews?

Caroline Frances Anne Mew, younger sister of Charlotte (see family), born. The birth of Caroline Frances A. Mew was registered Pancras vol.1b page 89 in the September-December quarter of 1873. Her age on the death certificate (died 18.6.1927) is 53 years, which means that she was born after 18.6.1873. (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.9 says she was born 1872). See Art School and Henry, Anne and Freda - The first of Anne's names (Caroline) may have been connected to a potential inheritance. Frances (Fanny) was the name of several Isle of Wight relatives. Anne, Ann, Anna were names on both sides of the family.

Notting Hill High School opened in 1873. (external link to history). This was in Norland Square, Kensington (map), until 1931. - 1881 census - In 1881 it is at 17 Norland Square and there may be a boys school next door. A few roads east is Lansdowne Road where Amy Greener taught. Stephanie Spencer (2000) gives information about the Girls Public Day School Company that established the school. Its website says that the first headmistress "began with one assistant and ten children", but "retired in 1900 leaving a school of 400 girls and 20 teachers and a steady stream of Cambridge, Oxford and London University entrants". Hugh Sinclair (1986) says that the (seven) Chick "daughters" were sent to this school "which provided an excellent education (including science) for girls. Consequently five of them became university graduates in botany [Edith and Harriette?], physics [Edith?] and chemistry, English [Elsie] and medicine [Dorothy?]". Related weblinks: Emily Shirreff - archive of webpage with history - Royal Society of Arts -

1874 Charlotte 4-5
next previous
Spring: cousin Florence born. Florence and Gertrude (born 1875) contributed memories to the 1960 reconstruction of Charlotte's life.

Florence Elen Mew of South Fairlee Farm born [Penelope Fitzgerald gives her name as Florence Ellen Mary Mew. I think she adds the name Mary because she thinks Florence is Sister Mary Magdalen] The birth of Florence Ellen Mew was registered in the January-March quarter of 1874, Isle of Wight volume 2b, page 552. Florence and Gertrude Mary were the two female cousins whose memories Mary Davidow (1960) drew on. There was just over one year between their ages.

In 1901, "Florence Mew", aged 27, born "Whippenham" Isle of Wight, was living at 13 Templeton Place, Kensington, London. Occupation "Independent". This is a boarding house run by Emma Hawkins (aged 42, husband Amos) with eleven boarders, predominantly women, and mostly "Independent" (One secretary and one artist). Florence Elen was interviewed, in the 1950s, by Mary Davidow.

Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 says that Florence Elen "joined an Anglo-Catholic community as Sister Mary Magdalen" (see pages 15 and 270). However, Mary Davidow acknowledges help from Sister Mary Magdalen and Florence Elen Mew (two separate people) and identifies Sister Mary as "Mary Mew"]

Marriages of older sisters of Lucy Harrison, taking place in Bromley, Kent (where their parents lived):
  • In the July-September Quarter of 1871, Anna Jemima Harrison, born Birkenhead about 1840, married James Macdonell. Possibly James Macdonell (1841-1879) Journalist. In the 1881 Census, Anna is a widow living with her mother and her three children (all born after 1871).
  • In the July-September Quarter of 1873, Agnes Harrison ( born about 1841 in Liverpool) married John Macdonell (born about 1845 in Scotland)

    The birth of Amice Anna B Macdonell was registered Bromley, Kent vol.2a page 348 in the October-December quarter of 1874. Her mother was Agnes T. Macdonell, a novelist, who wrote For the King's Dues (1874) and Quaker Cousins (1879). Amice's father, John Macdonell, was a barrister who had become a Master of the Supreme Court by 1891. His youngest sister, Anne (or Ann) Macdonell (born about 1861 in Aberdeen) (who knew Charlotte), was also a writer. Amice and younger sister, Margaret R. B. Macdonell, were both born in Beckenham Kent. Margaret was born about a year after Amice. See the 1881 Census, when the family are living in Surrey. The birth of Margaret Rachel B. Macdonell, was registered Bromley, Kent vol.2a page 363 in the June-August quarter of 1876. In the 1891 Census the family are shown at 24 Stanley Gardens, Belsize, St John, Hampstead. In the 1901 Census they are at 28 Belsize, St Peter, Hampstead. Amice said that she was ten years old [1884/ 1885 - not 1882] when she went to school with Charlotte Mew. The two letters from her to Mary Davidow in 1959 are a major source of information on Charlotte Mew's childhood. Amice Macdonell became Amice Lee (Name on books indicates this was possibly about 1909). She wrote a series of historical plays for children (1908-1913) including the story of Alfred the Great, Robin Hood and The Armada, and The enterprise of the Mayflower (first series) and Saxon and Norman, Magna Carta, Edward 3rd, Caedmon, The Burghers of Calais, The Good Queen and The Crusaders. The Way of the Heart, Saint George, and Beowulf. These were published in London by George Allen & Sons and included illustrations by the author. After the war, she wrote The Sacred Fire. A Morality Play for the League of Nations (Basil Blackwell, 1924), The Name on the Rock (1933) and then a book about The Production of School Plays (1934). In 1955, Oxford University Press published her Laurels and Rosemary: the life of William and Mary Howitt. [Her relatives, William (1792-1879) and Mary, previously Botham (1799- 1888). Her final exercise in family history, In Their Several Generations, was published privately in the United States. It gave a family history from 1640 to 1930. The index was constructed by one of her american cousins.

  • Save the Children: A Temperance Sermon, Preached in the Wesleyan Chapel, Great Queen Street, London by Charles L. Garrett. "20th thousand". In An Old Servant Charlotte Mew wrote: "Her Place of Worship... was a Wesleyan Chapel in Great Queen Street, and this was to, I believe, her favourite place of entertainment". The Great Queen Street Chapel, Lincoln's Inn Fields may have been established in 1639 and lasted until 1925. It became the Methodist head quarters in West London in 1798. It was the central church of the "Great Queen Street, Wesleyan Circuit". On 3.6.1898, Charles Booth interviewed Reverend Josiah Banham, its superintendent, and sister Sister Sara, deaconess.

    Thomas Hill Green's critical Introduction to Hume's Treatise in which (volume 2, page 71) he appealed to "Englishmen under five-and-twenty" to leave "the anachronistic systems hitherto prevalent amongst us" and take up "the study of Kant and Hegel" (See William Ritchie Sorley 1904). - Later elaborated on (by others) as a call to close Mill and Spencer and open Kant and Hegel. - See May Sinclair, who wrote about Green. Debates between idealism and materialism echo in much that Charlotte Mew wrote.

    1875 Charlotte 5-6
    next previous
    Spring/summer: Cousin Gertrude, Charlotte's favourite cousin, born Newport, Isle of Wight - Autumn: Baby Daniel, renamed Christopher, born - name links with family at Ryde, Isle of Wight

    upstairs: "not much higher than her knee, I remember climbing upstairs to bed in front of her" - (See nursery) - downstairs: At fifty she had not outgrown the absorbing conversion of lumps of sugar into 'pig's blood' over the kitchen gas. out in the Square: the player caught cheating at croquet.

    4.1.1875 Henry Edward Kendall (senior), Charlotte's architect great-grandfather died. His death (aged 98) was recorded Westminster vol.1a page 402 in the January March quarter of 1875

    Gertrude Mary Mew of South Fairlee Farm born. The birth of Gertrude Mary Mew was registered in the April-June quarter of 1875, Isle of Wight volume 2b, page 523. She would have been five in the summer of 1880.
    In 1901, "Gertrude Mew" aged 25, born Whippingham, Isle of Wight" was living in London and working as a "Hospital Nurse" at St Bartholomews Hospital, West Smithfield. She became Sister Mary Magdalen (See August 1958).

    Charlotte Mew's "favourite cousin" was thinking of entering a convent in 1919. (Mary Davidow appears to accept the identification of "favourite cousin" and Sister Mary Magdalen]. I cannot find any reference in Mary Davidow to the convent being Anglo-Catholic or belonging to any Anglican order (as Penelope Fitzgerald says). It is possible that the cousin converted to the Roman church. Mary Davidow says that Ann Mew "died an Anglo Catholic" - [But, as an anglican with high church leanings, so did Charlotte].

    Daniel Kendall Frederick and Anna's sixth? child, born in 1875, was renamed Christopher Barnes a few months after his birth. He died in 1876 "shortly after receiving his new name" (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.9) The birth of Daniel Kendall Mew was registered Pancras vol.1b page 78 in the October-December quarter of 1875.

    Daniel and Barnes: See Ryde, 1871

    6.12.1875 Birth of Evelyn Underhill. From about 1903 to 1905, she was a member of the occult Golden Dawn group. She published a novel, The Grey World in 1904 and another, The Lost Word in 1907 (Both Heinemann). She married (Hubert) Stuart Moore 3.7.1907, becoming "Mrs Moore" to friends and acquaintances. See November 1907 - Summer 1908 - July 1909 - She published under the names Evelyn Underhill and John Cordelier. An agnostic who became a Christian, her best known work is Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness, published in 1911. See May 1913 - 17.1.1914 - 10.3.1914 - 16.3.1914 - 4.4.1914 - 19.5.1914 - She died 15.6.1941.

    Mew businesses in 1875 Trade Directory:

    Henry Mew, Bugle family and commercial hotel and posting house High Street

    Richard Mew, wine, spirit and ale merchant, 16 Lower St James Street

    Isle of Wight Holidays

    "In late May or June every year the Mew children went to the Isle of Wight". Their mother "it seems" preferred to stay with her family in Brighton. "but the children went on by the Mid-Sussex Railway to catch the boat at Southampton for the Island, in the care of Elizabeth Goodman.".. "During the holidays the children had the chance to tour the Island from Newfairlee" (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988, pages 14-15). Clicking on the map below will take you to a map of a larger area.

    click for
    The Road east from Newport through Barton Village is, today, called Staplers Road. It leads eventually to Ryde. The road north, beside the (now disused) railway track is called Fairlee Road. It leads to East Cowes. The farm track going from opposite Fairlee Villa, on Fairlee Road, to New Fairlee and then to Staplers Road, was called (by 1901) "Mews Lane". New Fairlee Farm is shown hugging the south of Mews Lane opposite the words New Fairlee. It is shown in closeup on an 1866 map, where one can see the tracks into the farmyard and to the cow sheds passing what appears to be a farmyard pond. Perhaps this is the drive that this memory in The Trees are Down harks back to:
    I remember one evening of a long past Spring
    Turning in at a gate, getting out of a cart, and finding a large dead rat in the mud of the drive.
    I remember thinking: alive or dead, a rat was a god-forsaken thing,
    But at least, in May, that even a rat should be alive.
    The Mew children presumably walked down Mew Lane to and then west along Staplers Road to St Paul's Church, which is close to "Polars" (where William Baron Mew lived) in Barton Village.

    The Mew family at the farm are shown on the 1881 and 1901 census


    weblink to St Paul's Barton "The church is situated on the corner of Staplers Road and Cross Lane (opposite School Lane where the Parish Centre is) and about a quarter of a mile up from the main Coppins Bridge roundabout in Newport town centre."

    Kevin McCoy, the St Paul's Barton webmaster,
    has helped me with Mew family history.

    Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 pages 15-16 identifies this with the church of Charlotte's childhood described in The Country Sunday . Above the Sanctuary "is a cupola of stars set in a deep blue sky surmounting three beautiful stained glass windows depicting Faith, Hope and Charity these are in memory of Benjamin Mew who died in 1850, aged 65". The church also contains "a stone tablet in memory of Rev William Henry Nutter; and Fanny Mew, daughter of Richard and Fanny Mew". The first vicar of the parish was Rev. W.D. Parker (1844-1853). If the story is taken literally, the vicar in The Country Sunday would be Rev William L. Sharpe (1854-1890 - See 1881 Census). He was followed by Rev. William Henry Nutter (1891-1909 - See 1881 Census)

    Somerset Garden

    I expect I get my affection for flowers from spending some time in Somerset when I was a child with ancient aunts who didn't like me... their garden - when I was allowed into it - being, then, my only pleasure...

    The Nursery: The following passage from Mary Davidow (1960 page 23) may be based on the memories of Gertrude Mary Mew and Florence Elen Mew. Charlotte was already five when Gertrude Mary was born. Perhaps the first passage draws on memories from when Charlotte was about ten 1880, and Freda just born. The second passage relates to when Freda Mew was a small child, and Charlotte a teenager. Perhaps about 1884?

    "The Mew nursery... was located in the attic or top floor. The night nursery contained the essential beds and cupboards, and the day nursery was fitted with bookshelves, a toy-chest, a Noah's ark, a rocking horse, a doll's house with a bay window built by the architect father, and the indispensable round table at which the children ate their meals, and, in the intervals, at which they learned from Nurse their first lessons in reading and writing... The Mew nursery followed a fairly standard routine; breakfast at eight, dinner at noon, and tea at six. In the evening the children were allowed to go downstairs for dessert and for the privilege of spending a little time with their parents"

    "An Isle of Wight cousin recalls that on one of her visits to London she played in the Square with Freda where they spent a delightful and, for the over-disciplined and repressed Freda, an intoxicatingly joyous afternoon. When they returned to the house, looking as happy children ought to look -- hot and sweaty and dirty - Nurse spanked them for getting into such a state." (page 29)

    "One of Frederick Mew's Isle of Wight nieces recalls that when she visited the London Mew's, Uncle Fred took his children and the visiting relative to the Foundling for Sunday services to hear the music. During the short walk he recited the salient historical facts concerning the institution, and cautioned the children to be attentive to the music and the sermon. After the services the visitors were permitted to walk about the dining room and talk with 'the dear little children' while they ate their dinner." (page 28)

    1876 Charlotte 6-7
    next previous
    March: Baby Christopher and then, in December, Richard (5) die
    The needlewoman may have explained death to Charlotte as like a candle going out.
    Cousin Gilbert born in the Autumn

    In 1876, elementary education became compulsory for all children in England and Wales. It was also the year that Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson's Letters and Social Aims published, containg the essay Immortality

    "Is immortality only an intellectual quality, or, shall I say, only an energy, there being no passive ? He has it, and he alone, who gives life to all names, persons, things, where he comes. No religion, not the wildest mythology, dies for him ; no art is lost. He vivifies what he touches. Future state is an illusion for the ever-present state. It is not length of life, but depth of life. It is not duration, but a taking of the soul out of time, as all high action of the mind does : when we are living in the sentiments we ask no questions about time. The spiritual world takes place ;- that which is always the same"

    In 1876 two of Frederick and Anna's chidren died

    21.3.1876: Christopher Barnes Mew, son of Frederick Mew Architect, died, aged "4 months" at 30 Doughty Street. Cause of death: "Convulsions, Certified by J. Whicker, MRCSE" [Comment: The convulsions probably came at the end of an infection, but could have been the result of a congenital defect. The violent shaking damages the brain etc, and can bring about death in a matter of minutes]. Informant: "E. Goodman. Present at the death", registered it at Grays Inn Lane, Pancras on 24.3.1876. The death of Christopher Barnes Mew, aged 0, was registered Pancras vol.1b page 63 in the January-March quarter of 1876.

    April 1876: Competition for the design of the new Vestry Hall for Hampstead

    6.5.1876: Hampstead and Highgate Express "Sir... while inspecting the drawings for the above, prior to the decision of the Vestry, my attention was called to a gentleman with a foot-rule, pointing out the merits (?) of the design marked 'Cavendo tutus' to all comers. Upon speaking to him, I discovered he was a vestryman, and he stated to me that he knew whose design it was, and had seen it prior to its being sent in... 'Cavendo tutus' appears to have ignored all the conditions - the large hall showing to hold about 400 people (if I mistake not) instead of the 800 required." Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 pages 33-34)

    2.10.1876 Margaret Chick born. If she started at the Gower Street School when she was five, that would be about 1881. However, Gower Street pupils may have started when they were about seven (1883).

    October/December quarter 1876: Birth of Gilbert Mew of South Fairlee Farm registered.
    In 1901, Gilbert Mew, aged 25, a farmer, born Newport, was a visitor at 15 Bouverie Road (East?), Folkestone, Kent. This was the house of Arthur M. Riddall (aged 29, born Poplar) a Hotel Proprietor - although I do not think this was the hotel. In the absence of any other information, I have assumed Gilbert farmed the home farm with his father and brother.

    9.12.1876: Richard Cobham Mew (Son of Frederick Mew, Architect), five years old, died at 30 Doughty Street. Cause of death: "Scarlet fever, Congestion of kidneys, Uraemia. Certified by T. Robinson, LRCP. [Comment: It looks as if scarlet fever triggered Bright's Disease (of the kidneys) leading to poisoning of the blood by the urine. The child would have become mentally disturbed as an effect of the urea on the brain. Possibly severe slowing down of mental faculties.] Informant: "Elizabeth Goodman, Present at the death", who registered it at the Grays Inn Lane sub-district, Pancras on 12.12.1875 [The death of Richard Cobham Mew, aged 5, was registered Pancras vol.1b page 51 in the October-December quarter of 1876].

    Alida Monro (1953), page xii, says that "Charlotte Mew was educated at the Lucy Harrison School for Girls in Gower Street and for many years helped with Miss Paget's Girl's Club, work which she enjoyed enormously". Following up this lead brought Mary Davidow in contact with Amice Lee, who provided memories of Charlotte when (by about 1882), she and Ethel Oliver [a Quaker] were both living with Lucy Harrison. Amice's letters show that Charlotte lived with Ethel Oliver when Charlotte was about fourteen, and that she knew the other Oliver children. There is a suggested age difference that does not appear to be true. Margaret Chick's recollections suggest that all of the (four?) oldest Chick girls attended the Gower Street School. The strong scientific bent of some of the Olivers and Chicks may indicate that science was a component of the school's education. Mary Davidow says that Anne Mew was a pupil at the Gower Street School under Amy Greener , and went from there to the School of Art. Penelope Fitzgerald says that Charlotte also met "Maggie Browne" at the school - But I cannot find a basis for this.

    Mary Davidow (1960), page 31, says "Formal education began for Charlotte Mew at the Lucy Harrison School for Girls in Gower Street when she was six or seven" [1876/1877]. She does not give a source. The census for 1881 has Henry H. Mew at 15 and Charlotte M. Mew at 11 as "Scholar" - But not Caroline F.A. Mew [Ann] at 7. Henry was not shown as a scholar when he was 5 (1871 census), Freda (aged 12) and Caroline (aged 17) was not shown as a scholar on the 1891 census. No Governess is shown living in on any census - But professional home tuition could have been provided by someone not living in.

    Penelope Fitzgerald (page 22) says Charlotte "was entered as a pupil" at "the Gower Street School" in 1879 (not referenced). [See also 1881 and 1882].

    Lucy Harrison (1844-1915), born in Liverpool (census) came from a "Quaker family with a Yorkshire background". She was one of eight children of Daniel (tea merchant born about 1795) and Anna (born about 1798). The other children included Mary (born about 1826. The oldest. An invalid) - probably Charles Harrison, tea merchant, born about 1830 - Samuel (born about 1837) - Agnes, born about 1841 - Anna Jemima, born about 1842 - Annie, born about 1842 - Lucy (whose full name may have been Emma Lucy Harrison) born 17.1.1844. Charles Harrison married Mary (born about 1833) and they had (at least) four children: Charles W.D. Harrison (born about 1854?) - Edith M.W. Harrison (born about 1858) - Ethel M.J. Harrison (born about 1859) and Arthur J.U. Harrison (born about 1860). In 1871, Edith and Ethel were pupils at the school where Lucy taught.

    In 1861 and 1862, Lucy (and Annie) attended Bedford College, studying Latin, History and English literature. In 1865 or 1866 she started to teach the Bedford College School, which moved to Gower Street about 1868. She became headmistres in 1875. Lucy Harrison left the Gower Street School in 1885/1886, because her health broke down. Amy Greener took over the Gower Street School, and she and Lucy became close friends. Lucy Harrioson spent some years of recuperation in Wensleydale [North Yorkshire]. She became headmistress of Friends Girls School, York (Mount School) in January 1890.

    In 1881, Lucy Harrison, aged 37, born "Edge Hill, Cheshire" [Edge Hill is a district of Liverpool] Governess (Private) was living at 80 Gower Street with Ellen Mathews, aged 25, born Shrewsbury, Teacher (Private) - Mary Newcome, Housekeeper, (married) aged 48, born Devon - Lucy Newcome, assistant, aged 23, born St Pancras - and Ann Ayliffe, Housemaid, aged 17, born Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire.

    Lucy Harrison is "superintendent of school" at 6 Driffield Terrace, York in the 1891 Census - headmistress of Mount School, Dalton Terrace (by Driffield Terrace), York in the 1901 census. In the 1881 census (when Winifred Oliver was a "scholar" there) this is entered as "Friends' School". [Friends Girl's School, York (Mount School)]

    Amy Greener (born 1860) was a daughter of a coal agent in West Auckland. In 1871 the family were in Aston Hall, Cheshire. In 1881, Amy Greener was a "Governess" (one of two) assisting the headmistress in a school at 3 Lansdowne Road, in Notting Hill (near Notting Hill High School). She was 21 years old, born Etherley, Durham. She first met Lucy Harrison in 1885. In 1891 she was in charge of the Gower Street School in its new premises . In 1901 she was a teacher at Mount School, where Lucy Harrison was headmistress. She published Lucy's life and papers in 1916.

    There were educational publications by (a) Lucy Harrison in 1880 - 1883. But not 1903.

    1877 Charlotte 7-8
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    Frederick Mew, Charlotte's father, engaged in the construction of Hampstead Vestry Hall: Design: 1876 - Opening August 1878?

    click for EC1 local history trail Clerkenwell House of Detention closed . It was demolished. A school opened on the site in 1893, so the prison was probably being demolished at about the time Passed was written. Click on the image for the EC1 local history trail leaflet

    Spring 1877: The elite, modern, Grosvenor Gallery opened. "It included many famous pictures; Watts Love and Death and Portrait of Mrs Percy Wyndham ... Edward Burne-Jones (who was first introduced to the general public)... Three by Albert Moore, four by Holman Hunt, and seven Whistlers" (The Times Friday 9.5.1913). Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience opened 23.4.1881. It included the lyric "A pallid and thin young man - A haggard and lank young man - A greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery - Foot-in-the-grave young man!" (external link). The sunflower, depicted on Mrs Percy Wyndham's dress, became the symbol of the new against the passed (passée). A point of Charlotte Mew's story may be similar to Gilbert and Sullivan: a detection of superficiality in the new. See also use of passed by Mademoiselle

    8.6.1877 Hampstead and Highgate Express "though the work had not been proceeded with so rapidly as it might have been, the architect was of the opinion that his was all the better for the building" Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.35)

    1878 Charlotte 8-9
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    October: Death of grandma Mew on the Isle of Wight

    Women were admitted for the first time as full degree students to the Faculties of Science and of Arts and Laws at University College London in 1878 (See 1871). The first women graduates were in 1882. Cambridge University opened its examinations to women in 1881, and Oxford in 1884 - See Bedford College and London University and Edith Chick

    "Although mixed classes were held at University College from 1878, women still had a separate Common Room there (in fact, the Common Rooms were not desegregated until 1969 [Harte and North 144]), and many in those days still considered women-only establishments more appropriate" (external source). See also 1979 - 1986 - 2004

    Gold Medal for Botany initiated for women by The Society of Apothecaries. See Harriette Chick

    July/September quarter 1878 Birth of Catherine Dawson Giles registered Lewisham. The 1881 Census shows the family in Lancashire. Catherine Dawson Giles and Catherine Dawson Scott are first cousins. Miss Giles was known as Kathie Giles. She died in 1955

    "The [Hampstead] vestry met at the board room of the guardians in the workhouse until 1878 when a vestry hall and offices were built on the Belsize estate at Haverstock Hill. The red-brick and stone Italianate building, designed by H. E. Kendall, the district surveyor, and Frederick Mew, was extended in 1896." (From British History Online. Source: Hampstead: Local Government. A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume IX, T.F.T. Baker (Editor) (1989). - (external link with picture)

    This drawing of the "Vestry-Hall - Hampstead" is dated "August 1878" and has the name "Kendall and Mew, Architects".
    Hampstead Town Hall today,
    213 Haverstock Hill,
    Hampstead
    London NW3 4QP

    from the website of the London School of Yoga, who meet there.

    map - Interchange Studios map

    17.10.1878 Death of Ann Mew, Charlotte Mew's paternal grandmother. She was buried at Newport, Isle of Wight.

    1879 Charlotte 9-10
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    Spring: Freda born

    1.10.1879 First issue of The Theosophist - "Theosophy is ... the archaic Wisdom-Religion, the esoteric doctrine once known in every ancient country having claims to civilization". (Online copy). The Theosophist published a story by Charlotte Mew and, later, stories by her friend Mrs Scott. The Theosophist is the journal of the Theosophical Society. See objects - history - An index to The Theosophist

    There is another summary of what is known of Freda under Henry, Anne and Freda .

    After 1.3.1879?, but before 3.4.1879: Freda Kendall Mew, Frederick and Anna's seventh? child and Charlotte's youngest sibling, born. Her birth was registered at St Pancras in the April-June quarter of 1879. She was entered as two years old on the 3.4.1881 census and 19 years old on admission to an asylum on 4.2.1899. She was 78 years old when she died on 1.3.1958.

    There is ambiguity about Anna Mew's age, but she was probably about forty two when Freda was born. (See birth defects in children born to women over 40).

    Before 1886(?), when she was five, Freda attended dancing classes (at the Gower Street School?) with her mother. Her mother is described (by Amice Lee, recalling childhood memories) as "certainly silly". In an earlier letter, Amice mentions Freda followed by reference to a shadow on Charlotte's life. One interpretation is that Freda had a problem that could not be disguised from children who knew her.

    Freda (aged 12) was living at home in June 1891. She is not entered as "scholar" (as Charlotte was when she was 11). [The legal school-leaving age was ten for all children, however poor]

    We do not know where she was between 1891 and 1898. At the end of 1898 she was on the Isle of Wight. There is a strong association with the Isle of Wight, and with Richard Mew, her uncle, in her hospital records (See case book - census - and death certificate). This may indicate that she had been living there for some time. The (male) subject of Charlotte Mew's poem, Ken, has features similar to Freda's when she was institutionalised. Before that, he is described as living in a town similar to Carisbrooke and spending time in the country with animals.

    Freda was admitted to institutional care on the Isle of Wight soon after her father died. She was admitted to the Isle of Wight County Lunatic Asylum on 4.2.1899. In 1901 she appears as "F.K.M." in the Isle of Wight Asylum. On the 1901 census her place of birth is given as the Isle of Wight and her death certificate gives "Richard Mew" (her Isle of Wight uncle and cousin's name) instead of "Frederick Mew" as her father -

    17.2.1879 Death of Sophia Cubitt at Talbot Square, Westminster. She was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery

    12.1.1879 Florence Emily Dugdale born at 4 Hampton Villas, Sydney Road, Enfield. (external link archive) Her father, Edward Dugdale, was the Headmaster of St Andrews National School for Boys, Enfield. The 1881 Census shows her family.

    Her sisters were
    Ethel (born May 1877. Also shown as a "School Teacher" in 1901); "Ethel Dugdale- Richardson"?
    Constance (born 1884. Also shown as a "School Teacher" in 1901); Married Tom Soundy?
    Eva (born 1887. Aged 14 in 1901) - note in book - nurse? - nursed Thomas Hardy in his final illness. - Present at Florence's death;
    Margaret (born 1893. Aged 7 in 1901) Present at Florence's death.

    Florence attended St Andrew's Girls School, Enfield, and began teacher training at the same school on 10.5.1895. She began teaching at her father's school (for boys) on 10.1.1897. From 1903 (possibly earlier) she published children's stories: Little Lie-a-bed; and other stories (1903). Florence met Thomas Hardy in 1905, when she was 26 years old. She published Old Time Tales - Tim's Sister and Nurse Jane! in 1907 and Country Life in 1908. Florence left teaching in 1908. The Book of Baby Beasts, pictures in colour by E. J. Detmold and descriptions by F. E. Dugdale, with contributions by Thomas Hardy, was published in 1911. The Book of Baby Birds followed in 1912, The Book of Baby Pets in 1914. She also published In Lucy's Garden, illustrated by John Campbell, in 1912. Emma Hardy (Thomas's first wife) died 27.11.1912. Florence became his secretary in 1912 and moved into his home at Max Gate in 1913. They were married at St Andrew's Church, Enfield on 10.2.1914. He was --. She was --. Correspondence with Charlotte Mew began 24.9.1918 - The Hardy's met Charlotte Mew in December 1918. - See letters 1918 - Spring 1919 - Autumn 1919 - Spring 1921 - Autumn 1921 - Letters from Charlotte to the Hardys' friend Mrs Inglis begin in 1922 - letter 1923 - 1923 meal with De la Mare - letters 1925 -

    August 1879 Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Sheffield. Sir Edwin Ray Lankester gave a talk on Degeneration. This was published, in 1880, as Degeneration : a chapter in Darwinism. Alfred Russel Wallace reviewed this in Nature 17.6.1880 (External link to review). Wallace speaks of the "little-known phenomena of 'Degeneration'... which causes an organism to become more simple in structure".

    Dicken's Directory of London, by Charles Dickens junior (1879) includes:

    Bedford College for Ladies York Place, Portman-square, is under the management of a council, and undertakes to give a thorough education to girls and young women. Students are not admitted under 14 years of age, and may either pursue a systematic course of study as regular students, or select any number of separate classes as occasional students. The work is intended to prepare ladies desirous of matriculating and graduating at the University of London. All information may be obtained of the hon. secretary at the college.

    Since moving to York Place in 1874, the college had added extensions for science laboratories. The degree examinations of the University of London were opened to women in 1878. Bedford students gained BA, BSc and Masters degrees from the early 1880s.

    [See Harriette Chick. Helen Wigginton, Archives Assistant, Royal Holloway, inspected and helped interpret Hariette Chick's record. The Bedford College calendar for 1899 (AR/243) contains a list of all Bedford graduates, from which the information was taken. No Student Record File has been found for Harriette in the Bedford College or London University records/archives. File reference AR/285/1, obituaries and newspaper cuttings for former students, contains a small news cutting from The Times in July 1977 announcing Harriette Chick's death and an accompanying hand written note "student 1893 - 96; DSc 1904 from UCL"]. Link to Royal Holloway (including Bedford College) Archives

    Lydia Rous retired as Superintendent of Friends School for Girls, York, in 1879, due to ill health. She continued to live in York until 1887, and to advise the school. She helped Lucy Harrison when she became headmistress. Lydia Rous's immediate successor was Susanna Elizabeth Scott, who was superintendent in 1881, when Winifred Oliver (aged 14) was a pupil. Winifred started at York shortly after the first scholar went to Girton College, Cambridge.

    1880 Charlotte 10-11
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    Summer 1880? Charlotte (Lotti) breaks nurse's parasole on the Isle of Wight - Christmas: Charlotte (Lotti) and Anne write a poem for Freda
    click for Passed Henry Herne Mew in 1880, when he was fifteen years old

    "A cousin remembers vividly an incident which occurred in Newport one summer when she, accompanying her mother in the fly," [one horse covered carriage] "rode to the Newport railroad station" [Ryde-Newport linked by rail in 1875] "to meet Lotti, then about ten, and Nurse, who had arrived to spend a part of the summer holidays at the farm." [So, where were Henry and Anne? Freda was just born] "After the little ceremony of greeting was over, they all walked toward the fly. As they were about to mount, Lotti, who moved in sudden burst of energy, scrambled into the driver's seat so that she might enjoy an unobstructed view of the gently rolling farmlands as they rode home. Nurse, in utter exasperation, gave the wayward child a smart whack with her folded parasol, commanding her at the same time to get down and take her 'proper' place. The irate Lottie seized the parasol and, with a gesture expressing and exasperation equal to Nurses's, snapped the shaft of it in two across the edge of the seat, then, with an air of complete defiance, tossed the parasol aside. More than that, she refused to budge from her chosen place. She was severely punished for her poor conduct when the group reached the farm.

    As a child, Lottie was a 'determined little thing who knew what she wanted and generally got it' (Told by Mary Mew, Sister Mary Magdalen)" (Mary Davidow 1960 page 30)

    Christmas 1880: "When Charlotte was ten years old Freda... was born. In this sister's honour" a poem called "Christmas 1880" was written and signed "Lotti" and [Anne]. It was owned by Alida Monro when Mary Davidow (1960 page 3) wrote about it, but has not been found.

    1881 Charlotte 11-12
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    "Scholar" by Charlotte's name in the 1881 census probably indicates that she was a pupil at the Gower Street School
    Sunday 3.4.1881/Monday 4.4.1881 Census:

    30 Doughty Street, London, (See census) recorded Frederick Mew aged 49, born Newport, Isle of Wight: Architect and his wife Anna M.M. Mew, aged 44, born St Pancras, with their children (all born St Pancras): Henry H. Mew, aged 15, Scholar. Charlotte M. Mew, aged 11, Scholar, Caroline F.A. Mew, aged 7 and Freda K. Mew aged two, together with the live-in servants: Elizabeth Goodman, aged 56, "Nurse Domestic", and Lucy Best, aged 18, "Cook Domestic"

    Charlotte's maternal grandparents, Henry Edward Kendall and Mary Kendall, with her aunt, Mary (Leonora) Kendall were living at 34 Burlington Road. (See Census). Neighbouring streets show that this was in Westbourne Park. [Ledbury Road and Artesian Road are near]. Ann Perkin, cook aged 40, remained with the family: See 1891, 1901, 1902.

    (80) Gower Street School
    Lucy Harrison Head. At 80 Gower Street See census, which shows the residents as: Lucy Harrison (37) Governess (Private), Ellen Mathews 25 (boarding with Lucy Harrison), 25 year old unmarried teacher (private) born Shrewsbury, Shropshire. Mary Newcome (48, married), housekeeper, born Bishops Nympton, Devon, her assistant, Lucy Newcome (23) born St Pancras, and Ann Ayliffe (17), the housemaid, born Bishops Stortford, Hertford. In an 1882 Directory, the only relevant entry I could find is "80 Gower St: Miss Harrison". The school was not entered in the classified section under public or private schools. Amice Macdonell said that the school later moved to 96 Gower Street. In 1891, Amy Greener is shown at 98 Gower Street, as "Principal of School".

    Links to Lucy Harrison's family Anna Harrison (her mother). Her father died in 1873. [Maidernley is Macdonell in the original] Anna M. and Anna Jemima (Anna H.) living at home. Agnes T. Macdonell, mother of Amice.

    The Oliver family at Kew: See census

    The Chick family at 5 Newman St (Holborn - (map link) See census - Except for Samuel Chick (father): (See census) and Samuel Chick (son): (See census). All the Chick children were born at 5 Newman Street After 1887 (when Dorothy Chick's was born) the family moved to Ealing. Margaret Tomlinson says that they moved "soon after" 1886. 5 Newman Street continued to be used by Samuel Chick the father as his business premises. Margaret Chick was the last of the Chick family (girls) to attend Miss Harrison's School. It is, therefore, probable that Charlotte Mew was there with Edith (her own age), Mary, Harriette and Margaret [When Penelope Fitzgerald says Elsie, Margaret and Harriet were pupils, she presumably means Edith rather than Elsie]. [See also Chicks at Notting Hill]. At the time of the 1891 census, Charlotte Mew was staying with the family in Ealing.

    Family of Elsie Millard: See census
    George Robert Sims (1847-1922)
    See census

    Charlotte's paternal uncle and aunt, Richard Mew and Fanny Mew lived at South Fairlee Farm, Naider Road, Whippingham (outside Newport) on the Isle of Wight (See Census). Richard (aged 55, born Lymington) was a farmer of 400 Acres, employing 5 Men and 2 Boys. Fanny is shown as aged 47 and born in Somerset. They lived with their children (one was at boarding school), all born on the Isle of Wight: Fanny, aged 14, Ethel Louisa, aged 10, Florence Elen, aged 7, Gertrude Mary, aged 5 and Gilbert Mew, aged 4. They had a "Governess Teacher (Private)", Anna Maria Wigmore aged 24, unmarried, born Isle of Wight, who boarded in the house. There was also Jane Osborne, a domestic servant, unmarried, aged 36, born Isle of Wight. Living in the house were George Kennington, aged 59, a "Farm Servant (Indoor)", Jane Kennington, aged 57, "Dairy Woman", (married, presumably to George), and Sarah Kennington unmarried aged 30, the "Cook". The Kenningtons had all been born in Sussex. Other farm workers lived in nearby cottages.

    Richard Percy Mew, aged 12, born Newfairley, Isle of Wight, was a scholar at Surrey County School Cranleigh - A boys public school opened in 1865 "for parents of the middle class or moderate incomes" whose fees were initially set at £30 a year. Elsewhere it is descriced as a "school for farmers' sons". See 1881 census and 1901 census

    My best guess is that, in the 1881 census, South Fairlee Farm is the same as New Fairlee Farm in other places. There is an online walk that includes this. It includes the directions "Cross the stile on the left and work your way around the derelict barn to reach the gravel track known as Mews Lane" (Compare modern map of Mews Lane to 19th century map. Naider Road could have become Mews Lane. See 1901 Census).

    The Polars William Baron Mew: Widower, aged 60, born Newport. "Two Partners. Brewer Employs 50 60 Men Malsters 15 Men Farmers 8 Men 3 Boys", living with two nieces, Ethel Muriel Mew, aged 16, born Arreton (Standew), Isle of Wight, and Louisa Agnes Mew, aged 26, born Carisbrooke, plus three female domestic servants. (census)

    William Baron Mew, Joseph Parker Mew and Charles Edward Templeman Mew of Newport, brewers, maltsters and spirit merchants, traded in partnership as W. B. Mew, Langton & Co.

    70 Crocker Street
    Joseph Parker Mew, age 52, Brewer, Malster, Wine and Spirit Merchant
    Euphemia Mew, age 44, wife, born Woolwich, Kent
    Mabel F.M. Mew, daughter, age 9, scholar, born Newport
    Ella E. Mew, daughter, age 7, scholar, born Newport
    Elsie, K. Mew, daughter, age 5, scholar, born Newport
    Servants

    121 St James Street, Newport
    Charles Mew, unmarried, age 24, Brewer, born Neport
    Herbert, B. Mew, cousin, unmarried, age 22, Brewer, born Cowes
    [Herbert is the eldest son of Joseph Parker Mew and Euphemia]

    At 9 Barfield, Ryde, (Isle of Wight), Frances Barnes a widowed annuitant aged 52, born in Lymington, Hampshire, was living with Walter M. Barnes, her unmarried son, aged 24, born Ryde, a Barrister At Law and BA Oxon (Not Practising), Marian Barnes, her unmarried daughter, aged 19, born Ryde and Edward W. Barnes, another unmarried son, aged 17, born Ryde, an Articled Solicitors Clerk [The death of Daniel Barnes, age 59, was registered on the Isle of Wight in the January/March quarter of 1881]

    Ventnor

    Wallington House, Belgrave Road
    Henry Mew - 56 - Hotel Keeper
    Mary Mew - 50
    One visitor, age 19

    Wallhampton Cottage, Wallhampton, Lymington
    Thomas Parker Mew, age 61, Brewer retired
    Mary Julia Mew, age 58, wife
    Ellen Mew, daughter, widow, age 30
    Rose Maria Parker, granddaughter, age 10
    Servants
    Birth of Rose Maria Parker registered Tendring October/December 1871
    Ellen Mew married Alfred Pearson Mew October/December 1872
    Death of Alfred Pearson Mew registered Ashborne January/March quarter 1874

    Brighton and Sussex

    In 1881, 6 Codrington Place, Brighton, was occupied by The honorable Anne Massey and her daughter, Catherine Lippincott. Anne Massey was also there in 1867. A Mr Martin lived there in 1858. Charlotte Mew was born in 1869 - Penelope Fitzgerald says that her mother stayed with her mother at 6 Coddrington Place whilst Charlotte and the other children went to the Isle of Wight. Mrs Kendall is living there in the 1891 Kelly's Directory.

    5 Lewes Crescent: Lewis Cubitt - Sussex Square to the right, but numbers between about 10 and 40 seem to be missing

    Friends' School for Girls, Driffield Terrace, York (See census) There are 51 scholars of whom only one is 13 years old - three (including Winifred Oliver are 14 years old - four are 15 years old - fifteen are 16 years old - twenty two are 17 years old - four are 18 years old - two are 19 years old. See school in 1867

    Lydia Rouus: (census)

    1881 The novel Joseph's Coat by David Christie Murray, published by Chatto & Windus, illustrations by Frederick Barnard, includes a passage where two men are blinded to the ugliness of a Norman Church by their love for the lady who is playing the organ inside. "They yearned a little over the wheezy voluntary, which, after all, was played by Love's own hands."

    1882 Charlotte 12-13
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    Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901): Unknown to History: A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland Macmillan and Co. 1882 (First of many editions). Two volumes. Published London and New York. Charlotte Mew wrote:

    "Miss Yonge, in Unknown to History, carries us back to the schoolroom of the eighties, and the tinkle of its overworked piano. Basing her story on the tradition of the seventeenth century that Mary, during her imprisonment at Lockleven, gave birth to a daughter who was conveyed to France and became a nun at Notre Dame do Soissons, she adapts the legend, essentially romantic, as it stands, to meet the requirements of a tame domestic tale. A tale of James Hepburn and Mary Stewart pacing a convent garden, shut in with her passions and her ghosts; here, for the poet or the novelist is the finest stuff of dreams. We are, at least, indebted to Miss Yonge for having made practically no use of it" (Mary Stuart in Fiction)

    Not 1882 Penelope Fitzgerald (pages 26-17) says that, in 1882, Lucy Harrison ceased to be the headmistress of the Gower Street School, where she was succeeded by Amy Greener (page 28). However, Amy Greener says that she first met Lucy Harrison in 1885, which is when she took over the school. Penelope Fitzgerald also says that Lucy Harrison took lodgings "half-way up Haversock Hill", and studied at the British Museum during the day. She took some of the students from Gower Street as boarders, teaching them English literature in the evenings. However, Mary Davidow 1960 (page 35) says Lucy Harrison was headmistress from 1875 to 1885 and that it was the year preceding her retirement that she took the house on Haverstock Hill. The internal evidence of the letters from Amice Lee, on which Penelope Fitzgerald partly bases her story, also suggest 1884

    1882 Electric light installed in the Royal Academy, the British Museum and the Mansion House. D'Oyle Carte introduced electric lighting for the Savoy Operas, with 824 lamps on stage and 370 in other parts of the theatre. Street lighting, in Holborn, first in 1883. The first photographic studio lit by electric light was opened in Regent Street in 1877 by Van der Weyde. It was powered by a gas-driven dynamo. The light was sufficient to permit exposures of some 2 to 3 seconds for a carte-de- visite. Soon a number of studios started using arc lighting. (external link) The electric carbon arc was demonstrated by Humphy Davy in 1809, but its general use followed the development of the electric generator: especially after 1878. Charlotte Mew and Elizabeth Goodman had their photograph taken together artistically in the "new electric light".

    Society for Psychical Research founded in London - External link to history on its website - Wikipedia - Frederic William Henry Myers (1843-1901) was the leading founder. Myers was a Theosophist until 1886 External link to Wikipedia - See Science - Freud - May Sinclair - James Strachey and absence

    1883 Charlotte 13-14
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    Margaret Chick's school memories of Charlotte?

    Emily Brontë by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson (1857- 1944) published by W. H. Allen in its Eminent women series - (External link to review - pdf) - See Charlotte Mew 1904 paragraphs 5 and 9

    The Story of My Heart. My Autobiography by Richard Jefferies, Longmans, 1883. In A Country Book, Charlotte Mew described The Story of My Heart as "a wild, wearisome, awful chronicle of a heart too large to find a home on earth, which yet never reached as far as heaven, and so wandered on, with widely-opened but sun-blinded eyes upon its endless way" Field and Hedgerow was, she thought, "a better story, with much in it also of this strange man's heart".

    17.4.1883 Will of Mary Kendall, Charlotte's maternal grandmother [She died 1892]

    to dispose of her legacy from her own family, the Cobhams. One-third was to go to Anna Maria "for her sole use and benefit separate and apart from and exclusive of her said husband Frederick Mew, and that she may hold and enjoy and dispose of such share in the same manner as if she were unmarried" (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.35)

    Spenser for home and school Poems of Edmund Spenser, selected and arranged, with notes, by Lucy Harrison. London: R. Bentley and Son. (over 320 pages).

    Amy Greener (1916) says that "After nearly twenty years connection with the Gower Street School, Miss Harrison's health broke down and at length she determined to give up her work and carry out the plan she had for years had in her mind, to build a little house and live in the country. Her ambition from girlhood had been to own a piece of land and build. Hence in the summer of 1883 she went with her widowed sister, Mrs Macdonell," [Anna Jemima. Agnes was not widowed - She is living with John in 1881, 1891 and 1901] "to Bainbridge for several weeks. .. and at length she found Cupples field. The building was not actually begun until 1885". [A booklet says 1883 was the year Lucy Harrison moved from London to Wensleydale -
    Amice Lee's recollections fit in with the later year (1886) given by Amy Greener - Who is, in any case, the source the booklet cites.

    Margaret Chick's school recollections

    Mary Davidow says (page 40) " Margaret Chick was the last of the family to attend Miss Harrison's School. She was a few years" [Seven years: 1869 - 1876] "younger than Lotti" [Charlotte Mew] " Anne Mew and Amice Macdonell were nearer her age". [Margaret was seven in October 1883 - Anne eleven - Amice nine]

    In Margaret Chick's opinion Lucy Harrison was an exceptional teacher who possessed a philosophy of education which was for the times 'progressive' in that she believed that girls should be as well educated as boys; she, therefore, offered a broader curriculum than that which was to be had at most girls' schools of the period. Miss Chick recalls that Lotti was a bright, spirited, gay little person who had a way with children, and who told amusing stories because she loved to make people laugh. Her letters to Margaret Chick, then a mere child, were filed with delightful illustrations, many of them highly comical. Charlotte and Anne were both clever with their hands. Charlotte could turn out exquisite pieces of embroidery executed to her own designs."

    1884 Charlotte 14-15
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    Freda in the square with visiting cousin/s? - school memories of Amice Lee? - November: photograph of the sisters

    It is possibly about here that the memories of Freda in the Square belong. Gertrude Mary would have been nine in the summer of 1884, Freda five. I would have thought the Sunday visits to the Foundling Hospital were earlier.

    A bust of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow unveiled in Westminster Abbey. Longfellow was the first USA poet to be given a memorial in Poets Corner. Charlotte Mew's first published work, Passed, appears to allude to the theologian's tales in Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn, in one of which, Longfellow wrote:
    "Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
    Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
    So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
    Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."
    Charlotte wrote about "Like souls that meeting pass, And passing never meet again" because, in her story she only meets the other at a deep level once. She is repulsed, and her second meeting is a seeing, not a meeting of souls.

    click for Passed

    The back of this (early 20th century) postcard says "chromographed in Berlin". I think this is post-lithography.

    Breasts: London's waxworks moved from Baker Street to Marylebone Road in 1884. In Passed, Charlotte wrote about the attraction of waxwork breasts. In Paris, John Singer Sargent lifted the fallen shoulder strap on Madam X to appease public opinion. George Frederic Watts' Clytie (Sunflower as breasts) was painted about 1868. Charlotte Mew's Antoine de St Perre says that Watt's use of colour was but "a clever copy" of Paolo Veronese - who also used breasts in his allegories. See also Grosvenor Gallery. By the 1880s chromolithography was becoming widely used for magazines and advertising. This involved several stones being used to lay on the separate colours. High quality chromolithography to reproduce realistic flesh was expensive, but increasingly more affordable. Charlotte's Clerkenwell art shop sells a "chromo" of a girl with "elaborately bared breasts" - presented praying to make her colourful bosoms falsely respectable. ( Erotica versus pornography; An expose, by Cameron Kippen, contains some history of the media).

    In 1884, Alphonse Laveran relates in "Treatise on Marsh Fevers" that Louis Pasteur's discovery that microbial germs cause most infectious diseases (the "germ theory") led to the hypothesis of a bacterial origin of malaria being popular. However, in 1880, Laveran identified (correctly, as it turned out) a protozoan parasite as the cause of malaria. The protozoa being single cell "animal" organisms, whereas bacteria are a range of microorganisms that appear to have properties plant-like and animal-like. Failing to find the protozoa in soil, water or air, Laveran suggested, in "Treatise On Marsh Fevers", that it could be carried by the mosquitoes. The theory of the protozoan cause was not liked by most followers of Pasteur, who favoured bacteria as the cause of disease, but Pasteur accepted it quickly. It only became "indisputable" after staining of the microscopic samples was developed (1899) to make it clearer what one was looking at. Before the development of pigments, the microscope search for malaria signs began with looking for black granules that Lavaran had identified as present in all malaria victims. (external link - Nobel speech). In Notes in a Brittany Convent (1901), the bacteriologist approached Catholicism in a scientific spirit, comparing its fascinations to the study of malaria whilst Charlotte uses the "metaphor" of the "black rotundity" to link that to the ubiquitous presence of the priest who seeks their conversion.

    Gram stains - external link

    Mary Davidow (1960 page 37) says that "In the year preceding her retirement Miss Harrison and one of the other teachers from the school took a house in Hampstead on Haverstock Hill between Chalk Farm and Belsize Park where they accommodated three boarding pupils. Charlotte was one of these..."

    Internal evidence suggests that the following letters from Amice Lee (previously Macdonell) in Mary Davidow 1960, and the preceding recollection of MargaretChick relate to about 1884/1885.

    11 Gray's Inn Square
    February 6, 1959

    Dear Miss Davidow,

    Your letter Interests me much, and I am trying at once to make a contact with someone who may yet be alive and who knew Charlotte M. Mew. I am now aged 84 but I can remember C. M. Mew, or "Lottie" as we called her, clearly and can fancy I hear her very voice and laugh.

    I was then aged 10 [that would be 1884/1885], and Lottie would be about 14. We were at school together when Aunt Lucy had the school in Gower Street, London. That would be some time in the 1880ties

    I have already written to someone of a Quaker family, care of Friends' House, the Quaker H.Q. in London, to see if this person, Ethel Oliver, daughter of Prof. Daniel Oliver, Quaker keeper of the Herbarium at Kew, a known botanist, is alive.

    I know C. M. Mew's father was an architect and they lived in Doughty Street near here where at one time C. Dickens lived.

    Lottie lived at Aunt Lucy's; she had taken a house at Hampstead and had three girls boarding there and I joined them daily and we drove down together and then walked a long way back, partly through noisy roads and dreary, but I walked with C. M. Mew and her talk made the way seem pleasant

    She was about 14, short, with curly short hair. On week days she wore a black and white check frock; on Sundays, her best, a brown one. She was in a High Church phase then and wore a small silver cross on weekdays and a gold for best.

    We walked in procession: my aunt and one of the teachers, the elder two together.

    1. Edith Scull whose father was a professor at Harvard, I think. She was dark with deep-set brown eyes and rather stout. She did clever drawings.

    Gideon Delaplaine Scull , born - 13.8.1824, Sculltown, Auburn, New Jersey; "noted scholar, historian, genealogist", died 22.4.1889, Yorkshire, England. Married Anna Holder 7.4.1862, born about 1834 in Warwickshire, dued 235.1907. They had a daughter, Edith Maria Lydia Scull, born about 1868, who died, unmarried, 15.5.1915, in Sussex, Effects £11802 9s 1d. (external link). [See also Scull wills] In 1881 the family were living in Rugby (census) - Gideon Scull published in 1876 - 1879 - 1881 - 1882 - 1883 -1885

    2. Ethel Oliver, daughter of Professor Daniel Oliver of Kew, a stiff, silent girl of 16. Edith Scull was 17. So to CM they seemed grown-up.

    Ethel Oliver was one year and one month older than Charlotte Mew. Amice Macdonell was about five years younger than Charlotte. Ethel left for Friend's School Yorkshire in January 1885 (still sixteen years old). Given the description in Amice's letters, one wonders when Charlotte and Ethel became friends.

    Lottie and I brought up the rear.

    Aunt Lucy had the school and later it moved from 80 to 96 Gower Street, taken over by Miss Greener who after lived with Aunt Lucy in Wenslydale, Yorkshire, where she had built a house.

    I loved, as we all did, Aunt Lucy, mother's youngest sister, born 1844, died, after being Head of the Quaker School, The Mount, York, 1915.

    Edith Gray Hill taught me (with small success) sums! She married a Mr. Hill who was in some business. I well recall the Chicks: Edith, Harty (presumably Harriet), and then I can't recall the name of the youngest Chick. One of them made quite a name in Gov't service.

    The Olivers kept up with Charlotte M. Mew when grown up, I know, and knew of her cares and sorrows. She had one brother of whom I don't know, a younger sister, Anne, and a little sister. You probably know of the shadow on poor Lottie's life.

    I was so sorry I did not keep up with her in later times. She was very bright, musical, excitable. When my sister told her that Aunt Lucy was going to retire from the school, Lottie, who was practising, jumped up in wild grief and started to bang her head on the wall. My sister, aged about 8, was taken aback and wondered if she ought in loyalty to Aunt Lucy to bang her head too!

    As Margaret Macdonell was born in 1876,
    this fixes the head-banging incident about 1884/1885.

    The kind American cousin of mine who did the index of the book left out Aunt Lucy. He had never known her. I am planning on being able to visit my cousins in N.Y. in May this year....

    Yours sincerely, Amice Lee

    11 Gray's Inn Square
    February 13, 1959

    My dear Miss Davidow,

    Your letter has just come....I think the father of Charlotte must have been a fairly successful architect. I always heard he designed the Town Hall (threatened for destruction), and also a large red brick house, for a Mrs Hill, called Ivy Bank. I feel such regret that I did not continue friendship with Lottie....I remember the Mother as certainly "silly" all decked out in blue boas; she used to bring Freda to the dancing class. I wrote to the Quaker Head Office; they had old Daniel Oliver's name and dates and birth of his three children. Their subsequent dates not there.

    [In all probability, this means that the three children left the Religious Society of Friends - But that should be recorded.]

    Lottie I can see now when she was about fifteen. There was something piquante about her; she had bright eyes, was light and small-boned; had a way of turning round as she talked, sort of pirouetting on her feet; hands and feet were small. I recall often laughing with her. As for Aunt Lucy's influence, I can't say. Lottie at that time would be more like a child, though I recall some tale of Mr Mew going on his knees to Aunt Lucy to beg her to keep Lottie in the school. Her literary sense was very good. I had hoped to contact Ethel Oliver who knew Lottie in adult life, and was a kind friend, but she is dead, and was older than Lottie; and her elder sister is dead.

    Yes, by the "shadow" I meant the shade of insanity. Aunt Lucy did not worry; she was loving and gentle, but rather aloof then and would have had no sex interest; might have been without sympathy a bit to Lottie's ardent nature - I don't know. As for Edith Scull and Ethel Oliver they kept together and they rather ignored Lottie who was younger and very excitable. We walked miles. I was about ten, down Gower Street, through dull grey squares, through dreary Camden Town with crowded pavements and a horrible canal, and then up Haverstock Hill to Hampstead; but Charlotte M. Mew was good company, I feel.

    Lottie wrote for the Yellow Book - Bohemian oftentimes -. Her poems give me sorrow now when I think of her sad life and its ending which must have a bitterness of fate in it. I did not know her late enough to even guess at some lover (likely from her poems), or at her literary friends. She probably knew Hardy. He was well known to my father's youngest sister Anne Macdonell who knew Lottie, and artists and actresses. Aunt Anne was in that set, but also an authority on St Francis of Assisi! She has gone hence years ago.

    I hoped for a personal touch from Ethel Oliver. Edith, Ethel, and Lottie, all three boarded for about a year in Aunt L's house in Hampstead. Mary Howitt was my great-aunt....

    I hope we may meet....

    Amice Lee

    19.11.1884 Birth of Dorothy Webster Hawksley (died 1.7.1970) in Kensington, London. Parents: Thomas P Hawksley and Maria Groves Walters. Dorothy Hawksley became an artist. She entered the Royal Academy Schools in January 1906. She met Sydney Cockerell in June 1917. She was a friend of Kate Cockerell and acted as secretary to Sydney. In December 1922, Sydney Cockerell asked her to keep him informed about how the Mews were getting on after Mrs Mew's accident. She was at a lunch with Siegfried Sassoon and Charlotte on 11.12.1924. In 1926? she made a portrait of Charlotte Mew. At this time, it is clear from a letter from Charlotte, that Dorothy was a "cherished" friend. Charlotte wanted her to meet Elsie O'Keefe. She was one of the informants for Mary Davidow's biography of Charlotte Mew. - See also 1937 - 1957 telephone - Christian, J. 2005

    November 1884 Charlotte (aged just 15) in the centre, with Caroline Frances Anne (Anne) (aged eleven) and Freda (aged 5 and half).

    Photocopy of a photograph ("courtesy Peter, John and Richard Mew") in Davidow, M. 1978 page 442

      click for

    1885 Charlotte 15-16
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    January: Ethel Oliver leaves Gower Street and goes to York - June: Grandfather Kendall dies - Kendall and Mew becomes just Frederick Mew, architect - Amy Greener comes to Gower Street

    Miss Paget's Girls Club The Girl's Guild for a Good Life, at Hoxton Hall in Shoreditch, started in November 1885. At this time "Miss Maud Stanley's Girls' Club was the only other one in London". Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 (pages 91 and 272) refers to a Federation of Working Girls' Clubs, founded under the auspices of The Young Women's Christian Association. She quotes a report of 1914-1915 and says the club's address was 26 Cartwright Gardens. The "Miss Paget" might be Mary Rosalind Paget, (14.1.1855-19.8.1948) "social reformer, nurse and midwife", who became a Dame. Her main relevant interest appears to be District Nursing. See also (external link) Maude Stanley . The New York City Federation of Women's Clubs awarded its first Medal of Honor, in 1917, to Dame Leila Paget "whose leadership of a Serbian Relief Fund in WWI made her a world figure. She caught typhus in Serbia, and was given up for dead, but recovered and still managed to save thousands of Bulgars, Serbs, etc." (external link). There is a photograph of Leila Paget in nurses uniform on this link. Leila Paget was Louise Margaret Leila Wemyss Paget (1839-1929) (also Paget before she was married), wife of Sir Ralph Spencer Paget. She wrote "With Our Serbian Allies" for the Serbian Relief Fund in 1915. (See also Dorothy Chick)

    An Open Door is about the missionary spirit of the upper classes.

    January 1885 Ethel Oliver, aged sixteen, became a pupil at the Friends' School York. She was there until June 1886

    click for 9.6.1885 Henry Edward Kendall (junior), Charlotte's architect grandfather, died at Burlington Road, Westbourne Park, London. (See 1887) Buried Kensal Green Cemetery. His obituary published Builder volume 48, 20.6.1885, pages 883-884 Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.35 says that his wife and unmarried daughter "went to live permanently in Brighton"

    The list of Architects in an 1884 London Trade Directory includes "Kendall, Henry E. 34 Burlington Road, Bayswater, W.". There are six architects listed in Doughty Street, but Frederick Mew is not listed anywhere. (See 1895 Trade Directory. Also "Kendall and Mew, Architects" in 1878 and letter 24.2.1890)

    Gower Street School "The school was passed over in 1885 to Miss Amy Greener, a total stranger." Lucy Harrison helped Miss Greener connect. "In this way, the two came much in contact, and their acquaintance ripened into a close and lasting friendship". Building at Cupples field began in 1885. Lucy Harrison moved there in 1886. Amy Greener spent summers there. (Amy Greener 1916)

    1886 Charlotte 16-17
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    Lucy Harrison leaves the Gower Street School, which has passed to Amy Greener. Anne Mew (13 in the autumn) remained at the school. Edith Chick (16 in October), unwilling to join the family business, started at Notting Hill High School. In 1913, aged 43, Charlotte composed The Fête about the feelings of a sixteen year old boy in France. This refers, twice, to young ladies in a boarding school (demoiselles of the pensionnat). There are other indications that Charlotte may have gone to France to study when she left Gower Street.

    July 1886 Letters from Lucy Harrison from Cupples Field, Bainbridge, Askrigg, Yorkshire, to Amy Greener in London. After 1901, Amy Greener joined Lucy Harrison at Cupples Field, which was still her (Amy's) address in 1917.

    If Charlotte Mew went to school in Paris, as Laurence Armitage, the central figure of An Open Door, does, I expect it was to develop her French after leaving the Gower Street School. Edith Chick, the oldest daughter, was sixteen on October 1886. "Samuel thought that the time had come for her to join him as an assistant in the lace business. All his daughters, he said, would have to contribute to their own support". Edith loved school and "in desperation, declared she wanted to be a teacher". Samuel made enquiries and, in 1886, Edith entered Notting Hill High School. "She particularly enjoyed her first introduction to algebra and science" (Margaret Tomlinson p.67)

    Courses in bacteriology started at King's College Hospital, London.

    In the October-December quarter of 1886, the death of Jane Cobham, aged 89, was registered Chorley vol.8e page 382 and that of Thomas James Cobham, aged 23, Chorley vol.8e page 381 [Chorley - Lancashire] This seems to be the Thomas James Cobham entry on the 1881 Census [Mawdesley is in Chorley]. Although his name is the closest to T.A. Cobham that I can find, I do not think he has anything to do with Charlotte Mew's family.

    Henry, Anne and Freda and Charlotte

    As far as her 20th century friends knew, Charlotte Mew had one sister (Anne), who she lived with. The family was the mother and two sisters. Alida Monro (1953), page ix, wrote about the family after 1915: and before 1923:

    "Ma" was a tiny woman, scarcely more than four feet, very shrivelled and with tiny claw-like hands. There was a portrait of her painted in oils hanging on the walls, which showed that in her youth she had been very pretty and bright, like a little bird. She was the mother of four children, a son and three daughters. Charlotte was the eldest girl, then came Anne, her inseparable companion. I never met the youngest sister or brother, and only after Charlotte's death did I hear from an intimate friend that they had gone out of their minds many years before and were both in asylums. The friend who spoke of them, told me that the third sister, Freda, was as remarkable as the other two and was "like a flame". Their sad condition was a constant torment to Charlotte.

    Freda being an asylum patient is confirmed by a number of primary sources. The evidence for her brother, Henry Herne, is confirmed by his death certificate. The intimate friend may be Ethel Oliver. Alida does not say what (if anything) Charlotte and Anne did say about the rest of their family. I assume they kept as quiet as they could about Henry (who had died in 1901) and their living sister, Freda, - which was not unusual. However, Charlotte did not keep quiet about having insanity in the family and the fear that Anne and she had of it. Alida says (page xiii)

    She and her sister had both made up their minds early in life that they would never marry for fear of passing on the mental taint that was in their heredity

    Henry Herne Mew is recorded as a "scholar" aged 15 in 1881. Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.11 says he was apprenticed to his father as soon as he became 16, but became a patient in his early twenties (therefore not before 1885). His death certificate has Doughty Street as his home address, which may mean he was admitted to the asylum before 1890. I have been unable to trace him in the 1891 census. Penelope Fitzgerald says he was diagnosed with dementia praecox - which is possible, but it seems early for the term in England. He died in Peckham House Lunatic Asylum in 1901.

    Freda Kendall Mew was admitted to the Isle of Wight County Lunatic Asylum on 4.2.1899. "F.K.M." (aged 21) is shown as a patient in the private wing of the Isle of Wight County Asylum in 1901. This wing opened about 1897. A letter of 1921 confirms that Freda had been "confined in the Isle of Wight County Hospital" at an annual expense of "roughly 130 pounds a year". She died in 1958 at Whitecroft. [The hospital name is Whitecroft, not Whitelands.]

    Mania

    Penelope Fitzgerald says Freda "began to show recognizable symptoms of schizophrenia (in the early 1890s - before the term was used), then, like Henry, broke down beyond recall. "Her father insisted that she be sent back to the Island", within reach of family. (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.38). We can be certain that Freda was not diagnosed "schizophrenic" by anyone in the 1890s.

    On admission to the Isle of Wight Asylum, Freda's "form of mental disorder" was diagnosed as "acute mania". [Case notes]. Before seeing this record, I suggested that:

    " Using the 1844 list of conditions as a guide, the possibilities appear to be one of the manias (these would include conditions later diagnosed as "early dementia" - dementia - schizophrenia). Her length of life rules out congenital syphilis as a cause (leading to G.P.I.). Melancholia seems an unlikely cause for institutionalisation in one's teenage years. I believe moral insanity was a rare (and unlikely) diagnosis."

    As there is no mention of syphilis related diseases on Henry Herne Mew's death certificate, and he was also institutionalised young, I suggest mania was the most likely diagonosis for him as well.


    We do not know if Charlotte visited Henry and Freda. However, when we read the descriptions of children's games in her writing we assume she watched children: So when we read her descriptions of mental disability, should we not assume that she observed that closely?


    As far as her friends knew, Charlotte had one sister, who she lived with, Caroline Frances Anne Mew, known as Anne. Anne's death, in 1927, precipitated Charlotte's, and they are buried together. Anne was an artist who, Penelope Fitzgerald (1988 p.44) says, specialised in bird and flower painting. I do not know if any of her work survives, but it would be good to consider it in relation to Charlotte's writing, where bird's and flowers are as essential as people.

    Alida Monro (1953), pages ix-x, says:

    "Anne was a little taller than Charlotte, much gayer and much less weighed down by the sorrows of their lives. These lay heavily on Charlotte, whose temperament was naturally keyed very low. Anne bore a striking resemblance to Marie Antoinette. She had the most brilliant violet-blue eyes that I have ever seen, and although she was very fragile and delicate, she always managed to be bright and witty. She was an accomplished artist in redecorating seventeenth century furniture. She worked all her life painting flowers and fire-screens and renovating English painted furniture for a firm of antique dealers, who, according to Charlotte, paid her only a sweated wage."

    Painting on satinwood as employment to support greater visions is described by Charlotte in a studio that may have been Anne's. But perhaps we should not separate the greater visions from the craft? Charlotte in her needlework and Anne in her painting may have shared the ideal of uniting craft and art.


    Charlotte Mew's queer uncertain mind See above and madness

    Charlotte Mew wrote to Ethel Oliver, in 1902,

    "Physically I have been really better here but mentally tired, but if I wished to get my nerves under control up to now, thanks to being better, I have done it, and hope that it will last. I can't transport my thoughts to England and the things left behind with any sense of reality, and perhaps it is better so, but it makes me seem very egotistic - which I'm not really. It is a queer uncertain mind this of mine - and claims are being made upon it at the moment which I find difficult to meet."

    In February 1899, Freda Mew's case file states that there is a family history of "Madness" in her "Brother and Sister", no family history of "Consumption", and that it is unknown if there is a family history of "Drink". Consumption of the Lungs (Phthisis Pulmonalis) was the disease that Freda's only brother Henry died of in March 1901. The disease is now known as tuberculosis. Henry died in a lunatic asylum and had probably been in one for many years, but was not, presumably, consumptive in February 1899. But which of Freda's two sisters suffers from madness? I do not know of any suggestion that Anne had a nervous temperament, whereas incidents throughout Charlotte's life, including, of course, her suicide, spring to mind.

    Anne appears to have worked regularly from the time she left Art College to the time she retired. Charlotte's income from writing must have been negligible. It is probably, therefore, Anne who was described in December 1921 as doing some "occasional light work which brings her in a very trifling income". I am unclear which of the sisters (in the same letter) is described as "very delicate" and a "great expense" to her mother. Alida Monro (1953 page xi) says Anne "had always been very delicate and suffered with backache to a terrible degree". On the other hand, Charlotte, eight months after the 1921 letter, wrote about her (Charlotte's) heart having gone wrong again.

    A letter from Arthur Tansley to Sydney Cockerell on 27.6.1944 compares the mental stability of the Mew sisters. He writes:

    "Anne, as you say, was the most stable (and, my wife says, the most human) of the family. It was Freda's tragedy, confirmiing the fear of insanity in herself that probably determined Charlotte's end. Charlotte herself was never insane (as I am sure you will agree) though she had the mental instability that goes with certain types of genius. Her fear began with her brother's death - he had the same trouble as Freda. As you suggested, Charlotte's end may have been 'for the best', as they say, for she was profoundly unhappy for several years."

    1887 Charlotte 17-18
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    To the glory of God and in loving memory of William Barron Mew who died on February 14th 1887. The alter rails and tressecated pavement were placed in this church by his children.

    20.6.1887 and 21.6.1887: London celebrations of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. [external link] - See china teapot

    August 1887 First edition of Annals of Botany (88 pages) Quarterly. - Archive of all online editions since 1.8.1887

    7.9.1887 Dorothy Chick, the youngest Chick, born at 5 Newman Street. Shortly after, the Chick family moved "to a commodious modern house in the growing suburb of Ealing." [Chesterfield", 177 Mount Park, Ealing] "On high ground and standing in half an ecre of garden, the house then commanded fine views over cornfields towards central London" (Margaret Tomlinson p.62)

    December 1887 In Passed, Charlotte wrote My prayers were requested for the "repose of the soul of the Architect of that church, who passed away in the True Faith - December - 1887". (See 1885, when her grandfather died, and 1891, when the architect of Holy Redeemer died)

    The Female School of Art

    Anne Mew would have been 14 in the autumn of 1887. Elsie Millard would have been about the same age. Amy Greener went to Yorkshire after June 1891. Mary Davidow (1960, page 43, source not stated) says:

    "Upon the completion of her studies at the Gower Street School, then under the direction of Miss Amy Greener, Anne Mew attended the Female School of Art in Queen's Square, London. While there she met Elsie Millard, a student"

    Elsie Millard (19) is shown as a student of drawing in the 1891 Census, but Anne Mew (17) does not have an occupation shown.

    The Female School of Design was founded in 1842. It changed its name to the Metropolitan School of Ornament for Females in 1852. From 1842 its Principal was Fanny McIan. Louisa Gann (1824-1912) became headmistress in January 1858. The school became the (Royal) Female School of Art in 1862. The Female School of Art is mentioned in the Illustrated London News in July 1864. In an 1884 Directory it is "Female School of Art, 43 Queen Sq. WC" (Under Schools - Public). In an 1899 Directory it is "Bloomsbury Royal Female School of Art, 43 Queen Square". In 1907, the Committee of Management tried to dismiss Louisa Gann (aged 83) without any pension. Louisa Gann sued for wrongful dismissal. London County Council agreed to pay her £150 pounds in settlement on condition it take over the "debt-ridden and deteriorating Queen Square building. 58 The school was renamed the Day School of Art for Women, and moved to the Central School of Arts and Crafts in Southampton Row." "The Royal Female School of Art (established 1842) was transferred to the London County Council and incorporated into the Central School in 1908". See (external link) and F. Graeme Chalmers 1998

    click for

    See 1811 - 1863 - 1867

    In 1887, Alan Cole interviewed (grandma) Harriet Chick in Sidmouth. "She had, he says, almost quite retired from the business with which she had been connected for over forty-five years... she had once 'spent a ten-pound note' at the School of Design at Somerset House but 'no good really came of it, the students did not understand the technical requirements of designing for the lace-maker and the delicately painted white patterns were of no use to the worker'" (Margaret Tomlinson p.60). The School of Design was established at Somerset House in 1837. See external link to Victoria and Albert Museum

    1887 John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) exhibited Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. In Mademoiselle Charlotte Mew linked Sargent with George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) as contenders who might claim equality with French painters. But Antoine dismisses them.

    Petrie dishes: external link

    Sometime in 1887, William Robertson Smith was invited to lecture (1888 to 1891) on "primitive religion" and its relation to the judaism and christianity of the bible. The first series of lectures was published as Lectures on the Religion of the Semites in 1889. Robertson Smith had become famous as the advocate of a scientific analysis of sacred texts due to his public academic trial and acquittal (1878- 1880), in effect for heresy, following an Encyclopedia article on the Bible in 1875 and his dismissal as professor following articles in 1880 that included the application of anthropological thought to the interpretation of the bible. He had published an Encyclopedia article on Sacrifice in 1886 and, at Robertson Smith's instigation, James Frazer published Encyclopedia articles on taboo and totem in 1888 that developed earlier work by Robertson Smith. Working on these led Frazer to concentrate on the anthropological interpretation of classical (Greek and Roman) and other mythologies and to the publication of the first edition of The Golden Bough: a study in comparative religion in 1890 - A work he dedicated to Robertson Smith. The climax to this anthropological analysis of orthodox religious beliefs came in 1900, when Frazer's second edition of The Golden Bough included an analysis of the crucifixion of Christ.

    Charlotte Mew's Men and Trees in 1913 is written within the framework of the anthropological analysis of religion that was developed by Tyler, Robertson Smith and Frazer. She is critical, however, of the progressive thesis and sees civilised values in primitive religion and barbaric elements in present day beliefs.

    1888 Charlotte 18-19
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    October 1888 Consecration of The Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer, Exmouth Street, Clerkenwell. The architect was John Dando Sedding, who died in 1891, about three years before Passed was published. "The church interior was modelled upon Brunelleschi's famous church of Santo Spirito in Florence and the exterior given the feel of an Italian basillica, with its gabled front, generous eaves and deep cornice as well as the Latin inscription, 'Christo Liberatori' (To Christ The Redeemer)" (church website). - "If, by some misfortune, heaven turns out to be baroque rather than gothic, then I think it may be rather like this church" (Mystery Worshipper 2002)

    1888 Frank Bramley: The Hopeless Dawn first exhibited
    map: Newlyn, Cornwall
    Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 (chapter six) suggests that this picture of grief, with a china bowl catching the light, is part of the background to Charlotte Mew's "The China Bowl". - Where the grief is much darker and the bowl is sold. By 1913, Charlotte knew Newlyn Harboour [Charlotte's handwritten letter does say Newlyn, not Newlight as in the typed transcript] - But The China Bowl is more likely set in Devon. The main characters are Methodists called Rachel and David Parris. There was no one called Parris in the 1881 Cornwall Census, whereas there were several Parris families in Cornwall, including families in the part of South Devon the Chicks came from. The dialect of The China Bowl is the same as that in the poem that Charlotte gave to one of the Chicks

    1889 Charlotte 19-20
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    1889 Julia Turner B.A. from London University. (Date from Elizabeth Valentine by email).

    Toy balloons (air-balls) arrived about this time. They were all round, made of rubber, and possibly imported from Belgium. In Passed, Charlotte Mew, writing about the calendar of children's toys in the streets of Clerkenwell says "Easter is heralded by the advent in some squalid mart of air-balls on Good Friday"

    See external link on the history of balloons. See this passage in Barclay's The Rosary by Florence Louisa Barclay (1909) "Did you ever buy air-balls at Brighton? Do you remember the wild excitement of seeing the man coming along the parade, with a huge bunch of them--blue, green, red, white, and yellow, all shining in the sun? And one used to wonder how he ever contrived to pick them all up--I don't know how!- -and what would happen if he put them all down. I always knew exactly which one I wanted, and it was generally on a very inside string and took a long time to disentangle. And how maddening it was if the grown-ups grew tired of waiting, and walked on with the penny. Only I would rather have had none, than not have the one on which I had fixed my heart. Wouldn't you?"

    Autumn 1889 Edith Chick began her studies at University College London with physics and mathematics.

    1890 Charlotte 20-21
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    February 1890: Mews move from Doughty Street to 9 Gordon Square
    Before the Mews moved house, Henry Herne Mew (probably) admitted to an asylum
    Early 1890s: An Ending and other poems. Relation with Chicks

    Michaelmas Day 1890: Consecration of St James - Spanish Place (partially completed) (map). Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.54 says this seems to be the church in Passed. However, this does not fit either direction (north or south) and is in fashionable Marylebone rather than a poor district. The architect was Edward Goldie (1856-1921)

    Richard Jefferies, (1848-14.8.1887) Field and Hedgerow: being the last essays of Richard Jefferies; collected by his widow (Mrs J. Baden Jefferies): London and New York : Longmans, Green and Co. 1890. Also published 1895, 1900, 1910, 1926 (and other dates). Charlotte Mew quotes from three essays in Field and Hedgerow in her Men and Trees (1913), and from an earlier essay in The Minnow Fishers (1890s/1903). Charlotte Mew's ("apparently unpublished" until 1981) essay A Country Book is a review of this in which she says "When first I read it many years ago, it set my own heart beating, for I felt I discovered in it an undreamed universe". Reflecting back, in 1919, Charlotte linked this excitement to her excitement on discovering
    Henry Vaughan. - External link on Richard Jefferies

    The Mew family moved from 30 Doughty Street to 9 Gordon Street, Gordon Square, WC in February 1890. They lived there until March 1922.

    Mrs Anne Powell, the previous leaseholder of 9 Gordon Street, died sometime in the last three months of 1899 - Probably in December. Frederick Mew bought the lease of the house from Mrs Powell's son, before the end of February 1890.

    A letter dated 24.2.1890 (Davidow 1960, p.270) states:

    " 86 St. George's House
    Eastchap, London E.C.

    Dear Sir:

    In consequence of my Mother's decease as I informed you last December the house, 9 Gordon Street, had to be disposed of under my late Father's will. I have sold the lease to Mr. F. Mew, architect, of 30 Doughty Street for his own occupation exactly on the original terms and the same covenants. Will you kindly note the same and forward the notices for the Ground Rent to him? & oblige Yours obediently, Ellison Powell" [In the records of the Bedford Estate, London]


    The death of Anne Powell, aged 88, was registered in St Pancras in the December quarter of 1889. Ellison Powell, born 2.8.1833 in Middlesex, was the son of Edward Joseph Powell and Anne Powell

    A letter from Mrs Ann Mitchell, Archivist, The Bedford Estates to Betty Falkenberg, dated 22.6.2005 says that she cannot find any correspondence relating 9 Gordon Street in the archives. 9 Gordon Street is no longer part of the Bloomsbury estate of the Duke of Bedford and she suspects the relevant files will have been destroyed.

    Alida Monro (1953), pages viii-ix, gives a description of the house as it was sometime after 1915:

    " When I met her, Charlotte Mew lived in a tall, typically Bloomsbury house, No. 9, Gordon Street, Gordon Square (destroyed by bombs in 1940-41). It was tall and narrow, dark and gaunt inside... They moved to Gordon Street when she was still a child and here she lived for almost her entire life. Her father had been an architect, and the rooms and passages were lined with drawings and plans of his work... When I first knew Charlotte, the top half of their house was let to some people, but it was a long time before this was disclosed to me in confidence, as it was felt that such a circumstance was a matter of which to be deeply ashamed..."

    Gordon Street: Street Map See letter head 1913

    click for another 1950s map with different detail
    This mid-1950s map shows Gordon Square. Gordon Street is north (see other map). Friends House is the crime scene for the destruction of the plane trees. Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 suggests (page 31, no reference) that Anna Maria Kendall, Charlotte and Anne were attending Christ Church, Woburn Square from sometime after about 1884. Gower Street, where Charlotte is said to have attended school is to the west. Numbers 74-80 Gower Street, WC1E 7HU is a terrace of four, five storey, grade two listed Georgian houses, fronting Gower Street and back onto College Hall. Exeter Market, where Holy Redeemer (below) is can be seen on the north east of the map.

    The Mew's house in Gordon Street

    Gordon Street links the west side of Gordon Square and Euston Road. At the Gordon Square end of Gordon Street, on the west side, was All Saints Church, built in 1843. Between this and Euston Road there were 18 terraced houses. The Mew's house was the sixth from the church. In the 1895 Trade Directory, Frederick Mew, architect, shared the street with gentlemen, and some ladies, most of whom have no trade or occupation shown. There is the occasional vicar, solicitor or physician. In the 1910 and 1915 Trade Directory, the church has closed, and many of the houses have been taken over by ladies running boarding houses, and there is a University hotel.

    The Squares: Until the second world war, these squares were private, protected areas. Mecklenburgh Square, at the end of Doughty Street, is still a private square.

    The 1950s map below shows how Gordon Street backed on to University College in Gower Street. It shows Charlotte Street in the south west and Boswell Street (previously Devonshire Street) in the south east.
    click for another 1950s map with different detail

    London University and Charlotte Mew

    Alida Monro (1937) says that Charlotte Mew attended lectures at London University. Several of her friends were students there at one time or another - See Chick family - Edith Chick - Mary Chick - Harriette Chick - Margaret Chick - Elsie Chick - Frances Chick - Margaret Robinson - Charlotte's house in Gordon Street backed on to University College in Gower Street.

    Charlotte attended a musical at University College in March 1914 and May 1914 - at this time she was helping Elsie Chick with her MA. Gower Street is mentioned again in 1920

    Very early poems? (See Alida Monro's list of "early poems"). Mary Davidow reproduces a group of poems "From Frederick B. Adams' typecript" that had not been published before. An Ending is thought to date from the early 1890s. The others may also be early poems: A Question - Left Behind - A Farewell - There shall be no night there.

    An Ending and Charlotte's short story The China Bowl are both written in a dialect that I argue is based on South Devon. (Mary Davidow (1960 page 78) identifies the following poems as also written in "English West Country dialect": The Farmer's Bride - Sea Love - Arracombe Wood and Old Shepherd's Prayer. Two of the poems - The Farmer's Bride and Arracombe Wood - use "the Fall" for autumn, which I think persisted in south west England at the time.

    Charlotte's dialect writing, although not extensive, appears to have spanned her writing career rather than being located at one period

    1890 May Sinclair living with her brother Reginald and their mother in Sidmouth, Devon. Reginald died 31.1.1891, and was buried at Salcombe Regis. [This is west of Sidmouth - The Chicks were located to the east, at Branscombe, and in Sidmouth High Street] May and her mother remained in Sidmouth until (July?) 1895. ( Suzanne Raitt 2000 pages 65-44). Although it seems likely that Charlotte Mew visited Sidmouth during this period, it seems unlikely to me that she and May met.

    Mary Davidow says (page 40) "It has been said that there was a romance between Charlotte Mew and Sam Chick, the elder son of Samuel and Emma Chick. This may account for the close tie which existed in the early nineties between the Chicks and Charlotte Mew. Each Christmas she sent gifts to the family. Many of these the Chicks still possess. Among them are a dainty, pocket-sized, hand executed calendar for the year 1891 which, Margaret Chick pointed out, was sent to her father, and is one of several; linen handkerchiefs, hem-stitched and initialled by hand; and pieces of embroidery, designed and worked by Charlotte, which are still in use. Also in their possession are some of the unpublished writings, early pieces. A holograph" [A document wholly written in the hand of the author who has sigmed it] of the poem An Ending, written in the early nineties, was sent by Charlotte Mew to one of them; a typescript of a short story, The Minnow Fishers, believed to be unpublished, bears a notation in the upper right hand corner in Charlotte Mew's hand reading, "The property of The Outlook".
    ...
    Margaret Chick recalls that Charlotte Mew was "advanced for the time". She smoked, and went about visiting very much as she pleased, most often unescorted. This, from the point of view of the standard behaviour of the period, was daring indeed. She wore her hair in a short bob, much like a boy's. Her attire was invariably the tartan skirt, black velvet jacket, white blouse and soft silk tie. She moved in and out of a circle of friends who were for the most part writers, artists, and actors and actresses.

    The families we know most about in relation to Charlotte from 1890 to 1912 included the Chicks, Olivers and Robinson/Browne, with strong (but not exclusive) scientific interests. It is a reasonable supposition that she was friends (in the 1890s) with the writer Ella D'Arcy and with the painter Elsie Millard and her sister Evelyn in the theatre. Apart from that, speculation about her literary associations centres around The Yellow Book, and about her artistic associations around Anne

    Summer? 1890 Publication of the first edition of James Frazer's The Golden Bough. A Study of Magic and Religion. Frazer perceived a cruel core to religion in human sacrifice, particularly the murder and replacement of a human king-god, who originally represented the waning power of the sun. The core was revealed in the analysis of survivals of primitive thought in modern belief. Where Darwin was interpreted as revealing nature as red in tooth and claw, Frazer was seen as revealing that the human cultural sub-conscious is organsied around savage customs of bloody sacrifice.

    Autumn 1890 Edith Chick's second year of studies at University College. She included a substantial amount of botany with her physics and preliminary science (repeat). [Presumably bringing her into contact with the professor, Francis Wall Oliver]

    1891 Charlotte 21-22
    next previous
    Charlotte started using the British Museum Reading Room - June: Charlotte with the Chicks
    In 1891, Charlotte Mew obtained a ticket for the British Museum Reading Room - A ticket which she last renewed in July 1927 (Val Warner's Mew 1997, pages ix and xviii). Her first published work was Passed in 1894. The China Bowl was unsuccessfully submitted for publication in January 1895. A Wedding Day is dated 1895. An Open Door was rejected by Blackwood's in 1898. - (Val Warner's Mew 1997, page x, who adds "On stylistic grounds, most of her prose unpublished till the Collected edition of 1981 may be ascribed to this period". [That is, before 1899]

    Rudyard Kipling The English Flag - which was quoted by Charlotte Mew in Men and Trees (1913)

    7.4.1891 John Dando Sedding (born Eton, Berkshire 13.4.1838), architect of The Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer, died at Winsford Vicarage, Somerset. Suggests this was the year that Charlotte Mew visited the church and saw the memorial card asking for prayers for the architect's soul.

    5.6.1891/6.6.1891 Census.

    The inhabitants of 9 Gordon Street were Frederick and Anna M. M. Mew, their children Caroline F.A. Mew (aged 17) and Freda "Wendall" (aged 12), and the "domestic servants": Elizabeth Goodman (65), Emma J. Barker (20) and Emily Sanger (17) I could not find Henry Herne Mew (or H.H.M.) in the census. He did not appear to be a patient in either of the Peckham asylums.

    Charlotte Mew (aged 21) was staying in the Chick family home at "Chesterfield", 177 Mount Park, Ealing:. [By 1901 the family had moved to "Chestergate", 30 Park Hill, Ealing - "5 Chestergate" was the family home of Emma Chick (born Hooley) in Macclesfield.

  • Samuel Chick, the father, was a lace manufacturer, born Weymouth, Dorset on 7.6.1841, died London 1925. His father, Samuel Chick (1811-1880) the grandfather, married Harriet Staple (1812- 1892), possibly mis-recorded as Harriet Stubb, marriage at Radipole, Dorset, on 8.7.1833. (map). Their eldest child, Harriet (married James Cooper), was born in 1836. Samuel Chick "Honiton Lace Dealer" is shown at 91 St Mary Street (the main street of Melcombe Regis and Weymouth) in the 1859 Melcombe Regis Post Office Directory. In 1861 Samuel and Harriet Chick, both "lace manufacturers", with children over a year old born in Weymouth, are in the High Street of Sidmouth, Devon. At the 1861 census a Wesleyan (Methodist) Minister was also staying with the Chick grandparents. Samuel Chick, their grandson, was at a Wesleyan Boarding School in 1881. Samuel Chick, the father, was not at home in 1891, but staying with the Hooley family in Macclesfield, where he had been at the time of the 1881 census. He was at home (Chestergate) in 1901. Charlotte Mew gave hand made calendars to Samuel Chick the father for 1891 and other years. He (and Mary Chick) was a witness to Anna Maria Mew's will in 1899 and he left a bequest to Charlotte and Anne Mew in his own will in 1924
  • Emma Chick, his wife, was born Emma Hooley in Macclesfield on 8.4.1844. She married Samuel Chick at Macclesfield (Park Street Chapel) on 26.6.1867. She died in 1931. She was also not at home, but staying in the High Street, Sidmouth, Devon, with her husband's widowed mother (Harriette, aged 78, born Somerset, "Retired lacemaker". Recent disability not clear) and brother (Edwin aged 47? No occupation shown). The death of Harriet Chick, aged 79, was registered in Honiton, Devon in the March Quarter of 1892, volume 5b, page 26. Emma Chick was at home in 1881 and 1901.

    Hugh Sinclair (1986) says that Samuel and Emma Chick were "both Methodists" (see above) who brought up their children "with family prayers twice daily and a ban on such worldly pleasures as theatres and dancing". Dorothy Lumb says "the Chick family were Methodists. It may be because of being Methodists that the daughters received a good education, I have heard this is part of Methodist tradition. I do not recognise in my family background the often repeated idea that women have only recently been educated or had careers!". Samuel's brother, Elijah Chick of Sidbury Devon entered his occupation as "Miller (Corn) Local Methodist Preacher" in the 1881 census. Margaret Tomlinson (pages 52, 56, 77, 80-82) says that Samuel Chick, although brought up as a Wesleyan Methodist, became a Baptist. Her account suggests that he may have been active in the Baptists in London and in the Methodists in Devon. Charlotte Mew's describes Elizabeth Goodman as a Methodist and makes the main characters in The China Bowl Methodists

    There were twelve Chick children: four boys and eight girls, but one boy and one girl died when they were about three months old. All the Chick children were born at 5 Newman Street. The date and (usually) time of birth were recorded in a family Bible (Watts boxes). According to Hugh Sinclair (1986), all the Chick daughters went to Notting Hill High School. Perhaps they went to the Gower Street School when they were living in Holborn and then Notting Hill when they moved to Ealing? [See also Chicks at Gower Street]

    1) Samuel Chick Born 31.3.1868 at 9.30pm. Died December 1917. Eldest son, who would be age 23, was not at home in 1891. He was at home (Chestergate) in 1901 (age 33) when he is shown as a printer and an employer. It is Samuel Chick who was said to have had a romantic attachment to Charlotte Mew. His niece Margaret Tomlinson could not get her relatives to say much about him, because a "black sheep in the family" was not something they "of all people, found easy to accept". He had ability, but was irresponsible about women and money. "A small printing business, set up for him by his father, ended in failure, so, predictably, did a brief marriage. When things at home reached breaking-point he was provided with an annual allowance and a flat in London." (page 80)
    2) Alice Chick, Samuel Chick's twin. Born Newman Street 31.3.1868 at 10.10pm. Died, aged three months, 19.7.1868. Buried at Kensal Green

    Information below on the Chick sisters draws on an analysis of some student index cards at University College, London, and photocopies of some previous work on the what the University records show of Harriette Chick and her sisters. (See 3.10.2005)

    Those at home in 1891 were:
    3) Edith Chick (born 29.10.1869 at 10am, died 1970). [B.Sc. on family tree]. Eldest daughter, almost the same age as Charlotte Mew. She was at home in 1881. She went to the Gower Street School, with Charlotte, and then, in 1886, to Notting Hill High School. As a child, the first entertainment she went to was the circus. She told her own daughter (page 71) that "she thought the most glorious sight in the world was the beautiful lady who rode round and round the ring, throwing of one drab garment after another, until at last she stood upright on her horse, radiant in tights and a dress which glittered with sequins". Edith went to University College London in the autumn of 1889, where she studied, first physics and mathematics, combining this, from 1890, with botany. On 31.3.1891, when Charlotte Mew was staying, Edith was the oldest Chick in the house. Single, aged 21 (the same age as Charlotte), she is entered as "scholar".. In the early 1890s, Charlotte gave Edith the poem An Ending (see August 1958). In 1892 she obtained a two year grant for experimental work in biology.

    Edith is shown as obtaining her BSc in 1894. She paid for further classes in botany in 1895 and 1898. From 1896 to 1898, Edith was active in University debates. From 1899 to 1904, Edith was the first female Quain Student (paid £100 a year). She had "some demonstrating duties as well as time for research". Arthur Tansley "supervised her work". (Godwin 1957). Edith was at home (Chestergate) in 1901. Edith published papers with Tansley in 1901 and 1903 and another on her own in 1903. These suggest that her research was focused on analysing the structure of plants that might be related to plants surviving as fossils in coal seams - See November 1900. Her second joint paper with Arthur Tansley was based on fern material he collected on a botanical voyage in 1900/1901. I think she is likely to have been the botanist of Charlotte Mew's 1901 essay. Edith Chick married Arthur Tansley, in Devon, in July 1903. Charlotte Mew ("Lot") was with the Chick sisters during the week of the wedding. Edith remained at University College London, becoming a Fellow (?) in 1918.
    Arthur Tansley founded The New Phytologist in 1902. He lectured at Cambridge from 1906 to 1923.

    In 1908 he was paired with Frederick Frost Blackman in a student cartoon. The Survey of British Vegetation he edited (1911) contains ideas that are reflected in Charlotte Mew's "Men and Trees" (1913). Tansley helped to found the British Ecological Society in 1913. Edith and Arthur both went on the International Phytogeographic Excursion in the United States in the summer of 1913. About this time, Arthur began to develop an interest in Freud's ideas.. (See Sigmund Freud - May Sinclair - Charlotte Mew absence and clinic) When Tansley became a Fellow of the Royal Society (6.5.1915), his proposers included Frederick Frost Blackman and Francis Wall Oliver. "While working in the ministry of munitions at some point in the first world war he had a dream, set in a sub-tropical country and featuring, along with his wife, some South African "savages". He later indicated that this dream was a major turning point in his life and a spur to contacting Freud." (external link). In 1920 he became famous with the publication of The New Psychology and its Relation to Life. This led to his studying with Freud in the spring and summer of 1922. In 1923 he resigned from Cambridge and emigrated to Vienna with his family to study with Freud. The Tansley family "moved back to Grantchester" after six months. In 1924 Arthur Tansley was appointed acting chairman for the British Empire Vegetation Committee by the Imperial Botanical Conference From 1927 to 1937 he was professor of botany at Oxford University. Mary Davidow (1960 page 39) says he was "knighted for his work in the interest of conservation during World War 2". She refers to a letter in the Berg Collection dated 27.6.1944. Edith Tansley provided a holograph of a poem in 1958 and corresponded with Solly Zuckerman in 1969.
    4) Edward Chick (born 15.2.1871 at 8.40pm, died
    1897). Son single aged 20 in 1891. Birth registered Marylebone March quarter 1871 vol.1a p.497. Printers Apprentice.
    5) Mary Chick Born 11.12.1872 at 6.25am Birth registered Marylebone March quarter 1873 vol.1a p.477, died 1938. Margaret Tomlinson page 67 says that she was the only Chick daughter not to "stay the [academic] course". Mary probably went to the Gower Street School, with Charlotte and then, in 1886, to Notting Hill High School. She left Notting Hill High School early "because of ill-health" and "eventually joined her father in the lace business". Single, daughter aged 18 in 1891, when Charlotte Mew was staying. She was a witness to Anna Maria Mew's will in 1899 (aged about 26). She was not at home on 31.3.1901, probably because she was with Harriette in Vienna. Mary Chick was in Vienna on June 1901 when she helped Harriette with an experiment. She studied German at University College London for one year 1901-1902. She moved to Vienna [Munich?] with Harriette in 1903. At Edith's wedding, Harriette and Mary shared an empty carriage . In May and June of 1922 she was engaged in relief work in Vienna at the same time as Harriette Chick(?) and Arthur Tansley were there. Mary Chick was one of the original four Directors of Samuel Chick Limited in 1924. She became its chairman.
    6) Harriette Chick, [O.B.E. on family tree]. Born 5 Newman Street Born 5.1.1875 (Bible: 6.11.1875 at 11.50am). Died 9.7.1977. Birth registered Marylebone March quarter 1875 vol.1a p.527. Harriette probably went to the Gower Street School, with Charlotte and then, in 1886, to Notting Hill High School. She is shown as a daughter, "scholar" aged 16 in 1891, when Charlotte Mew was staying. Before starting at University College, London, Harriette passed the Junior Oxford Exam and the Senior Cambridge Exam. In June 1892 she passed the London Matriculation Exam. She was at Bedford College from 1893. Her association with Bedford College continued (at least) until 1896 - See Bedford College and the University of London - In Intermediate Science in 1894, she achieved Honours, coming first in First Class, Botany. She started paying fees for University College courses in 1894-1895. [Her address, possibly until after 1958, was 30 Park Hill, Ealing, W5]. Her primary subjects, year by year, being: 1894-1895: Botany (awarded Advanced Class Prize) - 1895-1896: Chemistry and Botany (awarded Gold Medal in botany and obtained marks qualifying for a prize in organic chemistry) - B.Sc 1896 "B.Sc. 1896: III., IV., V.: Hons. alone in Second Class, Botany" - In 1896, she and Edith were both officers of the Women's Debating Society. 1896-1897: Advanced Chemistry. She then "turned her attention to bacteriology". 1897-1898: No studies at University College shown. 1898-1899: Bacteriology. 1899-1900: Science Research Scholarsip (£150 per annum). Harriette was in Vienna by 20.2.1901. [She was not at home on 31.3.1901 (when she would have been 26) and I have not found her on the United Kingdom census of that date]. It seems likely that she went to Brittany with Charlotte Mew in the summer of 1901 and that she is the bacteriologist of Charlotte Mew's 1901 essay - The essay describes her scientific approach to religion. At the time she features in Charlotte Mew's writing (1901), and when Charlotte appears in her diary 1903, Harriette was engaged in research that gave her friends some lavatorial amusement. With an 1851 Exhibition scholarship she was able to research in Germany and Liverpool. She received her D.Sc from London University in 1903. She began research in Vienna on the nitrification process in sewage disposal in 1901. She then returned to England (Liverpool?) for two years, during which she worked for The Royal Commission into Sewage Disposal. Her research at this time was largely focused on green algae that live, in association with bacteria, in waters polluted by sewerage. As well as developing methods of creating pure cultures of the algae, she developed methods of studying bacteria in symbiotic association. In 1903 she went to Munich, to resume her work on the nitrification process in sewage disposal, the results of which were presented to the Royal Society in 1905.
    In 1905 she was the first woman appointed to the staff of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine" in London. (external link). In 1906 she began to study disinfectants - Establishing the Chick-Martin Test in 1908. Her work on the death rates of bacteria had philosophic as well as scientific implications. Her fame was made as a nutritionist. (external link: At the Lister Institute she began to study vitamins and became Secretary to the Accessory Food Factors (Vitamines) Committee in 1919. "She was sent to Vienna after World War One to lead a team investigating rickets in children; demonstrated that both cod liver oil and sunlight protected against, or cured, the disease; made a Dame of the British Empire in 1944"
    The picture is copied from the Vanderbilt website and may be copyright. I do not know how old Harriette was when this was taken. She is one of the group of Chick sisters in another photograph

    Harriette Chick papers at the Wellcome Library. The earliest diary is from 1906. However, an earlier diary has recently been found.


    7) Margaret Chick Born
    2.10.1876 at 3.30pm - Died 20.1.1963). Daughter, Single aged 14 in 1891. Birth registered Marylebone December quarter 1876 vol.1a p.508. Margaret Chick was one of Mary Davidow's sources.. She was a (much younger) pupil at the Gower Street School with Charlotte Mew about 1884/1885. (See her school recollections) and had memories of Charlotte in the 1890s. On 31.3.1901 (aged 24) she was "Head" of household at Hazelwood, Branscombe, Devon. Her sisters Elsie and Frances were with her and Albert Groom?, aged 44, caretaker, was gardener/domestic. In London, she appears to have lived at 30 Park Hill, Ealing, for most of her life in the 20th century. In the summer of 1901 she went with Charlotte Mew to Brittany. Mary Davidow (1960 pages 39-40) says Margaret "became a teacher of elocution at Notting Hill High School [which may have been another school she went to as a child] where she became acquainted with Charlotte Mew's first cousin, Ethel Louisa Mew, a teacher of Art there". She was a student of phonetics at University College London 1914/1915 (Just that year) when her address was "S.C. Esq, Chestergate.." (30 Park Hill, Ealing, W5) . With reference to the "rich store of of family memories and legends, handed down by my mother and aunts", Margaret Tomlinson page 88 pays "a special tribute to my Aunt Margaret, whose powers as a raconteur enriched our childhood". Margaret Chick appears to have managed Samuel Chick Limited from the death of Mary Chick in 1938 (61/62 years old) to (at least) 1956, when she was 80 years old. Mary Davidow visited her (at 30 Park Hill?) in August 1958. At this time, Harriette may also have been living there. Margaret collected souvenirs of Charlotte Mew from her family, and sent some to Mary Davidow. In 1959, Margaret and Elsie delivered a paper on Honiton Lace. Margaret's death on 20.1.1963 was recorded in the Times? on 22.1.1963. [When Penelope Fitzgerald says she became a "bacteriologist", she is presumably confusing her with Harriette Chick].
    8 Staple Chick Born 3.6.1878 at Newman Street at 7am. Died, aged three weeks, at Newman Street on 30.6.1878. Buried at Kensal Green
    9) James [Hooley] Chick Sometimes known as "J.H.C." Born 17.3.1880 at 8.00pm - Died 1933 Son aged 11 in 1891. He joined the Honourable Artillery Company (No.2 Company) as a bugler in 1900. However, he was at home (Chestergate) in 1901 when he is shown as a "Warehouseman (Worker)". He became a private and N.C.O. He was Company Quartermaster Sergeant of No.2 Company of the first Battalion throughout the first world war (1914-1918). There is an undated newspaper photograph of him and others in Flanders "Crossing the streams on rafts covered with waterproof sheeting". Meritorious Service Medal London Gazette 17.6.1918. He was demobilised on 10.5.1919. On 9.3.1920 he re-enlisted, when he was described as 5 foot 6 inches tall, of fresh complexion, with dark brown eyes and dark brown hair. He had a scar on his left knee. He was discharged, at his own request, on 15.7.1926, being "third in length of service of those on the Active List of the Regiment". James Hooley Chick was one of the original four Directors of Samuel Chick Limited in 1924. He became its chairman. An enthusiastic Mason (Fitzroy Lodge - In the H.A.C.). His home address was the family home at Chestergate, 30 Park Hill, Ealing, W5. In Ealing he was involved in cricket, swimming, and rugby. He shot and fished for sport and played bridge and "was also a man of wide reading and culture".
    10) Elsie Chick [B.A., M.A. on
    family tree]. Born 7.4.1882 (no time recorded). Birth registered Marylebone June quarter 1882 vol.1a p.521. - Died 12.4.1967. Daughter aged 9 in 1891, when Charlotte Mew was staying. In 1901 (aged 18) Elsie was staying with Margaret in Devon. She went to University College, London in 1905/1906. She won the Heimann Medal in 1906 [A silver medal awarded annually as the first prize in the senior class of German]. She may have gone with Charlotte to Brittany in July 1909. She won a Gilchrist Scholarship in 1910 [Two years financial support for study]. She graduated BA English in 1912. MA 1914. (See Chick sisters subjects). In November 1913, Charlotte proposed introducing her to Mrs Scott as an expert in Early English. The introduction does not appear to have taken place: In April 1914 Charlotte told Mrs Scott she would be spending the afternoon helping "a friend" with her MA in Old English Poetry. After her MA, Elsie spent a year studying Icelandic. Elsie was president of the Women's Union for several years between 1911 and 1915. In 1917, Elsie Chick married Frederick Frost Blackman (25.7.1866- 30.1.1947), who worked in the field of Botany at St John's College, Cambridge from 1891 to 1936 (Reader in Botany at St John's from 1904 to 1936) and was a friend of Arthur Tansley and Sydney Cockerell. Her address becoming 34 Storey's Way, Cambridge. - (London University Cards) See also 1948. See 20.12.1917 - 1923 - 1948 - 1958 - 1964 - 1967 - 1977 - [At some time, possibly after 1958, this also became the address of Harriette Chick, who may have continued to live there with Peter Blackman after Elsie's death]. She and Harriette were made Fellows of University College London in 1918, and Elsie may also have become a Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge at sometime. Publications traced in 1918 and 1927 may be by her. In 1928, Frederick Frost wrote to Sydney Cockerell with the news of Charlotte Mew's death and Elsie sent him a short account of her funeral. Frederick Frost died 30.1.1947 and the F. F. Blackman Memorial Lectureship in Plant Physiology was established in 1961 from the sum of £1,000 given to the University by "Mrs Elsie Blackman", his widow. (See external link)] Mary Davidow footnotes that their son, Peter Blackman (192?- to 2001), was a guest lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1957-1958 - which may indicate that she had contact with him. Elsie may have contributed Charlotte Mew souvenirs in 1958. She died 12.4.1967 and there was an obituary in The Times? 14.4.1967 (cutting with her records at University College, London).
    11) Frances Chick. [B.Sc. on family tree]. Born Christmas Day 25.12.1883 at 7.00am. Birth registered Marylebone March quarter 1884 vol.1a p.547. Died 12.10.1919. Daughter aged 7 in 1891. In 1901 (Schoolgirl Student, 17) she was staying with Margaret in Devon. At University College London 1903-1904 to 1909-1910. BSc 1908. Re-entered 1911-1912 "No student records available, but listed as doing postgraduate research after B.Sc.). May have taken her degree in eugenics and hygiene (Student Card: "[Eug..Hyg.]"), but classes listed are German, Physics, Botany, Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, Chemistry, Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, Chemistry Laboratory and Electro Chemistry. Address 4 Brandon House, Mortimer Street, W. She may have published work on changes in the recorded mortality from cancer with Major Greenwood in 1914. Her other published work (1923 posthumous) is eugenics and statistics related. Became Mrs Sydney H. Wood. (Marriage Honiton, September quarter of 1911?) Married S H Wood at Branscombe Wesleyan Chapel July 1911 (Family Bible: Watts boxes). OBE 1917. The Woods had a daughter, Barbara Wood, for whom substantial provision was made in Samuel Chick's will. Sydney Wood remarried. Margaret Tomlinson suggests (note 27 p.86) that he was the "discerning but anonymous friend" (p.83) who wrote Samuel Chick's memorial in the West Middlesex Gazette
    12) Dorothy Chick [M.B., B.S and M.D.
    family tree]. Born 7.9.1887 at 2.30pm. Birth registered Marylebone December quarter 1887 vol.1a p.516. Died 26.2.1919. Daughter aged 3 in 1891. She was at home (Chestergate) in 1901. Dorothy became a surgeon, working at the Royal Free Hospital in Gray's Inn Road. At the end of January 1915 "Miss Dorothy Chick, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P." was in the first medical unit organised in Britain by the of the Serbian Government - leaving from Paddington station on Tuesday 19.1.1915. (British Journal of Nursing Volume 54 23.1.1915 page 68 - direct pdf link). The Dorothy Chick Prize in Obstetrics was founded at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in 1920 by Mr Samuel Chick (external link)

  • Margaret A. Smith visitor single aged 47, born Macclesfield, Cheshire, living on her own means - In 1901, Anne Smith, ten years older, otherwise the same, was a visitor. [1881 census link to who this may be]. "Margaret Smith, or Mimi, Emma Hooley's schoolfriend from Macclesfield... lost both her parents when she was a young in Macclesfield." (Margaret Tomlinson p.72) Emily Hooley's parents not approving of the relationship with Samuel Chick, Emily and Samuel often met at Mimi's parents house. "They never forgot their debt and after their marriage Mimi came to be regarded as a sort of honorary member of the Chick family... in later years she became something of a problem, having developed the awkward characteristics of an embittered spinster. In her own way she was devoted to Samuel and Emma's children, particularly to Margaret who was named after her." (Margaret Tomlinson p.53)
  • Charlotte M. Mew
  • three female servants.

    96 Gower Street Amy Greener [indexed as Any Creence], aged 31, "Principal of School" and an "employer", born Etherley, Durham. Alice H. Stocker (43), cook, born Yorkshire. Ann Craven (20), housemaid, born Wardour St, London. [Lucy Harrison "began her work at The Mount School in January 1890". In 1891-1892 she had an attack of rheumatic fever, which affected her heart, and in 1902 she retired. (Amy Greener 1916)] In January 1895, Amy Greener, "who had given up the school in London, joined the Mount School staff as an English mistress." (Amy Greener 1916). In a directory for 1895, the entry for 98 Gower Street is "Glover Miss Josphn. M. girls' schl"

    Death of Aunt Fanny

    5.6.1891/6.6.1891 Census. Val Warner, 1997, page 45 says that "Aunty Fanny from Crewkerne, wife of Uncle Richard, farmer on the Isle of Wight, and mother of most of Mew's cousins" is shown as blind in this census, but not in the 1881 census. [She died later that year (see below)]

    The death of Fanny Mew, aged 58, was registered Isle of Wight vol.2b page 376 in the October-December quarter of 1891. Her daughter, also Fanny, aged about 24, may have become the farm's housewife - With her brothers, Richard Percy, aged about 22 and Gilbert, aged about 14, as farmers with their father (aged about 65). The other three Mew girls appear to have left home in the next few years (or earlier) - See 1901 Census - This would be the family closest to Freda Kendall Mew when she was admitted to the Isle of Wight County Lunatic Asylum in 1897/1898?.

    No 9 Barfield - Ryde
    Frances Barnes, son, 64
    Walter Barnes, son, 34, single, Barrister at Law
    Marian Barnes, daughter, 29, single, Living on own means
    George Barnes, son, 24, single, Surveyor
    Martha Williams servant 50 Housemaid
    Sarah Terry servant, 30, Cook

  • Kelly's Directory of Kent, Surrey and Sussex 1891: Codrington Place, between Montpelier Road and Hampton Place, Western Road. 1. Mrs George Smith, 2. George Field Tavenor, 3. Miss Skirrow, 4. C. Augustus Lee, 5. Mrs F. Rew, 6. Mrs Kendall, 8. James Brooks Leigh, 9. Mrs Kidd.
    Census: Mary Kendall aged 79, widow, born London. Living on her own means. Mary Kendall L. aged 45, single, born London. Two servants: Ann Perkin, Cook, aged 50 and a parlormaid aged 21, both single)

    October 1891 The Bookman (London) monthly magazine started. Founded and for many years edited by William Robertson Nicoll (1851-1923). Subsequent editors: St John Adcock, H Ross-Williamson. Hodder & Stoughton, London. Monthly. Eighty seven volumes. Last in 1934. After Charlotte Mew's death, the London Bookman republished (in May 1928) an early poem of hers

    The Bookman (New York) owned by George H. Doran was published from 1899 (or earlier) onwards. Following Charlotte's USA publication in 1921, the New York Bookman published a poem by Charlotte Mew in April 1922 (and included this in its anthology of that year), and another in June 1923.

    1892 Charlotte 22-23
    next previous
    Death of Grandma Kendall in Brighton. Charlotte's mother present - Relatives' money in trust to Charlotte's mother - Handled by Frederick Mew, Colonel Henry Gillum Webb and Walter Mew Barnes

    microbiology 1892-1902 [External link]

    1892: Entartung, by Max Simon Nordau (1849-1923), published in Germany. This was translated into English as Degeneration (1895?). A "popular edition" was published by Heinemann in 1913. - German Wikipedia - English Wikipedia - an article in German - "degenerates are not always criminals, prostitutes, anarchists, and pronounced lunatics, they are often authors and artists". The book was dedicated to Caesar Lombroso. Degenerate authors included Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Richard Wagner, Zola, and Walt Whitman.


    Elizabeth Goodman may have received her twenty-five year's service certificate. See Winter 1866

    In the early months of 1892, Grandma Harriet Chick died. She had been ill for more than a year, during which Emma (Hooley) Chick came as often as she could be spared from home. When Harriet fell ill the grandchildren were no longer able to stay at her house. "For some years the Miss Tuckers stepped into the breach and invited the girls - nt more than two at a time - to spend time at Barnells. A later ... arrangement was the renting of a cottage nearby as an overflow". (Margaret Tomlinson pages 72-73)

    8.6.1892 Mary Kendall died at 6 Codrington Place, U.S.D., Brighton. Her age is shown as 80 years. Occupation: "Widow of Henry Edward Kendall (Architect)". Cause of death: "Senile Decay. Certified by F.W. Salzmann M.R.C.S." [Comment: means she died due the natural decay of age]. Informant "A.M.M. Mew, Daughter, In attendance, 9 Gordon Street, Gordon Square, London, Middlesex". Registered 8.6.1892. [The death of Mary Kendall, aged 80, was registered Brighton vol.2b page 167 in the April-June quarter of 1892.] Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 (p.164) says her grave in Kensal Green Cemetery has this inscription from Psalm 21 "He asked life of thee; and thou gavest him a long life; even for ever and ever". See 1916 Val Warner 1981 p.xiv, however, says the inscription is on the grave of Ann Kendall in Fortune Green Cemetery.

    Autumn 1892 In 1892 Edith Chick was awarded an exhibition of £40 a year for two years - Honours - Intermediate Experimental Science Botany. In the autumn she began her fourth year at University College London with biology and applied mathematics, but mostly "BSc Applied Mathematics, Geology and Mathematics" She won the Morris Prize in Geology. From 1893 to 1907, Arthur Tansley was working as Francis Oliver's assistant, researching and teaching in palaeobotany, plant anatomy, and ecology (Whilst also continuing his studies at Cambridge) (Peder Anker, 2001, page 12)

    fossil botany (palaeobotany) Dunkinfield Henry Scott was honorary keeper of the Jodrell Laboratory in Kew Gardens from 1892 to 1906 (He may previously have been experimenting there). Francis Oliver met him at Kew and began his interest in fossil biology. It seems likely that Edith Chick's study of geology is related to an interest in fossil botany - which is what Francis Oliver appears to have first brought in Arthur Tansley to assist him with.

    [I was able to give shape to Klemantaski family with the assistance of Roderick Hinkel, a descendent of the family

    18.12.1892 Birth in London of Alida Klementaski who married Harold Monro. She was the daughter of Sigismund Klemantaski, a Polish-Jewish trader, and his English wife, Lizzie, nee Phillips. (Oxford DNB) Alida married Harold Edward Monro on 27.3.1920 in Holborn, London. He died 16.3.1932 in Broadstairs. She died on 31.7.1969 in Chichester, Sussex, England.

    Sigismund Klemantaski married Lizzie Phillips, of Hope House, Stamford Hill, Hackney, in the City of London in 1890. Her father, Godfrey Phillips, was a tobacco manufacturer. The name of her younger brother, Moses David, suggests a Jewish family. Sigismund's older brother, Martijn Klemantaski, married Lizie's older sister, Helena, in the City of London in the March quarter of 1891. In 1891, Sigismund and Lizzie were living with a domestic servant at 10 A(something) Road, Stoke Newington [Hackney]. Sigismund is a "Russian Merchant". The birth of Louis Arthur Klemantaski was registered Hackney in the September quarter of 1891 (volume 1b page 456), and that of "Ale_ia" [could be Aleidia] "Klemantaski" in the March quarter of 1893 (volume 1b page 469). The birth of Benjamin I.[Leonard] Klemantaski was registered in Edmonton in the June quarter of 1894 (volume 3a, page 328). The family of another brother, Maurice Klemantaski, lived in south Edmonton [Tottenham]. Tottenham is north of Stoke Newington along the Hertford Road. The birth of Elizabeth Klemantaski was registered in Hackney in the December quarter of 1895 (volume 1b page 454). The birth of Godfrey C. [Charles] Klemantaski was registered Hampstead in the June 1901 quarter of 1901 (volume 1a page 626))

    In the 1901 census, Alida is shown as eight years old, living at 2 Tanza Road, Hampstead. [It is "Klimantaski" in the transcription and in the original. However, the 1905 directory shows S. Klemantaske at 2 Tanza Road and the 1908 and 1914 directories show Sigismund Klemantaski at 2 Tanza Road, Hampstead on West Side (first house)] She is living with her father (Sigismund aged 32), mother (Lizzie), a governess, and nine year old brother, Louis A[rthur] Klimantaski. Sigismund is a horse hair merchant, and an employer. He is shown as a "(Dutch sub.[ject])"

    Louis Arthur Klemantaski

    Alida's older brother, Louis Arthur Klemantaski, was born on 12.8.1891 in Hackney, London. He was employed as a Clerk in 1911. He was a man of letters, specialising in musical criticism. He founded and edited his own musical quarterly Euterpe when he was only 18. He served in the military in 1914 (Commissioned 19.11.1914, 8th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment - Second Lieutenant (1916?)). He married Phyllis Agatha Powell, daughter of Charles Powell and Georgina Meriton Wastell on 7.10.1915 in The Register Office, Wareham, Dorset. She was born 8.5.1883 in Westminster, London. He was buried in May 1916 in Bully-les-Mines, Departement du Pas-de-Calais, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Grenay Communal British Cemetery Extension, France (Plot; 1. A. 15.). died on 27 May 1916 in Near Loos, north of the Somme, WW1. Phyllis died on 10.3.1917 in 7 Tanza Road, Hampstead.

    Alida Klemantaski

    Alida Klemantaski was born on 18.12.1892 in Hackney. Sometime between 1895 and 1901, her family moved to 2 Tanza Road, Hampstead, where they remained, at least until 1914. Alida read a Charlotte Mew poem in 1912, when she was about 19 years old. She met Harold Monro of the Poetry Bookshop in 1913. She met Charlotte Mew in November 1915 when she invited Charlotte to hear a reading of her poetry at the bookshop. Alida married Harold Monro in 1920. After the death of Harold Monro 1932, she continued living in London until 1939, when she moved to West Sussex. Her Charlotte Mew- A Memoir (1953) is the point from which subsequent biographies start, and the only one based on knowing Charlotte. She died in 1969.

    National Portrait Gallery photograph of Alida Monro (née Klemantaski) by Lady Ottoline Morrell (born 16.6.1873, died 21.4.1938)

    Alida means "noble" in Dutch, "archaic" in German, and "winged" in Latin. (archive)

    Benjamin Leonard Klemantaski

    Benjamin Leonard Klemantaski, who changed his name to Klemens, was born about June 1894 in Lower Edmonton. In the June Quarter of 1919, he married Katherine "Kitty" Phillips, daughter of Phineas Phillips and Ophelia Phillips. Kitty was born in 1892 in New York, USA or Stamford Hill, London (1911 census says born in Stamford, London). Benjamin died between March and June 1951. Kitty died in 1960 in London,

    Elizabeth Klemantaski

    Elizabeth Klemantaski, born about December 1895 in Hackney, died on 30.9.1922 in Sanatorium de la Rose de la Reine, Buysinghen, Belgium.

    Godfrey Charles Klemantaski

    Godfrey Charles Klemantaski, who changed his name to Godfrey Charles Phillips, was born about June 1901 in Hampstead. (The birth of Godfrey C. Klemantaski was registered Hampstead in the June 1901 quarter of 1901 (volume 1a page 626)). He married Patience Evelyn. Godfrey Charles died on 10.6.1930 in Hull, Yorkshire.

    In 1899, "Klemantaski Brothers and Co. russian merchants" were at 37 Great Tower Street, EC (Note "T.A. "Klemantaski"" which I do not understand). The partners may have been Lodewijk (Louis) (Alida's grandfather; Isidore Brand (Alida's uncle); Martijn Klemantaski (another uncle), Maurice Louis (another uncle) and Sigismund Klemantaski (Alida's father)

    Lodewijk (Louis) Marcus Klemantaski (Alida's grandfather, born about 1827 in Warsaw or a part of Poland in Russia) was employed as a Shoe Maker in Rotterdam then Horse Hair Manufacturer and Employer in London, living in Walthamstow. (1901 census. Age 74). The census says he was born in Russia and a Russian subject. His (second) marriage certificate says he was born in Warsaw.

    His first marriage (7.12.1853 in Rotterdam, South Holland) was to Aaltje (Alida Hannah) Bosman (born 22.7.1833 in Rotterdam). She was Alida's grandmother. The death of Alida Hannah Klemantaski (aged 48) was registered Hackney, London, in the December quarter of 1882 (volume 1b page 321). [She died 16.10.1882 - Ten years before Alida was born]

    Lodewijk (Louis) Lodewijk (Louis) married his second wife, Flore Bessie in the City of London in the March quarter of 1884. Flore (aged 45 in 1901) was born in Holland and a Dutch subject. There was a son (aged 28) at home named Jacques. The death of Louis Klemantaski, aged 80, was registered in Hackney in the September quarter of 1907 (volume 1b, page 193). He was buried in 1907 in Plashet.

    Alida's oldest aunt, Louisa Klemantaski, the first born child of Lodewijk (Louis) married Eduard Bles. The next child, Celina Klemantaski, married "Isaac Brand" [Isidore is a non-Jewish name often adopted in place of Isaac] in the September quarter of 1883 in the City of London. In 1901 Isidore (44, born City) and Celine (42 born Holland) Brand, with their son Leonard (16 Commercial Clerk), lived at 20 St Marks Villas in Dalston. Isidore is a "Hair (Horse) Produce Merchant".

    Martijn Klemantaski born 13.5.1864 in Rotterdam. About March 1891 in the City of London, he married Helena Phillips (born about 1858 in St. John Hackney. Died 11.11.1948 in London). Their eldest son, Godfrey Louis Klemantaski, was born 8.7.1893 in Hackney (died 17.9.1980) in Camden) [Birth registered in Hackney September 1893 (1b page 453)] Martijn died 8.8.1941 in London.

    Maurice Louis Klemantaski. Born 27.4.1866 in Rotterdam. Maurice married Deborah Jaffa in The City of London in the December quarter of 1891.

    Maurice Klemantaski was at Devon House, Hertford Road, Lower Edmonton in 1894. Three Klemantaski births were registered in Edmonton: Louis Philip J. in the December quarter of 1893. Benjamin I. in the June quarter of 1894 (volume 3a, page 328) and Alida Evelyn in the March quarter of 1895 (vol.3a page 459). In 1901 Louise would have been about 8, Benjamin about 7, and Alida about 6.

    In 1901, M.L. Klemantaski, aged 34, was at 46 Pretoria Avenue, Walthamstow. A Jaff, Widow, 81, his mother in law, is with the family. Maurice is a merchant in hair, working on his own account. Shown as "Foreign sub[ject]". Only initials are shown for the first names. The rest of the family are D. [Deborah] 36 (wife born Australia). H. [Harry] 8 (son); L. [Louis] 7 (son) and A. [Alida Evelyn] 6 (daughter). The children are shown as born London (which does not fit Edmonton, and the initials and ages do not fit properly, but it is the best fit I can make). Maurice died 8.1.1946 in London.

    Harry, Alida and Louis Klemantaski were potographed by the tennis court at Brook House, Tottenham in the 1920s: (external link). There is also a picture of this Alida playing tennis. The entry says that this "Jewish community" family resided "here" from 1898 until 1956. Brook House, in 1951, stood on the site of "B.R.S. parcels depot" by the Edmonton boundary.

    Searching the National Archives (Public Records Office) Catalogue with "Kl?m?nt?sk?", or even "Kl*m*nt*sk*", only gives Klemantaski. Second Lieutenant L.A. Klemantaski is in the War Office Records for 1914-1917. A limited company Klemantaski, Bates & Co. Ltd. 117094. Possibly limited 1911. Still existing 1925. There is "Declaration of Alienage" for a L.P. Klemantaski in 1917. Elizabeth Klemantaski, from the Netherlands, Resident in Bournemouth, is naturalised 6.5.1921 (Certificate 7,997 Re-admission) and Louis Klemantaski, from the Netherlands, Resident in London on 27.6.1933.

    20.12.1892 Letter from Frederick Mew ("affectionate uncle", at 9 Gordon Street, to "Walter" [who is Walter Mew Barnes, Esq. 4 Harcourt Buildings, EC and is acting as lawyer for the Mews] "We quite think with you that the grandfather's money be transferred, and Aunt Caroline's £500 added to it... The dividends your Aunt received the other day were" [three lots: Mr Cobham's; Mr James Herne's and Mrs Kendall's] "The dividend from Mr Cobhams money must therefore be one of those referred to in Messrs James and James letters". [The letter from James and James relates to money from the estate of T.A. Cobham deceased. They wrote to Frederick Mew on 15.12.1892, "as one of the Trustees of Mrs Mew's Settlement". The "Cotrustee" was "Col. Webb". In Frederick's letter he gives the full name as "Henry Gillum Webb"]

    External links says that William Monk moved to London in 1892, "setting up at the Hogarth Studios in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square". If the Hogarth Studios refers to 64 Charlotte Street (currently labelled Hogarth Studios) these are the premises that Anne Mew later occupied. In an 1895 Street Directory the occupant of 64 Charlotte Street is shown as "Duff and Spagnoletti, artists in stained glass". In 1899 it is "Spagnoletti and co., artists in stained glass", and two others are also at 64 Charlotte Street: "Carpenter Alfred, designer" (who was still there in 1910) and "Ayrton Maxwell, architect" (external link) - The 1899 Trade Directory bears no relation to the 1901 Census, which shows three apartments with residents: Mary Ann MacGillivray (lodging house keeper aged 41) and her mother Alice Owen, both widows. Walter Francis Scott Hetherington (aged 35) Sculptor/Artist born Liverpool, and his lodger, Henry Samuel P Lancellor (aged 24), Artist born Ireland. Hubert Lloyd Wellington (aged 21) Artist born Gloucester and his wife Nancy (same age) born Grays in Essex.

    1893 Charlotte 23-24
    next previous
    Spring: Death of Elizabeth Goodman

    Death of Elizabeth Goodman "dropping one day suddenly between the shafts, she died". [An Old Servant. 1913] The death of Elizabeth Goodman, aged 67, was registered Pancras vol.1b page 34 in the January-March quarter of 1893.

    This photograph described as "Charlotte Mew as a girl with her old nurse" is reproduce in Alida Monro (1953), facing page xiv. Underneath the main heading, it says "Photo reproduced by courtesy of Sir Sydney Cockerell. The original bears the legend Artistic Photography at Night by the New Electric Light"

    "At sixty-five she looked wistfully through the frosted window panes, regretting nothing more than that she could no longer skate and slide and snowball with the 'best of us', the spirit still keen for all adventures when the flesh, which was so small a part of her, had grown infirm."

    Seventeen years before, little Charlotte had counted knots fearful of Elizabeth's death. The Mew children were her "family", but now another family arrived.

    Tuesday 31.1.1893 Westminster Gazette launched. [See British Newspapers] Merged with Daily News in 1928. In 1919 it published Charlotte Mew's poem The Cenotaph

    May? 1893 Daniel Oliver awarded the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society for his service to science. The first medals (two) were awarded at the society's centenary in 1888 to a zoologist and a botanist. The zoologist was Richard Owen, superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum (later the Natural History Museum) from 1856 to 1883, who created the name "dinosaur", and opposed Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The botanist was Joseph Dalton Hooker, Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, and a close friend of Darwin. In the succeeding years the medal was awarded, alternatively, to a botanist or a zoologist. It was awarded to Alphonse de Candolle, Director of the botanic gardens in Geneva, in 1889. Thomas Henry Huxley received it in 1890, [Jean Baptiste] Edouard Bornet of France in 1891, Alfred Russel Wallace in 1892, and Ernst Haeckel in 1894. Later recipients included Francis Wall Oliver in 1925, Frederick Frost Blackman in 1937 and Arthur George Tansley in 1941

    Autumn 1893 Edith Chick's fourth year at University College London with biology and some applied mathematics and mechanics

    October 1893 Pall Mall Magazine launched in Britain and America. "One of the more visually impressive magazines of the 1890s, championing art nouveau". Charlotte Mew appears to have had one story accepted by it - In 1901. The editor from January 1901 to August 1905 was George Roland Halkett (1855-1915), cartoonist and writer.

    1.10.1893 Death of Benjamin Jowett (Wikipedia). May Sinclair wrote sonnets in memorium which a friend sent to George Bentley, editor of Temple Bar who "raised the issue of [May] Sinclair's religious faith". "In Memorium: Professor Jowett" was published in Temple Bar 99, page 472 in December 1893 and reprinted as "Sonnets-Professor Jowett" in Cheltenham Ladies' College Magazine number 29, page 48, in Spring 1894. ( Suzanne Raitt 2000 pages 59 and 275).

    December 1893 May Sinclair's "The Ethical and Religious Import of Idealism" published in New World (an American magazine) is largely based on Thomas Hill Green (1836-1883) (Wikipedia). ( Suzanne Raitt 2000 pages 45 and 275).

    1894 Charlotte 24-25
    next previous
    July: Charlotte published: Passed, a short story in which she explores Clerkenwell and sees a kiss that means more than the established religion.

    1894: Women of Letters in two two volumess by Gertrude Townshend Mayer published, London, Richard Bentley. Prefatory note: "The following papers, revised and reprinted - with, in some cases, considerable additions - from Temple Bar (1887-1896 [??]) ... aim ... only to give some idea of the lives and characters of the women themselves, mainly in their own words, supplemented by the recollections of their contemporaries". Contents: Volume one: Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle: "Lamb's Duchess" - Mary, Countess Cowper - Lady Hervey: the home life of a court lady - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu - Mrs. Delany: "Queen Charlotte's friend". - Mrs Montagu: "The queen of the blue stockings" - Lady Anne Barnard: the authoress of "Auld Robin Gray". - Mary and Agnes Berry: Horace Walpole's twin "wives".   Volume two: Elizabeth Inchbald - Amelia Opie - Sydney Owenson - Lady Morgan - Miss Mitford - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Lady Duff Gordon.

    16.4.1894: First volume of The Yellow Book. An Illustrated Quarterly published by Bodley Head. [See Victorian Web] Editor (throughout 1894 - 1897) Henry Harland ... Ella D'Arcy was assistant and contributed stories, including "Irremediable" (April 1894) - "A Marriage" (October 1894) - "The Pleasure- Pilgrim" (April 1895) - Monochromes (1895) - "The Death Mask" (July 1896). [I think it is inferred that Charlotte Mew met Ella D'Arcy at this time. The first referenced trace seems to be when Charlotte Mew visited her in Paris in 1902 Ella D'Arcy may have lived in Paris from sometime in the 1890s until 1930]

    29.4.1894 Letter from H. Harland to Charlotte Mew. The address on all his letters is 14 Cromwell Road, SW. [Adams collection - Davidow 1960 275-276]

    2.5.1894 Letter from H. Harland to Charlotte Mew: Includes "Please don't forget that you are to let me read your other mss. I wish it could be arranged between you and Messrs Mathews and Lane to publish a volume" [Adams collection - Davidow 1960 276-277]

    3.5.1894 Letter from H. Harland to Charlotte Mew [Adams collection - Davidow 1960 277-279]

      July 1894 Passed by Charlotte Mew published in the second volume of The Yellow Book pages 121 to 141. Charlotte was twenty-four years old, living with her parents in Gordon Street. The story tells of a walk from her part of London to the poorer parts, which she regards as romantic. This was a time of social surveys of poverty (See 1883 - 1889 - 1890). The directions north to Islington or south to Westminster suggest a walk from nearer London City than where Charlotte lived. Going north to Islington from the City, the prison being demolished about this time is the Clerkenwell House of Detention. The nearby Church of our Most Holy Redeemer appears to have all the features of the church described in the story. Charlotte's imaginary walk may be up St John's Street, east to the prison, south to Clerkenwell Green and then north by streets with rural names, to Exmouth Market. The 1862 map show street names with rural connotations going north from Clerkenwell Green to Exmouth Market, where the church is. The main one is Coppice Row (which became Farringdon Road), but there is also Pear Tree Close, Bowling Green Lane, Wood Street and Vineyard Walk

    "Up in the little gallery the grey-habited nuns were singing a long Latin hymn of many verses, with the refrain Oh! Sacred Heart!" - external link to a history of the sacred heart . See also 1899. The alter to the sacred heart at the Church of our Most Holy Redeemer was not added until the 1930s

    Passed "like souls that meeting passed" - but also, perhaps, passed as Mademoiselle uses it, for passé. In which case, I would note that the true gospel is neither the new picture or the old religion in a new building, but the "sublime and ghastly" kiss.

    In Passed, themes that will flower in Charlotte's later works, lie like the curled springs of newly sprouting seeds. Here, for example, are the parallel rhythms of town and country, running together in the names of streets. And here is the parallel consciousness, the ability to absent oneself from the present reality or, as Charlotte writes "My heart went home". Faced with death, she left her body in the chamber to which she was taken, and travelled elsewhere

    The Yellow Book was what it said, a yellow book. It was 8.25 inches tall, a typical book height, but 6.5" wide, presumably to give a more square page for the illustrations. Each volume was about an inch thick

    No further publication by Charlotte Mew from 1894 until 1899 is known. The China Bowl (or another long story) was unsuccessfully presented for publication in 1895. The Minnow Fishers has been ascribed to this period. Its "anonymous revised publication" has been traced to Outlook 31.1.1903 by Val Warner.

    Autumn 1894 Harriette Chick began her studies at University College London with biology.

    Tommy and diptheria In 1894, a horse named Tommy was injected with diptheria by Armand Ruther of the Lister Institute and Charles Sherrington of the Brown Animal Sanatoria Institution. From it, serum was obtained which it was thought might cure diptheria. Sherrington tried the serum on his nephew, who was dying of diptheria, and the boy recovered. It was later tested on children at Eastern Hospital (Homerton) and Great Ormond Street. Harriette Chick met Sherrington in 1901 - He later recommended her to the Lister Institute.

    1895 Charlotte 25-26
    next previous
    January: Henry Harland suggests a volume of stories - February: A Wedding Day - July: Delivered - Summer on Guernsey and a sunlit house.

    January 1895: Manuscript of The China Bowl first seen by a publisher? - The following letter relates to a long piece by Charlotte, although the title is not mentioned. The China Bowl was not published until September 1899

    3.1.1895 Postmark on a letter from H. Harland to Charlotte Mew: "There is no living writer of English fiction who can touch you. I am afraid the tale is too long for the Y.B., but it would make the backbone of a volume. It is partly about a volume that I wish to speak"

    In the 1980 collection: Passed takes 14 pages, The China Bowl 24, An Open Door 19, A Wedding Day 12, The Bridegroom's Friend 32, White World 22, Elinor 16, Spine 7, The Minnow Fishers 2. It is possible that some of these (A Wedding Day - The Bridegroom's Friend - White World?) were being prepared for a volume. Val Warner suggests (Val Warner's Mew 1997 page x) that Charlotte did not have enough stories written when the suggestion for a volume was made. See also her suggstion about their date on grounds of style. Elinor appears to relate to Charlotte Mew's interest in the Charlotte and Emily Brontë

    "When Wilde was arrested in 1895, he was reported in the press to be clutching a copy of The Yellow Book, though it was a French novel. John Lane defended The Yellow Book by dismissing Aubrey Beardsley, the art editor, but in 1897 it closed" [Val Warner, 1997, page 44]

    The list of architects in the 1895 London Trades and Professional Directory includes "Mew, Frederick 9 Gordon Street, WC". He is an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

    Death of William Wetmore Story. 1819-1895, who wrote:
    "With a simple, guileless heart in his breast,
    And a mind as honest as ignorant.
    Half a child and half a man"

    The British Library typescript of Charlotte Mew's short story A Wedding Day is dated February 1895, although apparently unpublished until 1981. It is about life (yes) and death (no) and one "who met thus, alone and smiling, the terror of men's dreams" - There is also a copy in the Buffalo Collection, which is catalogued as being between 1906 and 1928 - Possibly on the hypothesis that, being unpublished, it was written after Temple Bar finished.

    14.2.1895 Premiere of Oscar Wilde's comedy The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People at St James's Theatre, with Evelyn Millard in the role of Cecily Cardew, the young ward of Jack Worthing (Earnest) who fantasizes that she is engaged to Jack's wicked fantasy brother (Earnest).

    March 1895: madness and the fairies. The trial in Ireland (reported in the English Press) of Michael Cleary, and others, for the murder (reduced to manslaughter) of Bridget Cleary, his wife, who was "killed in the belief that an evil fairy had taken possession of her". Bridget's character had changed. A doctor was consulted about her "nervous condition". As he, and the priest, failed to resolve the problem, Michael and his associates acted on the assumption that the real wife had been abducted by fairies and a changeling left in her place. Bridget's badly burned body was found in a shallow grave near her home on 22.3.1895 (The Cork Examiner - Carole Silver 1999, p.66)

    Fairy index: See Faerie - The Farmer's Bride - The Changeling - Men and Trees - The Pedlar - November 1911 -

    automiles France was prepared to close roads to allow automobile races. The speeds attained caused surprise. In 1895, in a race from Paris to Bordeaux and back (total distance 744 miles), the winning car averaged 15 miles per hour. In Britain, "light automobile or mechanically-propelled carriages running on common roads" were called motor cars. In France it was an automobile, and that term was also used in the United States. Alternatives like autocar were also used. The terms seem to have been used for large vehicles like buses as well as the smaller ones we now call cars. Britain controlled the speeds of these vehicles more tightly than other countries. As it developed into "a reliable, silent, odourless and smokeless power- propelled vehicle" the motor car displaced the horse, "becoming the private carriage of the wealthier classes to-be used on all occasions". [See "Motor Vehicles" article in the 1911 Encyclopedia.] Charlotte Mew wrote in 1902 about the danger of motor cars on Paris roads. In 1909 she speaks often of automiles in the roads of Brittany.

    July 1895 Photocopy of a handwritten draft of a short story titled Delivered, located in Box 3.5 of the Penelope Fitzgerald Papers, is initialled C.M.M., dated July 95 at the top of the first photocopied page in Charlotte Mew's hand, and consists of 8 leaves. Information supplied to Betty Falkenberg by L. Christine Amos, Library, University of Texas, Austin, 3.5.2005 (email).

    Note to The Sunlit House: I passed this house on a hot Guernsey road (with a rollicking party) one afternoon in '95, and have hung about it in thought, like the frog footman 'on an off for years and years'. Only suddenly 2 months ago I saw the little bound spirit inside. I will not be a psychic, but please - one day - explain. CMM, 9 Gordon Square, WC"

    Autumn 1895 Harriette Chick continued her studies at University College London with biology and chemistry. Edith and Harriette Chick were both officers of the Women's Debating Society in 1896. Edith was President of the Social Discussion Group in 1898. The University College Gazette has items showing their activities in February, July and December 1896 - March 1897 - February and March 1898. It does not always distinguish which "Miss Chick".

    The Women's Union Society at University College London was formed in 1897. The UCL Union Society was formed, for male students only, in 1893.

    1896 Charlotte 26-27
    next previous

    Arthur Tansley designed a book-plate for himself, which he had engraved by J.P. Emslie. It shows a microscope on a table at an open window in a library, looking out over fields and hills. Wild flowers blossom in the margins which also feature books by William Shakespeare, Balzac, Matthew Arnold, George Meredith, Shelley and Charles Darwin.

    Two poems by "Charles Catty" (Charlotte Mew?) published in The Yellow Book. April 1896: "Song of Sorrow", volume 9. page 157. October 1896: "The Wind in the Tree", volume 11 page 283. Although it has been suggested that this was a pen name for Charlotte Mew, it would seem more likely to be Charles William Stratford Catty who published (Charles Stratford Catty) Poems and Legends in 1914.

    June? 1896 Harriette Chick graduated with a second class B.Sc. from "Un & Bed College" -[London University and Bedford College]

    August 1896 Photograph of Charlotte Mew (aged 26)

    Edited from a photograph ("courtesy Peter, John and Richard Mew") in Davidow, M. 1978 page 443

    Mary Davidow describes this as "at the beginning of her career as a writer"

      click for

    Autumn 1896 Harriette Chick continued her studies at University College London with advanced chemistry, organic chemistry and analytical chemistry.

    In 1896, Max von Gruber (6.7.1853-16.9.1927) and Herbert Edward Durham (1866-1945) published a joint paper on the agglutination (clumping) of bacteria of similar size. This became the basis for F. Widal's test for typhoid. Gruber was Professor of Hygiene at Vienna University from 1887 to 1902. Gruber's main interest at the time Harriette Chick worked with him (and for the rest of his life) was sexual hygiene - See lectures 9.5.1900 - Does Hygiene lead to Racial Degeneration? 1903 and Hygiene of the Sex Life 1912.

    Herbert Edward Durham subsequently worked with Frederick Walker Mott on the spread of dysentery in London asylums. They reported in 1900. Durham then joined Walter Myers (March 1872-20.1.1901) on the Yellow Fever Expedition to Brazil from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine June 1900 to April 1901. In preliminary notes they gave credit to the theory that yellow fever was transmitted by gnats. Myers died on the trip. Durham's interim report suggested that gnats did not transmit the disease. Harriette Chick knew Durham before meeting him on his return from South America. It seems likely that she had met him in London.

    15.12.1896 Death of Lydia Rous. An article appeared in The American Friend (6.3.1897 page 513) which gave her date of birth as 1817 (not 1819). (external link). However, the 1819 date would appear to be the correct one. (See 1881 census)

    1897 Charlotte 27-28
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    April 1897: Last volume of the The Yellow Book

    The private block of the new Isle of Wight County Lunatic Asylum opened about 1897. "F.K.M." is shown as a patient on 31.3.1901.

    March 1897 Death of Edward Chick, aged 26, at Ealing. Interred at Perivale. Family Bible (Watts boxes). Free BMD: March quarter 1897 recorded Brentford 3a 62. He died of appendicitis, a death which Margaret Tomlinson (page 80) thinks could have been avoided "with modern day surgery and the use of anti-biotics". This is a comment she also applies to the deaths of Dorothy (aged 31) and Frances (aged 35) in 1919.

    Tuesday 22.6.1897 Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

    Autumn 1897 Harriette Chick is not recorded as taking classes at University College London.

    October 1897 Laboratory for Experimental Psychology opened in University College London, on the initiative of James Sully (1842-1923). (external source). Iinitially under the superintendence of W.H.R. Rivers (1864-1922), who was then at Cambridge University. Then E.T. Dixon. Then, in 1900, William McDougall. McDougal went to Oxford in 1904, but continued to superintend the London Laboratory until 1907, when Charles Spearman took over.

    May Sinclair (1863-1946) moved from Devon to London in the mid- 1890s and her first novel, Audrey Craven was published in 1897. May's major intellectual interest was idealist philosophy. Her early philosphical writing included both prose and verse. Nakiketas and other Poems by "Julian" Sinclair was published by Kegan Paul, Trench and Co. in 1886. To Cheltenham Ladies's College Magazine she contributed "Descartes" (Spring 1882) - "Studies in Plato. 1. Was Plato a Dualist?" (Spring 1893) - She published work on Jowett and Green in 1893. Charlotte Mew would have been aware of May Sinclair's writing on the Brontë. Charlotte had wanted to intoduce an edition of Emily Brontë's poems (1903/1904). May Sinclair wrote introductions to works of the Brontë's in 1908 and 1910. Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 page 120 says that May Sinclair read Freud "in German as soon as The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and the Three Essays on Sexuality were available." [1901 and 1905]. Suzanne Raitt (2000 page 134), however, says May first "came across" "psychoanalytic theory" in "the months before the first world war". Her other interests included telepathy and psychic research. Ghost stories that she wrote (see 1911) may help us to link these interests. May joined the Society for Psychical Research in 1914. (Leigh Wilson 2001). She read and commented on sections of Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism (1911) before publication. May Sinclair met Charlotte Mew in 1913. She became interested in her when she heard her read The Farmers Bride. Charlotte's trance like state when reading may have been an aspect of May Sinclair's interest. In the same year she helped to found the Medico-Psychological Clinic. Her last known contact with Charlotte Mew is a letter of 25.8.1916 in which she expresses her low estimate of the importance of literature in comparison with the war effort. May Sinclair was writing her A Defence of Idealism throughout 1916. Publication of Mary Oliver began in January 1919.

    1898 Charlotte 28-29
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    September: Charlotte's father dies in London, Charlotte witnesses his death - November: On the Isle of Wight, Freda, Charlotte's youngest sister, goes mad - An Open Door rejected

    An Open Door was rejected by Blackwoods Magazine in 1898 "after earlier encouragement to submit further stories". (Val Warner's Mew 1997, page x)
    It was published in Temple Bar in 1903. [The British Library catalogues a printed copy of this, but no typescript].   In September 1898, Gertrude Mayer became editor of Temple Bar and it is possible this was why Charlotte Mew found a publisher.

    The Happy Exile (1898), by Henry Dawson Lowry, is a semi-autobiographical novel, about a Cornish poet living in London yet longing 'for the Idyll of the Daffodils' he knew with his mother

    Monday 12.9.1898: Death of Frederick Mew, age 65 years. Architect, (Charlotte's father) at 9 Gordon Street. C.M.Mew, Daughter, Present at the death, and of the same address, registered the death in the Tottenham Court district of Pancras on Tuesday 13.9.1898. The cause of death was "Malignant disease of the Stomach. Exhaustion. Certified by E. Hollings, MD" [Comment: It sounds like cancer of the stomach with exhaustion from the pain contributing to the death]

    An obituary was published in 1899 in the RIBA Journal volume 6 page 328. Alida Monro (1953), page ix, says

    "Her father... seems to have been a man who took his responsibilities very lightly. His daughter's account of her early life was one of gaiety and extravagance which she enjoyed to the full. However, he died when she was about twenty-nine, leaving nothing, having spent all his available capital on living. The sudden drop in her financial circumstances had a most damaging psychological effect. Charlotte Mew inherited from her mother a view that was very prevalent during the last century, namely that appearances must be kept up at all costs"
    Autumn 1898 Harriette Chick continued her studies at University College London with two terms of bacteriology and bacteriology laboratory work.

    The Royal Commission into Sewage Disposal ran from 1898 to 1915. (external link). At some time, Harriette Chick worked for this.

    about September 1898: Macmillan bought Temple Bar from Richard Bentley and Son, The editor of Temple Bar from September 1898? to December 1900? was Gertrude Mary Townshend Mayer - I have no information about who the editor was from 1900 to 1906 - Richard Bentley and Son published Mayer's Women of Letters in 1894. The change of editor and owner may have meant a more liberal policy about what was published. (See May Sinclair's experience in 1893). It is noticeable that Charlotte Mew's unpublished (until 1981?) stories include Elinor, a powerful and compelling story, whose heroine has a philosophy opposed to Christian values. Her only publications before Temple Bar under Gertrude Mayer had been in the deliberately unorthodox The Yellow Book [And look what happened to that] and, just before Temple Bar, The Governess in Fiction, which the editor of The Academy cut.

    Known contributions to Temple Bar by Charlotte Mew: The China Bowl in September 1899 - V.R.I. (poems about Queen Victoria's death) March 1901 - Miss Bolt (reminiscences about a needlewoman) April 1901 - To a Little Child in Death (sentimental poem) in September 1901 - Notes in a Brittany Convent (another autobiographical story) in October 1901 - At the Convent Gate (a poem) in June 1902 - In the Cures Garden (a story of resignation) in June 1902 - Song Song (a poem - she cannot sleep with sorrow) in 1902 - Not for That City (a poem) in 1902 - An Open Door (short story) in January 1903 - A White Night (short story of total resignation to a medieval social system) in May 1903 - The Little Portress (St Gildas de Rhuys) (a poem) in June? 1903 - Mademoiselle in January 1904 - The Poems of Emily Brontë (literary essay) in August 1904 - Mark Stafford's Wife (short story) in January 1905 - The Country Sunday (semi-autobiographical essay) in November 1905 - The London Sunday (matching essay) in December 1905

    early November 1898 Freda Mew became insane. (She had been insane for three months when admitted to the Isle of Wight Asylum on 4.2.1899). She was taken (at some time) to The Limes, Newport, Isle of Wight

    December 1898. Birth of Marjorie Catharine W. Scott who became Marjorie Watts and an influential biographer of Charlotte Mew. [See Marjorie Watts 1982 and 1987; and Penelope Fitzgerald 1988

    External link to Charles Booth's Poverty Map 1898-1899 showing area of Holy Redeemer and (just north) the House of Retreat, Lloyd Square, of the Sisters of Bethany.

    1899 Charlotte 29-30
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    January: Freda tries to kill herself - February: admitted to the local asylum - August: The Governess in Fiction published - September: Charlotte finds a regular outlet for her writing in Temple Bar - The China Bowl published - The family will revised

    Henry Alves Inglis married Ethel Robinson at St George's, Hanover Square in the January to March quarter of 1899. Born "about 1860", Henry A. Inglis died in March 1924 at Carlisle, Cumbria - See 1875 - Somerset Garden - 1899 - 1913 - 1918 - June 1922 - July 1922 - November 1922 - 1923 - 1927 - 28.3.1928

    Will of Anna Maria Mew witnessed by Samuel Chick senior and Mary Chick

    About Wednesday 25.1.1899 Freda Mew jumped out of a window. (Suicidal)

    From the 1890 Lunacy Act and Freda's case notes (below) it is reasonable to infer that her uncle, Richard Mew, signed a petition for her admission and that he had her mother's consent. He would have seen Freda in the fortnight preceding signing and would engage to visit Freda (or appoint someone else to visit her) at least once every six months.

    Saturday 4.2.1899 Freda Kendall Mew, aged 19, admitted from The Limes, Newport, Isle of Wight, to the Isle of Wight Lunatic Asylum. Her "Relative's Address" is "Mother" "Mrs A.M.M. Mew, 9 Gordon Street, Gordon Square, London, WC" followed by "Mr Richd Mew, Fairlee, Newport, I.W.". Details of Freda's "Previous History" were given by "Nurse Sutton, Newport". her admission had been planned. Medical Certificates were provided by two local doctors "J. Groves, M.B. and S.Foster, LRCP.Ed, Newport". Their certificates said:

    "(a) At time of examination and on previous occasions she has not replied to questions put but has held her face down and could not be got to look up, playing with her fingers and behaving generally in an abnormal manner: said she jumped out of a window to end all."
    "(b) Impossible to get an answer to any questions: holds her head down so that her face cannot be seen: quiet and made no remarks at time of examination and only by pressure could be got to say yes or no: don't think it possible to get a satisfactory answer from her"

    In the morning Freda had said "she would commit suicide sooner or later". Patrick Taffe Finn, the assistant superintendent of the asylum, diagnosed her form of mental disorder as acute mania. She was a single woman of no occupation who had not previously been treated for insanity, but had been insane for three months.

    Under "Supposed Cause" the "Predisposing" cause was entered as "Probably heredity". No "Exciting" cause was entered and she was not "Epileptic". There was a family history of madness in her " Brother and Sister".

    Her expression was "Downcast; rather scowling". She "At times struggles to get through windows" and she "usually has her head down". Her conversation "is limited. When addressed she barely answers, sometimes not at all. She has delusions of persecution at the hands of some Miss" [space]. "At times very stubborn". [Case notes] next previous

    Penelope Fitzgerald speaks of her being "within reach of" the family on the Isle of Wight. At this time this would be mainly her uncle Richard and cousins Richard, Fanny and Gilbert at the farm, and her other cousins as long as they remained.

    Saturday 11.2.1899 Freda: "Remains the greater part of the day gazing at a book without apparently reading a word: has attempted to get through a window: stubborn refusing to do as she is told: barely answers when spoken to, sometimes not at all: has delusions of persecution. next previous

    Saturday 18.2.1899 Freda: "At times resists getting dressed: never voluntarily says a word to others: will not employ herself in any way." next previous

    Saturday 25.2.1899 Freda: "At times she is very troublesome at night jumping out of bed and trying to get at the windows: nearly always has her face hidden with a book or newspaper." next previous

    Saturday 4.3.1899 Freda: "Will not say a word when spoken to nor does she take the least notice of others, and will not amuse herself." next previous

    At the end of the first month, entries in Freda's case notes now become monthly rather than weekly. This means she was still regarded as a curable case.

    Friday 3.4.1899 Freda: "At times seizes article of clothing the nurses have on and struggles to get them saying they are hers: will not answer when spoken to." next previous

    Tuesday 2.5.1899 Freda: "There is little sign of improvement so far: she continues stubborn and still refuses to answer when spoken to: she is in fair health but thin. next previous

    May? 1899 Berlin Congress on Tuberculosis. At this congress, Virchow challenged the dominant belief in an hereditary disposition to tuberculosis (See 1911 Encyclopedia). The Mew family had not known about Henry Herne's tuberculosis when Freda was admitted to the Isle of Wight Asylum. Presumably it developed from infection in Peckham asylum sometime over the next eighteen months. Henry Herne died in March 1901. Bloch, in 1908, classifies alcoholism, syphilis and tuberculosis as the three most potent causes of racial degeneration. Any one of them, or "actual mental disorder" was a "contra-indication" to marriage with the person afflicted, although not necessarily with his or her relatives.

    25.5.1899: Papal encyclical consecrating the whole world to the heart of Jesus. The Litany of the Sacred Heart, approved by Pope Leo 13th on 2.4.1899, starts, in its French Translation:

    "Seigneur, ayez pitié de nous,
    Jésus-Christ, ayez pitié de nous,
    Seigneur, ayez pitié de nous,
    Jésus-Christ, écoutez-nous,
    Jésus-Christ, exaucez-nous"

    Thursday 1.6.1899 Freda: "Occasionally she is for a few hours very excitable during which she will scratch and bite: will not yet answer when spoken to." next previous

    At the end of the fourth month, entries in Freda's case notes now become quarterly rather than monthly. This means she was now regarded as a chronic case.

    26.6.1899 to 5.7.1899 International Congress of Women. London "It is estimated about three thousand women were present. The meetings lasted over a week, and were held sometimes five at once... Many complained of the different halls... of having to go from one place to another. That was London's fault... London is in many ways an old-fashioned city, and her public buildings were erected before the day of women's congresses." (Charlotte Perkins Stetson)

    "The principles and objects of the Parents' National Educational Union :an address ... as delivered before the delegates of the International Congress of Women, London, 1899" by Florence Mary Parsons. The PNEU was founded by Charlotte Mason in 1887. (external link - Aimee R. Natal on).

    12.8.1899 Charlotte Mew's essay: The Governess in Fiction in The Academy pages 163 to 164 [The signature is just "M". Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 page 269 says it was identified as Charlotte Mew's by Mary Davidow. On page 71 she says the editor cut the essay] "nowadays, when nothing, it seems, is unpermissible to youth" [remember] "that to the young person of that period Jayne Eyre was a forbidden book" [with a] "too unfettered, too fervid romance"

    In 1899 a scholar at Friends Boy School York left snail shells boiling in the natural history room. Almost the whole school was destroyed by fire. (external link)

    Thursday 31.8.1899 Freda: "She is less excitable but never answers when spoken to only turns away in disgust: she will not amuse or employ herself in any way: getting fatter." next previous


    September 1899: First known publication of Charlotte Mew in Temple Bar. The editor of Temple Bar in 1899, Gertrude Mary Townshend Mayer, remained a friend of Charlotte Mew's in 1917. She was also a friend of Catherine Amy Dawson Scott. Florence Mary Parsons is said to have recommended Temple Bar as an outlet to Charlotte.

    September 1899 Charlotte Mew: The China Bowl in Temple Bar volume 118. Although Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 page 70 says it appeared in two parts in September and October 1899, I have a bound copy with continuous pages numbers from 64 to 90. "Charlotte M. Mew" is at the end of the story. click for information about the magazine

    " All things that are of the earth shall turn to the earth again: and that which is of the waters doth return into the sea. But thy providence, O Father, governeth it: for thou hast made a way in the sea, and a safe path in the waves;" Jenefer Parris - aged 13 - March 16th 1844 [Her sampler] The second is quoted again at the end of the last chapter, David Comes Home [Dead]. Jenefer had been swallowed, not by the sea, but by the city. "Together they had watched for Jenefer, long and patiently and lovingly; listening vainly for unreturning feet, but still together. Now, for David, she watched alone, rarely stirring from her seat at the window looking upon the bay".

    Charlotte developed the story of The China Bowl into a one act play. The play was read by May Sinclair in July 1913. Sometime between 1899 and 1913 (I infer), Charlotte attempted to have the play produced, and it was possible that the actress Violet Vanbrugh would produce it.


    Thursday 30.11.1899 Freda: "Remains taciturn: assumes the same attitude and sits in the same place daily: she is insulting and very untidy in person: still gaining in weight." next previous

    Autumn 1899 Edith Chick was Quain Student for five years, carrying out research which she published with Arthur Tansley. Harriette Chick had a research scholarship. It is not clear for how long, but she seems to have been researching micro-organisms in England, Austria and Germany from 1899 to 1904. She was in Vienna (Austria) by 20.2.1901. Neither Harriette nor Mary Chick were at home in England on 31.3.1901, but both of them were in Austria on 27.6.1901. Mary always appears to be Harriette's companion in her diary for these years, so I am inclined to think she went to Vienna at the same time as Harriette.

    1900 Charlotte 30-31
    next previous
    Freda remains silent

    February 1900 Freda: "Will sit in the same place as long as left with her head hung down: she will not do anything for herself: pale but in fair health. next previous

    Monday 28.5.1900 Freda: "For the last 3 months has scarcely spoken a word: takes not the slightest notice of anything said to her: bodily health is fair". next previous

    Wednesday 9.5.1900 Max von Gruber lectured on prostitution from the standpoint of social hygiene (Die Prostitution vom Standpunkte der Sozialhygiene aus betrachtet) to the Sociological Education Association (Sozialwissenschaftlichen Bildungsvereine) at Vienna University (Universität Wien)

    click for Doughty Street

    27.6.1900 The Prince of Wales opened the Central London Electric Railway (The Central Line). At this time it went from Shepherds Bush to Bank. When extended to Liverpool Street in 1908, it linked the original circle from west to east. In Paris the first line of the Métro, from Porte de Vincennes to Porte Maillot. opened on 19.7.1900.

    1901 1900: Punch tries to laugh at the invisible enemy - ["Dr Miguel has discovered that germs live to an advanced age" - Weekly Paper] A couple of "Old 'Uns," seen through Mr Punch's microscope - In Peckham House, Charlotte Mew's older brother was dying of tuberculosis. On 10.8.1900 the International Congress of Medicine and Hygiene met in Paris with Lord Lister as guest of honour. 1900 House (1999) argues the fear of germs led to much greater concern for household cleanliness.

    27.8.1900 Freda: "Sits almost quite still, never noticing anyone, nor saying a word: she is in fair condition and bodily health" next previous

    September 1900 Arthur Bourchier (1863-1927) became manager of the Garrick Theatre. From here, through to 1906, he and his wife, and fellow actor, Violet Vanbrugh (1867- 1942), staged plays at the Garrick most of which were by contemporary authors. It seems likely that this was the period when Violet Vanbrugh intended producing Charlotte Mew's The China Bowl, but was prevented.

    30.9.1900 - 4.5.1901 Arthur Tansley "Diary Kept in the East 1900-1901". Tansley was on a half year tour to Ceylon, the Malay peninsula, and Egypt "all ambitious scholars had to make such a voyage if they wished to scale the hierarchy of British botany" (Peder Anker, 2001, pages 13 and 254) On the voyage Tansley collected specimens of Lindsaya and Schizea and Matonia which were used, on his return, for research, and publication, in collaboration with post-graduate students (Godwin 1957), including Edith Chick.

    November 1900 Two seeds of the Californian Nutmeg, from the garden of Orton Longueville, near Peterborough, were sown "with the fleshy covering still on, at the time when the seeds were ripe". They had been supplied to Professor Oliver by Mr. A. Harding, the head gardener. Edith Chick grew them until 31.5.1902, and 15.6.1902, "so that they were respectively eighteen and nineteen months old" before "gathering" them for examination. The interest in this plant, I suspect, lay in the possibility that it related to plants that were fossilised in coal - Such as the ones Marie Stopes was analysing under Professor Oliver's supervision. Edith also used a seedling from Kew sown in January 1895, and gathered in May 1896.

    26.11.1900 Freda: "Requires to have everything done for her: has not spoken a word since last entry: bodily health continues fair." next previous

    In the second edition of The Golden Bough. A Study of Magic and Religion, James Frazer "spelled out a parallel with the Christian atonement that had he had been content to leave latent in the version of 1890. In the third, he coyly banished this section to an appendix" (Robert Fraser, 12.1.2001). Charlotte Mew's reflections on Brittany, between 1901 and 1913 include the pagan and christian elements of the culture, and their relationship. In Men and Trees (1913), the blood on the wood is related to the modern exploitation of the Congo and Amazon rain forests.

    1901 Charlotte 31-32
    next previous
    End of January: death of Queen Victoria - March: Poems on the Queen's death - Asylum death of brother Henry of tuberculosis - April: Miss Bolt - Harriette and Mary Chick in Vienna - Summer: Holiday with the Chicks in a Brittany Convent - September: To a Little Chid in Death - October: Notes in a Brittany Convent - November: Freda perfectly stuporous

    In the Pathological Institute of Vienna University, Karl Landsteiner developed the AB - O classification of blood groups, following the observation that mixing red blood cells and serums sometimes led to agglutination (clumping), but sometimes did not. ( Chick Hume Macfarlane, 1971 p. 193. Wikipedia)

    Tuesday 22.1.1901 Death of Queen Victoria at Osborne House.

    1.2.1901? Andrew Lang's "Mr Frazer's Theory of the Crucifixion",
    criticising Frazer's new chapter, in the Fortnightly Review 75 (1901) pages 650-662

    Monday 4.2.1901 Victoria buried beside Albert in the Frogmore Royal Mausoleum at Windsor Home Park. Her body had been bought, in state, across the Solent and on to Windsor.

    20.2.1901 Harriette Chick set up the filters for her sewage experiment in Vienna. Last reading 1.7.1901 (1905, p.261). A table on page 263 gives readings from 24.5.1901 to 1.7.1901

    Harriette Chick began her research on nitrification with reference to the purification of sewage in Vienna in 1901, under the "hospitality" of Max Gruber and the Vienna Institute for Hygiene. It was then broken of for two years, during all or some of which, Harriette worked for the Royal Commission into Sewage Disposal. The Commission granted her leave of absence in 1903 to continue the research at Munich, still under Max Gruber's hospitality. She thanked Max Gruber for his valuable advice and kind assistance constantly given in the course of the research. Part of the expense of the work was defrayed by a grant from the Royal Society.

    The diagram (which may be copyright of the Royal Society) shows the bottle at the top with a reservoir of liquidised cow manure. This flows through the tube, which is packed with coke to make it a filter, and collected in the bottle at the bottom.

    Monday 25.2.1901 Freda: "Remains in the same attitude as long as left and never says a word: she is in fair condition and bodily health." next previous

    March 1901: C.M V.R.I. Temple Bar volume 127, pages 289-290. A two part poem. The first part is called January 22nd 1901. The second part is called February 2nd 1901 click for information about the magazine

    "Letters to the printer in the archive of Temple Bar's then publisher Macmillan, deposited in the British Library in 1967 (Chadwykck-Healey microfilm, 1982) confirm Mew's authorship of [the] two V.R.I sonnets... Mew's first published poems. But along with sonnets, she experimented early with lines of different numbers of iambs "An Ending"; the Chicks dated their MS copy to the early 1890s." [Val Warner, 1997, 1997, page 45]

    22.3.1901: death of Henry Herne Mew, Charlotte's brother, "Age 35 years". His death certificate, issued 23.3.1901, has "R.E. Leonard, Present at Death, Peckham House Lunatic Asylum"
    [Not Peckham Hospital.
    Richard Eugene Leonard, single, aged 36, born Ireland,
    was an "asylum attendant" (1901 census)].
    The cause of death is "Phthisis Pulmonalis" [Tuberculosis, not pneumonia] "Certified by H.C. Halstead, MD"
    [Harold Cecil Halsted, single, aged 38, born Chichester,
    was the medical superintendent of the asylum. (1901 census)]
    David Kessel commented that, "if the patient's resistance was low, which I suspect it was, death could have followed a few months after the first signs of the disease. If his resistance was high, he could have been ill for several years". Freda Mew's case notes say there was no consumption in the family in February 1899, two year's earlier. The implications that the Mews may have drawn for the diagnosis can only be guessed.

    Henry Herne Mew is shown as "no calling" and of "30 Doughty St" - Although the family moved from there in February 1890.

    [The death of Henry Herne Mew, aged 35,
    was registered Camberwell vol.1d page 536 in the January-March quarter of 1901].
    He is said to have been buried in Nunhead Cemetery - Just south of Peckham.

    The following verse from Charlotte Mew's poem In Nunhead Cemetery has every appeaance of being written just after Henry's funeral. The poem, written in parts, was completed by July 1913.

    "I shall stay here: here you can see the sky;
    The houses in the street are much too high;
    There is no one left to speak to there;
    Here they are everywhere,
    And just above them fields and fields of roses lie -
    If he would dig it all up again they would not die."

    As Charlotte explained in 1913, this verse, the last in the published poem, was written first. It was, in her opinion, "the most inevitable" ... "a lapse from the sanity and self-control of what precedes it. The mind and senses can stand no more, and that is to express their failure and exhaustion."

    A.G. Tansley and Edith Chick in Annals of Botany os-15 (March 1901) pp 1-38: "Notes on the Conducting Tissue-System in Bryophyta" The bryophyta are the mosses and liverworts. See 1911 Encyclopedia

    On Sunday 31.3.1901 Census:

    At 9 Gordon Street: Anne Mew aged 60: Charlotte Mew aged 30: Caroline Mew aged 25 (no occupations shown for any) and Emily Stafford, single, aged 41. General Servant Domestic, born Blunsdon, Wiltshire. [Transcribers spell Blunston and mis-read her age as 14]. Broad Blunsdon is a north Wiltshire hamlet, south east of Cirencester in Gloucestershire. [The 1881 census shows Emily as born Cirencester, Wiltshire and, in 1881 (aged 19), a Domestic Servant to an elderly farmer and his wife in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire. I cannot find her in 1891. The Mews now have one general servant (mature) in place of Elizabeth Goodman and two young servants in 1891. Emily may have been succeeded by "Jane the factotum"]

    [The Mary Kendall aged 52, born Westminster, living at 29 Ryland Road, St Pancras, London is not Charlotte's aunt. See Brighton below

    At 30 Park Hill (Chestergate) - Samuel Chick (59) and Emma Chick (57). - Edith Chick (31) - Dorothy Chick (13) - Samuel Chick (33) - James Chick (21 Warehouseman - Worker) - Anne Smith (Visitor - 57 - Living on own means) - Louise Lacey and Mary Seymour, Cook and Housemaid.

    See also Ethel Louisa Mew (teacher), Florence Elen Mew and Gertrude Mary Mew (nurse), Charlotte's Isle of Wight cousins, who were all living in London.

    Brighton

    At 20 Sillwood Road: Mary L. Kendall (mis-transcribed Kendell), single, living on own means. Aged 53. Ann Perkin (mis-transcribed Perken), single, Housekeeper, aged 64, born Hanley? Worcestershire.

    Isle of Wight 1901 -
    Compare 1881 and 1891

    New Fairlee Farm, 22 Mews Lane

    Richard Mew, Head, Widower aged 75 Employer working at home Born Hampshire Lymington, Fanny Mew, his daughter Single aged 34, born Newport, Isle of Wight, Richard Mew, his son, single, aged 32 Employer working at home born Newport, Isle of Wight, Rosena Harding, Servant, single, aged 20 , General Domestic, born Avreton, Isle of Wight

    See also Gilbert Mew

    New Fairlee Farm 23 Mews Lane: Walter J. Pragnell Head. Married aged 29 Dairyman, and his family

    South Fairlee Farm, 17 Fairlee Road: John Hale, aged 41, farmer and his family. Number 16 is Fairlee House and 19 is Fairlee Villa (see map). Possibly, South Fairlee Farm 1901 is the Little Fairlee Farm, Mews Lane of today.

    Isle of Wight County Lunatic Asylum

    Patient 6 on page 3: "F.K.M. - Patient - Single - 21 - born Newport Isle of Wight - Lunatic"

    The page of twenty five females appears, from the occupations shown, to be the patients in the women's wing of the private unit. [The unit had 50 places, male and female] The entry for place of birth seems to be incorrect. With most patients there is no entry in this column. No occupation is shown for fourteen patients, including F.K.M. The occupations of the other eleven are: "Wife of Publican - Living on own means (3) - Formerly Milliner - Wife of Naval Engineer - Wife of Civil Engineer - Wife of Medical Practitioner - Boarding House Keeper - Wife of retired Tool Manufacturer - Wife of Customs Officer. All are described as lunatic in the final column. None are described as blind, deaf or dumb, or imbecile/feeble-minded" (the alternative categories). Most of those where a place of birth is shown, were born outside the Isle of Wight.

    Devon

    Hazelwood, Branscombe, Devon

    Margaret Chick "Head"
    Elsie Chick
    Frances Chick
    Albert Groom?, aged 44, caretaker, was gardener/domestic.

    Hazelwood was rented by Samuel Chick the father from 1901. In the 1920s it appears to have been the home of Samuel and Harriette. It was bought by the Chick sisters in 1930. See also 1944 and 1977.

    See Three trunks in a Branscombe attic by Barbara Farquharson Spring 2011

    April 1901 Charlotte Mew's essay Miss Bolt in Temple Bar volume 122 pages 484-493 click for information about the magazine

      This copy of Temple Bar (external source) is the month after Miss Bolt was published. As far a I can tell, the magazine always had a standard format, measuring about 7 and three quarter inches by 9 and three quarters, and always the same colour and design.

    At the time Charlotte wrote for it, Temple Bar did not have illustrations. Its stories were plain pages of print, like a book. The print was clear and I do not agree with Penelope Fitzgerald's description of it as so tightly packed that its readers must have risked eyestrain.

    Harriette Chick's diary: [Sunday] 28.4.1901: "I set my house in order in the morning for we are going to Venice tomorrow". Appears to be in Vienna. Edith has been staying, but leaves in the evening. She is "rather low as it wore to evening". "We got Edith a comfortable carriage and to her and our delight, up comes the dear Padre, with a packet of chocolates". This is the earliest entry in the diary. The Padre is a constant part of the story in Vienna, he visits in Munich and, at one point he travels to London and Liverpool with Harriette. The close association and dialogue of Harriette and the Padre may be reflected in that between the bacteriologist and the priest in Charlotte Mew's Notes in a Brittany Convent - See below

    May 1901? Return of Arthur Tansley from his botanical voyage

    Upon his return the Gazette reported that he "danced to the very last extra" during the annual prom of 1901, and he even wrote an article praising the women of Cambridge, whoes "feet and ankles are proverbial... and hockey skirts are short" (quoted Taylor, D. 1968 pages 22 and 35-47). It was during this happy period of his life he fell in love with his former student Edith Chick (the first female student to recieve the Quain Studentship)... (Peder Anker, 2001, pages 13 and 254)

    21.5.1901 Harriette Chick's diary: Vienna: We went to tea with the Padre. Mary has been to Rothschild's Garden....

    A mighty experiment: (from Harriette Chick's diary) - This takes place in Vienna. Harriette, Mary and, possibly, Samuel Chick, are there.

    Thursday 27.6.1901 "I'm getting ready a mighty experiment with 400 test tubes and 2.5 kilos glass beads. beads = 3 g a kilo. glass rod 1 g 60 a kilo. so Mary principally has saved 3 g 50 and I have spent 90 heller on files. We cut up half a kilo in the evening.

    [one gulden was two krones and one krone was 100 heller

    Friday 28.6.1901 "worked to death again. Mary like an angel cut up another kilo in the morning. Padre came to tea. After tea he was pressed into the service and it was very beautiful to see him chopping glass. I have since given him his file as a memento. Then it was eight o'clock. He went to supper and so did we and then we had intended to go to the Volksgarten, but it was too late, so we went to the [word deleted] Wiener Prater where I provided drinks. Later hr Mosley and Schmidt turned up and I treated them to teas. Then we all went and got weighed and got home strictly in good time."

    [External link about Wiener Prater about 1900

    Saturday 29.6.1901 "I had to work on until after two and only met the party at Hadersfeld - Mary, the Padre, Miss Cross and Miss Barfoot. I was disappointed. I expected gay, reckless, dissipated, handsome ------ and found only common. I had weißer Wein gespritzt and drank coffee (much) and then we walked down to Kritzendorf. Padre and I together, chatted about Miss Barfoot - She had suggested accompanying him to Budapest and the dear man had not had presence of mind enough to turn the attack. He talked about her mostly.

    [correctly it would be "Weißwein gespritzt" which is German and means white wine with soda or sweet soda]

    Home. had supper, changed clothes and then went to the Padre's. Hymns sung and then 'Sam' had his present and then Mary and I went home."

    Sunday 30.6.1901 "Went to the Lab for one hour and then dressed and went to Church. The Padre is coming to Seyring with us today..! Went to church and had a very good sermon and then waited to take the Padre out - to our indignation he cam and said goodbye - I stared - 'I can't come. I am not free to' and that was all. So I said 'Well I'd like to know what to believe' and the matter ended. He went off to the Gillespies with Miss Cross and we went to Seyring. Mr Krauss [?] very nice, made a tremendous fuss of me - too much fuss! I drank whisky and soda for dinner, was made to lie down after dinner and read [?]"

    [Help with transcription and local knowledge from Andrea Nagy

    Tuesday 2.7.1901 "A hard days work - very. In the afternoon, with the Professor's help, inoculated all my test tubes for the nitrifying organisms and did not get to Miss Cross' s to tea till very late...."

    Friday 5.7.1901 Dresden

    Early July: London and then Liverpool

    Sunday 14.7.1901 also rather flat till I went to see Mrs Sherrington in the afternoon and they made me feel quite at home and comfortable and to supper I stayed and ... nice Dr Sherrington... We talked... and all sorts of things.

    This appears to have been Harriette's first meeting with Charles Scott Sherrington (27.11.1857-4.3.1952) and his wife, Ethel Mary. Sherrington was Professor of Physiology at the University of Liverpool from 1895 to 1913. He was associated with Rubert Boyce (22.4.1863 - 16.6.1911) the (rich) Professor of Pathology at the university, whose father-in-law had funded the chair of Biochemistry (the first in the United Kingdom) in 1902. Sherrington recommended her to the Lister Institute in 1905.

    Monday 15.7.1901 Dr Durham came back from South America - He seemed pleased to hear I had been to see dear Max... he has grown a beard and seems in good spirits.

    15.7.1901 This part of the diary ends.

    July 1901 International Medical Congress on Tuberculosis in London. Amongst those present was Robert Koch, who had identified the tubercle bacillus in 1882 and, in the 1890s, raised (disappointed) hopes that his "tuberculine" preparations could arrest the progress of the disease. At this conference he announced his belief that different bacteria caused tuberculosis in cattle and humans. In 1905 he was awatded the Nobel Prize for "for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis". (External link to his lecture on "The Current State of the Struggle against Tuberculosis"

    July 1901 Charlotte Mew's story Some Ways of Love published in Pall Mall Magazine [Not listed in Mary Davidow's 1960 bibliography, but included (without comment, as far as I can see) in Collected Poems and Prose (1981)

    There is an online index of the contents of the volume in which her story appeared. It was illustrated by A.J.B. Salmon

    Left: A 1902 bound volume of the Pall Mall Magazine

    Sunday 25.8.1901 Freda: "She maintains a stubborn silence, never utters a word voluntarily and takes not the least notice of anyone near her. Generally very untidy and absolutely unemployed." next previous

    Summer 1901 [Penelope Fitzgerald says June - But Harriette Chick's diary would place it later]. Charlotte Mew and friends holiday in the convent at St Gildas de Rhuys on the south coast of Brittany. (See language and France) map - weblink with pictures - another - another - another - For other Brittany entries see 23.6.1902 - Oliver's Brittany field trips - the index of trips from 1906 - June 1909 trip

    The holiday is not entirely a deduction from Charlotte's essay Notes in a Brittany Convent (October 1901). Mary Davidow (1960 page 67), who interviewed Margaret Chick, says

    In the summer of 1901 Charlotte Mew and five other "unmated females" spent a holiday in Brittany. Notes in a Brittany Convent is a direct product of Charlotte Mew's observations among the Bretons. Margaret Chick was one of the group; Florence Hughes, later Mrs Alsop, has been identified as the singer mentioned in the essay"

    I have not traced Florence Hughes who married an Alsop. Penelope Fitzgerald says she was the daughter of the painter Arthur Hughes, but he does not appear to have had a daughter called Florence

    In the story, the travellers cross from Southampton to St Malo, them south (by train?), then by four horse-drawn vehicles to the convent.

    "Although they had a bad crossing she danced ... for them in the cabin, in her boots and silk directoire knickers" [bloomers] - story told by Michael Holroyd in Unreceived Opinions p.156 New York 1967 (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 pages 74 and 270)

    This may not have been an occasion when Charlotte Mew saw the "midsummer" fires at Guingamp. In the "Notes", she and friends appear to spend their time in the region of the convent, and, if Harriette Chick was part of the real party, the trip took place after mid July, whilst the Guingamp Pardon is in late June (?) or early July. Deduction from Men and Trees suggest summer 1902 as a visit to Guingamp. The 1909 holiday in Brittany was in July and her surving letters from it discuss Guingamp.

    September 1901 Charlotte Mew's poem To a Little Child in Death published in Temple Bar "He who calleth all... Doth call the smallest soonest to his knee, Since smallest limbs are soonest weary". [A different poem with a similar title was published in 1922] click for information about the magazine

    October 1901 Charlotte Mew's essay Notes in a Brittany Convent in Temple Bar volume 124. "Our party of six 'unmarried females' included a Botanist, a Zoologist, a Bacteriologist, a Vocalist, a Humorist, and a Dilettante" click for information about the magazine

    It may not be possible to create a convincing one-to-one relationship between the essay and a real party which is consistent with the evidence we have. Charlotte Mew and Margaret Chick were part of the group, but who do we identify them with? Margaret cannot be the vocalist (elocution teacher) if that is Florence Hughes. Harriette Chick seems clear as the bacteriologist and her close association with Edith Chick suggests that Edith was the botanist. Later associations with Charlotte Mew suggest Margaret Robinson as the zoologist.

    A simple explanation would be that Charlotte went with a party of Chick sisters, including Harriette (and Mary?) on route for Vienna. However, the Chicks do not appear to have included a zoologist, so perhaps the line up was Botanist: Edith Chick - Zoologist: Margaret Robinson - Bacteriologist: Harriette Chick - Vocalist: Margaret Chick - Humorist: Charlotte Mew - Dilettante: Mary Chick or Elsie Chick

    Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 (page 74) says "According to Charlotte's account" the women were "all thirtyish [?], and all old school friends [?]" [I cannot see these points in the story]. Her identification of Margaret Chick (aged about 24) as the bacteriologist is a mistake for Harriette (aged 26). She says the botanist was Edith [she means Ethel] Oliver (aged 32), who, she says, helped her father revise his official handbook to the Kew Gardens Museum. [ Edith Chick, who I think more likely, was about 31]. She identifies the Zoologist as Maggie Browne [Margaret Robinson at this time]. The Vocalist was Florence Hughes She says "the Dilettante was Anne (a painter without a studio), and Charlotte was... the Humorist"

    " The little portress ... will die young, whatever age they write up over her... She sits framed in the slit of window... As you pass, though she does not look up, you catch somehow the fragrance of that presence with its sense of benediction..."

    Botanist, zoologist, bacteriologist, as three of he names for the six (fictional?) travellers, do link us to some of Charlotte Mew's actual friends - especially the Chick family. Equally, the six travellers (including vocalist, humorist and dilettante) could be read as aspects of Charlotte's character, and aspects of modern character, which enter into dialogue with the unquestioning faith of the little portress.

    The story is rich in dialogues, but I have selected that between scientific spirit and unquestioning faith as one illustration. It may reflect both a dialogue within Charlotte Mew and dialogues between Harriete Chick and the Padre.

    21.10.1901 First experimental date on Harriette Chick's unicellular green alga research [Which I take to be at Liverpool - But it may also have been in London]. The last experimental date is 22.12.1902.

    Friday 8.11.1901 Harriette Chick's diary: She attends an "At Home" in Liverpool where she is ignored because (she thinks) she is not rich enough or not a Professor's wife.

    October 1901 Francis Galton launched his project for race improvement - See taint in the Mew family - Galton Laboratory - In the Curé's Garden - A White Night - Sociological Society - Eugenics Education Society - Crackanthorpes - Ken - On the Asylum Road. In Charlotte Mew's writing it is often the fatalism of religion that eliminates the unfit. The parallel was not foreign to secular eugenicists. See James Barr. Charlotte set out an alternative "gospel" (good news) in her first published story.

    24.10.1901 Formation of the Psychological Society. William McDougall later wrote: "During my teaching at University College, a little group of persons interested in psychology began to gather for informal discussions in my laboratory. After a time we made ourselves into a formally constituted group, the British Psychological Society... At this time, also, or later, I became a member of many scientific societies, the Physiological, the Neurological, the Royal Anthropological, the Sociological, the Medico-Psychological, the Aristotelian, the Mind Association, the Royal Society of Medicine, the Society for Psychical Research, and the German Society for Experimental Psychology. Before all of these I read papers from time to time, and in most cases served on the governing body."

    Monday 4.11.1901 Freda: "Perfectly stuporous and listless: dribbles, unable to attend to her personal wants, silent and unemployed. General condition poor and bodily health indifferent. next previous

    1902 Charlotte 32-33
    next previous
    January: Aunt Mary dies of nervous debility - February: Freda receives thyroid treatment - April: Charlotte in Paris after physical and mental problems - Visits Ella D'Arcy - Letter to Ethel Oliver - At the Convent Gate - June: In the Curé's Garden - Freda utterly demented - Song unable to sleep with sorrow - Not for that City prefers dreamless sleep to heaven

    23.1.1902 Arthur Tansley launched The New Phytologist journal. As well as online editions there is an online pdf history of The New Phytologist

    The first edition included the first of a series of papers he co-authored with Frederick Frost Blackman on the classification of green algae. [See green algae - Chlorella and Cyanobacteria]

    19.1.1902 Charlotte Mew's aunt, Mary Leonora Kendall, died at 29 Sillwood Road, U.D.. Age given as 55 years. Occupation: "Fundowner. Daughter of Henry Edward Kendall. Architect (deceased)". Cause of death: "nervous debility and inanition 12 years. Paralysis of intestines and bladder 1 month." [Comment: She had been suffering from mental illness for twelve years, as a result of which she had not taken care of herself (not eating and drinking). Perhaps she survived that long because she was looked after, but was difficult to persuade to eat. She could have been agitated, but perhaps more likely that she was withdrawn. Her intestines and bladder seizing up could have been the result of not eating properly. Probably means she did not pass water or solids.] "Certified by J. Bradbury Winter M.R.C.S." [A "medical practitioner" aged 31, living at 28 Montpelier Road - Which is near. (census)]. Informant: "A. Perkin. Present at the death. 29 Sillwood Road, Brighton". [The death of Mary Leonora Kendall, aged 55, was registered Brighton vol.2b page 182 in the January-March quarter of 1902]

    March quarter of 1902 Marriage of Elsie Millard and James George O'Keefe registered St Marylebone. One of the bridesmaid was Vivian Haigh-Wood (28.5.1888 - 22.1.1947), an artists daughter from Hampstead, who married T.S. Eliot in 1915. The O'Keefe's had two children by 1913, when they may have known Mrs Hill. The two children may have been a girl born about December 1903, who died in a road crash on 30.5.1926, and a boy, born summer 1908, who was badly injured in the same road accident.

    In 1902 James George O'Keeffe and Art O'Brien published (in Dublin) A Hand-book of Irish Dances, with an Essay on Their Origin and History. This included an English-Irish vocabulary. Internet Archive copies

    4.2.1902 Freda: "Resistive and stuporous, taking no interest in objective influences; reticent and indolent: habits dirty: at present under Thyroid treatment. frv. bis.indic. Health fair." next previous

    1.3.1902 Harriette Chick's diary: She attends a party in Liverpool that she enjoys.

    4.5.1902 Freda: "Sits quite still all day, absolutely unemployed, silent and stuporous and evincing no interest in her surroundings: never utters a word. Health poor but slightly improved." next previous

    April 1902: Charlotte Mew in Paris visiting Ella D'Arcy

    18.4.1902 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Ethel Oliver ("My dear") from 26 rue de Turin. [ Buffalo Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 282-285]

    "Up to now I have had no sensations worth recounting. Perhaps I have worn them out; and then, too, I have been living at rather high pressure with not much space for such."

    When, in her conclusion, Charlotte writes "Love to thee who understands...", thou will not not need to be a Quaker to feel the sensitive touch of "thee".
    Speaking of Quaker peculiarities, David Murray-Rust says that the use of thee and thou was not unusual within British Quaker families during the first half of the twentieth century, but was little used in public. The (small) Quakers in Christ community still use thee and thou.

    The letters in the Buffalo Collection from Charlotte to "My dear" have all been considered as written to Ethel Oliver. The 1902 one has no date, but is with an envelope postmarked 18.4.1902 addressed to Ethel Oliver. The one on 27.6.1911 says "You sound very quiet and Quakerly"

    "Early Poems" Six "early poems" were published as an appendix to The Rambling Sailor (1929). Alida Monro said they were all first published in Temple Bar. They are: At the Convent Gate (1902) - Requiescat (1909 in The Nation) - The Little Portress (1903) - Afternoon Tea - She was a Sinner (external web copy) - Song (1902). [See Very early poems?)]

    1902 Charlotte Mew's poem At the Convent Gate in Temple Bar volume 125, page 299 click for information about the magazine

    June 1902 Charlotte Mew's story In the Curé's Garden in Temple Bar volume 125, pages 667-676. Also published Living Age volume 234 on 5.7.1902 pages 44-53. "flowers of seduction and desire" - "She is to suffer for, to expiate, her mother's fault? Her father's also, I presume." click for information about the magazine

    Charlotte Mew in America Living Age reproduced In the Curé's Garden and The London Sunday (1905) from Temple Bar and Requiescat (1909) from The Nation. It also published Exspecto Resurrectionem, and may well have published other works by Charlotte. These appear to be her first appearance in the United States media. American poets were active in The Egoist (London based) when it published Charlotte's work in 1914. This and Charlotte's war-time publication do not appear to have crossed the Atlantic, although three poems were submitted unsuccessfully to a Chicago magazine in 1913. Her poetry collection appeared in the United States in 1921 when, according to one report, she "immediately received wide critical recognition". See after the war

    16.6.1902 Freda: "Utterly demented - never voluntarily moves - dribbles and requires everything done for her" next previous

    23.6.1902 - St John's Eve - The summer solstice: In Men and Trees (1913) Charlotte Mew links this to the Fête of Notre Dame de Bon Secours at Guingamp. (map). Charlotte's letter of 6.7.1909 and the 2005 notice, suggest the festival is not held on mid-summer's night. - Web list of Pardons says "Premier dimanche juillet: pardon Notre-Dame de Bon-Secours, à Guingamp". I thought Charlotte might have linked the Guingamp festival and midsmmer because of James Frazer's 1913 writing on the fire festivals of Europe, but this appears to be later in the year than Men and Trees

    Google map

    The text of Men and Trees suggests a number (minimum two) of midsummer visits over ten years. - Which raises the possibility that Charlotte Mew was in Guingamp (Brittany) in late June/early July 1902.

    4.7.1902 Harriette Chick's diary: "Came down to Branscombe with E's Botanical Party"

    click for the Chick family The seven Chick sisters in a photograph that Margaret Tomlinson dates "about 1902"

    7.7.1902 Harriette Chick's diary speaks of taking a panorama view of a group (not the above) and then going to investigate some pools. They walked home by the shore. Cam [?] expiated on botany in general and Mr Blackman's botany in particular. Harriette said she had chosen the title for her papers for the New Phytologist. She would write about "Decadence in Modern Botany. Its Causes - Extent and Suggested Cure".

    Tuesday 6.7.1902 Harriette Chick's diary: "And I daresay you wouldn't think the Chick family Scorners and Scoffers - But they are."

    15.7.1902: Harriette Chick's diary: She and friends attend Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in London. Sung in German with a printed English translation for the audience.

    1902 Charlotte Mew's poem Song in Temple Bar volume 126, page 230
    "I left my love at your behest, I waved your little boughs of yew, But, Sorrow, Sorrow, let me rest, For oh! I cannot sleep with you!
    click for information about the magazine
    Republished in
    The Rambling Sailor (1929). It was chosen for Twentieth Century Poetry in 1933 and, possibly, 1929. Another poem that Charlotte Mew called Song was published in 1919

    1902 Charlotte Mew's poem Not for That City in Temple Bar volume 126 page 600 click for information about the magazine

    Max von Gruber left Vienna in 1902, becoming director of the Institute for Hygiene in München in October (external link). - Harriette Chick resumed her nitrification experiments under him in Munich during 1903. She measured the flow through some of her filters in Munich on 17.3.1903, and resumed her main experiment on 1.4.1903. She was in Austria in mid April 1903 (this may have been revisiting her friends there) and moved to Munich (and the Institute) on 23.4.1903. Her DSc from London, in 1903, was partly for a study of green algae in polluted waters. Her studies in Germany were interspersed with work under Rubert Boyce at Liverpool, where she was also friends with the Sherrington family. She joined the Lister Institute in London in 1905.

    15.11.1902 Freda: "She is still listless and apathetic and absolutely never speaks: She needs the attention of others." next previous

    22.12.1902 Last experimental date on Harriette Chick's unicellular green alga research [Which I take to be at Liverpool - But it may also have been in London]. The first experimental date is 21.10.1901

    October/December quarter 1902 Death of Henry Stopes, age 50, recorded Dartford. Marie Stopes degree results were released early by London University in order that he should know them before he died. (Keith Briant 1962 p.36) She achieved "at the same time first class honours in botany and third class honours in geology and physical geography. After a year of research under F. W. Oliver, she went with a scholarship to Munich" (James Macgibbon, Dictionary of National Biography 1971). Marie Stopes research, analysing slides of fossil ferns, led to a publication as early as NewPhytologistMay1903.

    1903 Charlotte 33-34
    next previous
    January: An Open Door published - The Minnow Fishers published - May: A White Night - Freda kicking - Edith Chick and Marie Stopes on Palaeobotany in New Phytologist - June?: The Little Portress - July: In Devon for the Marriage of Edith Chick and Arthur Tansley - August: Freda a silent, demented patient, in fair health, who sometimes kicks - Autumn: Death of Uncle Richard - December: Proposal for book of Emily Brontë poems

    1903 was the first year of The London Calendar, with an original print of London, produced by William Monk and Elkin Mathews, Vigo Street. During the year, Charlotte approached Elkin Mathews with a proposal - (External link to MOTCO site)

    January 1903 Charlotte Mew's story An Open Door in Temple Bar volume 127 pages 71-91. See above - 1895 and 1898 click for information about the magazine

    31.1.1903 Issue of Outlook or The Outlook in which Val Warner found The Minnow Fishers. I think this must be the magazine that began as New Review in 1889 rather than the one that started in 1870. The 1870 magazine had a family and religious orientation that does not fit the amoral fishers for minnows. George Wyndham is listed as editor of The Outlook throughout its life with that title (1897-1928). It was published in London.

    28.2.1903 Freda: "She never speaks and never moves unless told to. Requires care from others Her health is fair." next previous

    Harriette Chick "A Study of a unicellular green alga, occurring in polluted water, with especial reference to its nitrogenous metabolism" Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol.71, 1903, pp.459-476, one plate. Communicated by Professor Rubert Boyce, FRS, Received February 28 - Read March 12 1903. From the Thompson Yates Laboratories, University of Liverpool. [Harriette identified a variety of green algae that she called Chlorella pyrenoidosa. It is sometimes called Chlorella pyrenoidosa chick. Chlorella was discovered in 1890 by the Dutch microbiologist, Martinus Beijernick (1851-1931) [Wikipedia] Harriette distinguished Chlorella pyrenoidosa from Chlorella vulgaris, discovered by Beijernick] Richard Ford has a copy inscribed by Harriette Chick, extensively annotated with corrections and additions, including long passages crossed out, and with manuscript pages in her hand inserted. This could be preparation, by Harriette, for her D.Sc.

    17.3.1903 Harriette (1905, p.258) gives this date for a measurement of the flow through some experimental filters at Munich.

    1.4.1903 Harriette Chick set up the filters for her (main) sewage experiment in Munich. Last reading 13.6.1903 (1905, p.261) A table on page 263 gives readings from 24.6.1903 to 27.11.1903 (according to the heading), but actually includes a reading for 20.1.1904. Table on page 265 has experiments that cover 17.12.1903 to 3.2.1904.

    Harriette Chick's diary:

    Sunday April 12th [1903] It has rained today as never before in Austria, I think..

    [Munchen - Munich]

    Thursday April 23rd [1903] Feeling slightly ill and also very much bereft. Cheered by the sight of my Institut particularly Here Dokter who is very English in appearance -

    May 1903 edition of New Phytologist, 2 (1903) contained by "Edith Chick, B.SC, Quain Student in Botany, University College, London, pp 83-91 "The Seedling of Terreya Myristica" [Nutmeg seedlings] - (online), followed by "M.C. Stopes (University College, London)" [Marie Carmichael Stopes] On the Leaf-structure of Cordaites, pages 91-97. Edith Chick thanked Professor Oliver for the help and interest he had taken in her work and Marie Stopes was "indebted to Professor F. W. Oliver for the use of the fossil slides, and for the interest he has shewn in their description. The sections figured are all in the collection belonging to the Botanical Department of University College". Edith and Marie are said to have been friends.

    May 1903 Charlotte Mew's story A White Night in Temple Bar volume 127 pages 625-639. "some pride of spirit or of race bore her honourably through. She had... clogged the wheels of an inflexible machine... the speck of dust she knew herself to be... was... swept away." [Reprinted 1998] click for information about the magazine

    7.5.1903 Freda: "She sometimes kicks people but beyond that never voluntarily moves. In fair health" next previous

    June? 1903 Charlotte Mew's poem: The Little Portress (St Gildas de Rhuys) in Temple Bar volume 128 pages 88-89. The little portress is the character in "Notes in a Brittany Convent" who provides the counter-balance to the modern world of questioning science, humour, dilettantism and romance. click for information about the magazine

    Arthur Tansley and Edith Chick in Annals of Botany June 1903; os-17: pages 493 - 510. "On the Structure of Schizaea malaccana" [a fern] - 1911 Encyclopedia on Pteridophyta - 1911 Encyclopedia on Palaeobotany

    Harriette Chick's diary:

    Wednesday 1.7.1903 [Munich] First event of importance, letter announcing arrival of Herr Padre, 4.p.m. arrival of Herr Padre

    Saturday 4.7.1903 Had an excellent meal from Frau Schlegel. Somehow I think Munchen makes you think very much of food

    Branscombe wedding

    Thursday 30.7.1903 Edith Chick married Arthur George Tansley at Branscombe Church (free BMD: Honiton in Devon). (Date from Dorothy Lumb. Rest from Family Bible (Watts boxes).

    Harriette Chick's diary [Loose sheets with]

    Sunday 26.7.1903 Harriette Chick, on paper headed "Hazelwood, Branscombe, Axminster" "Telegrams, Branscombe, Beer" "Got home from Germany to find the house much excited [another word]. Inspected the wedding presents and the 14 serviette rings and in the afternoon Stopey and Norman and Lot came to tea. Stopey was rather sweet on the subject of the D.Sc. amusingly so. Norman finally went off at about seven and Lot stayed. E's clothes etc the absorbing subject of conversation."

    Monday 27.7.1903 They went shopping. At 3pm "A select party saw the bride off, including Aunty Smith, Lot..." Mention of "dress boxes"

    Tuesday 28.7.1903 Packed hard and then to Mrs P. where we were fitted in a most awful rush and then went is a special train figuratively to the Brocate where we lunched with Cam, drank Munchester beer with all due rites and ceremonies - awful day with rain and then caught the 3.0 train at Wolerton [?] Journey down uneventful except for a momentary scare when I thought I saw the name of Coopar [??] hanging out of a window at Seaton Junction, but it was a mistake.

    Wednesday 29.7.1903 Showery day again, but we picnicked in true Chickian way on Colzton moors whilst we got heather to decorate the house, ate bread and cheese, got flowers, sat in the road and behaved in a most unbecoming manner - especially the bride. At night in the pouring rain Mrs Cane [?] and Mrs Sutton and others arrived. Weather prospects awful.

    Thursday 30.7.1903

    Day broke looking promising. Bride has been sleeping most disgracefully well. Can't realize there is to be a wedding today. It seems quite unlike it somehow. Entertaining Mrs Cane [?], getting the brides boots heeled and fetched and decorating the house with flowers took up all of the [day deleted] morning. The village is en fete, banners, flags [word] an arch. A slight dampener was cast over our otherwise glad hearts by a letter from Exeter telling us H. Chick was coming over [word] !!

    [Lunch and deleted] We dressed, [word] and then oversaw [?] the bride - all went very well. But the bride was a little disconcerted to find that the intention was for the Exeter contingent to hurry back from church and "play the happy pair in" with a wedding march [?] or some such thing. - E. said "something" and Mary finally attacked Pop and got the thing vetoed to our great delight - Then Mary and I got into an empty carriage.

    Thursday 13.8.1903 [London] Latest entry in Harriette Chick's diary: My chief went away on his holiday. The atmosphere (mental) is much clearer, though the physical is not improved. However one can manage. I think the powers consider a D.Sc fraught with dangers for the higher nature and are taking care of my character, lest haply I should be puffed up.

    Harriette Chick's D.Sc (Doctor of Science) Hugh Sinclair (1986) says Harriette obtained her "London D.Sc" in 1904. However her London University Student Index Card shows it as 1903. She was approaching thirty years of age. See Wikipedia on Doctor of Science. [At this time her research was based at Liverpool University under Professor Rupert Boyce?] - See above on alga

    30.8.1903 Freda: "Quiet demented patient. Never speaks. At times kicks. In fair health." next previous

    The death of Richard Mew, aged 78, was registered Isle of Wight vol.2b page 264 in the October-December quarter of 1903. There is no mention of this event in Freda's case notes, but there never is mention of external events.

    Autumn 1903: Marie Stopes went to Munich. On 10.3.1904 a planned meeting with the Chicks failed to take place.

    6.10.1903 and 13.10.1903 "Does Hygiene lead to Racial Degeneration?" by Max Gruber, published in the Munchener Mediziniscfie Wochenschrift [See Bloch and dictionary entry for degenerate

    November 1903 Sociological Society formed at London School of Economics

    20.12.1903 Freda: "In a state of advanced dementia, requiring to be cared for in every way. She never voluntarily speaks. Is in fair health." next previous

    29.12 - 1903? [The year is not stated] A letter from Charlotte M. Mew to Elkin Mathews, Esq. "venturing to submit to you a MS on the Poems of Emily Brontë which I designed as an introduction to a separate re-publication of her poems which as yet are I believe only procurable - with those of her sisters - at the end of the volume of The Professor... if the idea of reprinting Emily Brontë's poems with it should at all commend itself to you." She enclosed a postage stamp for the return of the manuscript if found unsuitable. Mary Davidow (1960 page 285)

    Conversational lessons on social geography for teachers of infants by Mrs Lucy M. Harrison. London. (About 100 pages) would appear not to be by our Lucy Harrison

    1904 Charlotte 34-35
    next previous
    January: Mademoiselle The Camden art studio and Paris - August: The Poems of Emily Brontë - A change of focus, Charlotte moves from the study of various forms of resignation to the study of determined "pagan" struggle - Freda demented and spiteful

    January 1904 Charlotte Mew's story Mademoiselle in Temple Bar volume 129 pages 90-101 - In which Mademoiselle and Monsieur dissect English culture from a studio in Camden - which may suggest Anne was there before Hogarth. click for information about the magazine

    20.4.1904 Freda: "Always sits in the same position. Never speaks. Is at times spiteful kicking other patients and staff. Health fair." next previous

    10.3.1904: Marie Stopes, writing to her mother from Munich:

    "Dear Mother ... [Kenjiro Fujii] and I were to go out together on the Sunday ... the Chicks were to have met us and all gone together but at the station they never turned up so we had to go without them." (British Library, Stopes Papers quoted Ruth Hall 1977, page 49)

    20.7.1904 Freda: "Utterly demented. Takes no notice of anything and has to be looked after by others. Health fair." next previous

    August 1904 Charlotte Mew's essay The Poems of Emily Brontë in Temple Bar volume 130. click for information about the magazine
    "It was with the face of a pagan warrior that
    she confronted life and met death"
    .
    In Charlotte Mew's fiction,
    Elinor, living on and loving the moors two decades before Emily, develops and explains a similar philosophy. See also Mary Stuart, whose passion is for victory.

    Maurice Henry Hewlett (1861-1923: Novel: The Queen's Quair: or The Six Years' Tragedy London, 1904. "In The Queen's Quair we come to the first attempt in fiction at real portraiture" [of Mary Queen of Scots], an ugly portrait finely painted"... "During the century which divides" [Walter] "Scott, the father of the historical novel, from Mr Hewlett, the methods and ideals of fiction have suffered a momentous change... Scott represents a robuster, more idealistic age than ours... in The Abbot... he delights to honour, an actress moving in the highest 'class of life'... clothing her instinctively with all that traditional grace and majesty of which Mr Hewlett has cynically stripped her to expose his drenched wanton naked to the storm". (Charlotte Mew: Mary Stuart in Fiction 1912)

    Brittany Field Trips

    September 1904 Francis Wall Oliver's first field trip with students to the Brittany coast to study salt marsh vegetation. The trips were to Bouche d'Erquy (Wikipedia francais). The trips were reported in New Phytologist, including The Bouche D'Erquy in 1907 by F.W. Oliver (Volume 6, Issue 9, Page 244 - November 1907 and The Bouche D'Erquy in 1908 by T.G. Hill in Volume 8, issue 3, Page 97 in March 1909

    Francis Wall Oliver and Arthur George Tansley "Methods of surveying vegetation on a large scale" - The New Phytologist, volume 3, nos. 9 and 10, November and December 1904.

    "The methods, both of which we have recently used with success in the survey of a circumscribed salt-marsh occupying the floor of an estuary called the Bouche d'Erquy on the north coast of Brittany, may be termed the "Method of Squares" and the "Gridiron Method " respectively."

    The September excursions to the Bouche d'Erquy continued until 1908. "after 1910" Oliver "annually took his honours students for a fortnight to Blackney Point, Norfolk, to study plant life in relation to habitat conditions and raised the funds to erect the field laboratory there" (Edward Salisbury in DNB)

    Edward James Salisbury was a collaborator in these field trips and the likely author of the following limerick about Oliver:

    A certain Professor of Botany
    To save his class from monotony
    Led his students a dance
    Round a salt marsh in France
    To develop their brains
    If they've got any

    (Peder Anker, 2001, pages 16 and 256)

    "In 1904, A G Tansley and Robert Smith among others formed the Central Committee for the Survey and Study of British Vegetation, which became the British Ecological Society in 1913" (David Evans 1986, page 18)

    16.10.1904 Freda: No change whatever. Demented and spiteful. Health fair. next previous

    Sometime in 1904, The Galton Laboratory was founded at University College London. (Home Page)

    Also sometime in 1904: "'General Intelligence', Objectively Determined and Measured" by Charles Spearman published American Journal of Psychology 15, 201-293. (External link to web copy)

    1905 Charlotte 35-36
    next previous
    January: Mark Stafford's Wife - April: Freda incontinent - November: The Country Sunday - December: The London Sunday

    January 1905 Charlotte Mew's story: Mark Stafford's Wife in Temple Bar volume 131 pages 90-101 click for information about the magazine

    21.1.1905 Freda: "Sits in the same place staring in front of her, never speaking. [Unreadable word] spiteful at times. In fair health. next previous

    18.4.1905 Freda: "Stuporous [unreadable word] always in one place. Does not speak or take any interest [?] when addressed [?]. Dirty in habits. In fair health." next previous

    11.5.1905 Professor H. Marshall Ward, FRS, read to the Royal Society a paper by Harriette Chick, D.Sc., received 1.4.1905. "A Study of the Process of Nitrification with Reference to the Purification of Sewage" Later published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character (1905-1934) Issue Volume 77, Number 517. 26.2.1906

    Harry Marshall Ward, born 1854, was Professor of Botany at Cambridge from 1895 to his death. He died Babbacombe, Torquay, Devon on 26.8.1906 and was buried in Cambridge. His proposers for membership of the Royal Society (elected 7.6.1888) was Daniel Oliver

    May/June 1905 Harriette Chick "The biological limitations of the method of pure culture" - The New Phytologist, volume 4, nos. 5 & 6, May and June 1905, pp.120-123). - Online - download copy - - (Richard Ford) -

    22.7.1905 Freda: "Takes no notice when spoken to, sitting in one place staring in front of her. In fair health." next previous

    20.9.1905 Birth of a Margaret Tansley to Edith and Arthur Tansley. (Information from Dorothy Lumb. Birth registered Pancras 1b 43, December quarter 1905. She became Margaret Tomlinson, the Chick biographer, and died 9.10.1997. She was educated at the Perse School in Cambridge and Newnham, from which she graduated in 1927. She studied architecture, married her tutor and had a daughter, Anna. She was a Director of Samuel Chick Limited from about 1948 to 1956 or later. As well as her Director's fee, she received a small salary. She worked on the Victoria County History (from 1949?), photographing buildings, investigating and writing articles. After her retirement she researched and wrote the Chick family history. (external link).

    The birth of a Henrietta Tansley had been registered Pancras 1b 70 in December quarter 1904: is, apparently, not related.

    Autumn 1905 Siegfried Sassoon was a student at Clare College Cambridge (law and then history), dropping out in spring 1907. While at Cambridge he "used a letter of introduction from Edmund Gosse to meet Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum". (Knitting Circle)

    20.10.1905 Freda: [unreadable word] always in one place never speaking - At time spiteful to those near her. Dirty in habits. In fair health. next previous

    November 1905 Charlotte Mew's essay The Country Sunday in Temple Bar volume 132. click for information about the magazine

    December 1905 Charlotte Mew's essay The London Sunday in Temple Bar volume 132. Also published in Living Age volume 248 on 27.1.1906 pages 240-243 click for information about the magazine

    Sometime in 1905, Harriette Chick "at the suggestion of Charles Sherrington... Professor of Physiology in the new Thompson-Yates laboratories at Liverpool" applied for the Jenner Memorial Research Studentship at the Lister Institute. "As soon as her application became known, two members of the scientific staff implored the Director not to commit the folly of appointing a woman to the staff". She was "soon accepted on terms of equality and friendship by the apprehensive males" (Chick, Hume, Macfarlane 1971, pp 87-88

    1906 Charlotte 36-37
    next previous
    No regular outlet for Charlotte's writing after Temple Bar until 1912 - Freda doubly incontinent (July) and getting much thinner (October)

    "In the six year's before ... "The Farmer's Bride" [February 1912] nothing is known about her life except she published one other poem [Requiescat 1909] and had a holiday in Dieppe [1909, but actually Brittany] with her friend Elsie O'Keeffe (born Millard) [more likely Elsie Chick] and in Boulogne [1911] with her sister Anne." [Val Warner, 1997, page 43]
    Mary Davidow (1960 page 41) says "Letters indicate that Charlotte Mew was in Brittany in 1909, in Boulogne in 1911, in Dieppe, or thereabouts in 1913, and in Dieppe again in 1914.

    We do not know anything about Charlotte Mew in 1906 - 1907 - 1908 and 1910 ? - Although we know what was happening to Freda Mew in 1906 - 1907 - 1908 and 1909

    January 1906 Temple Bar: Number one of the new series, brought out by Macmillan. Number 10 was published in October. Charlotte Mew does not appear to have been published in the new series.

    22.1.1906 Freda: "Always sits in the same place - Never speaks or answers when spoken to. Is at all times unemployed - spiteful - In fair health." next previous

    17.4.1906 Freda: "Sits doubled up in the chair and resists any form of examination - Requires attention of others. In poor health" next previous

    20.7.1906 Freda: "Never speaks or answers when addressed - Wet and dirty and often very spiteful. In fair health. next previous

    "In 1906, Harriette Chick, at" [Charles James] "Martin's suggestion, began to investigate the process of disinfection by chemicals and heat, which lead to pioneer work in collaboration with Martin on the nature of proteins" (Chick, Hume, Macfarlane 1971, p.78

    Harriette Chick Notebook with travel journal of visit to Germany 9.8.1906 to 8.9.1906. Several blank pages between entries for 20.8.1906 and 21.8.1906. Some financial notes at the back. Wellcome Library

    16.10.1906 Freda: "Requires constant attention of others which she resists. Wet and dirty. Has recently been getting much thinner although no organic disease can be discovered, but examination is very difficult" next previous

    21.10.1906 "Always sickly", Henry Dawson Lowry (born 1869), journalist, novelist, poet, died of pneumonia and a "wasting disease" at his home, 49 Dulwich Road, Herne Hill, London. (Oxford DNB online)

    1907 Charlotte 37-38
    next previous
    Freda confined to bed from weakness and wasting

    1907-1914 The construction of King Edward 8th's Galleries, fronting Montague Place, as an extension to the British Museum. The felling of a tree, over several days, was watched by Charlotte Mew - perhaps in 1912, or the spring of 1913. The British Museum had bought all the surronding properties with a view to a massive expansion - But was stopped by protection orders.

    25.1.1907 Freda: "Stuporous, dirty in habits, never speaks or answers when addressed. Resists everything done to her by kicking and biting - Confined to bed from weakness and wasting - In poor health." next previous

    9.2.1907 Letter from May Sinclair to Otto Kyllman about watching a suffragist march in company with Beatrice Harriden, Alice Meynell and Aphra Wilson - She did not have the courage to march. (Suzanne Raitt 2000, p.107)

    15.4.1907 Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway (now part of the Northern Line) opened from Charing Cross to Golders Green (external link). This linked the original circle, north and south.

    20.4.1907 Freda: "Lies curled up in bed and never speaks. Bites at those who come near her. In poor health." next previous

    3.7.1907 Lamentabili sane (external link), the papal encyclical of Pius 10th (now a saint) condemning sixty-five modernist propositions that might have allowed a rapprochement of science (especially social science) and Catholicism.

    17.7.1907 Freda: "Has to have everything done for her by others. Spiteful and demented. In poor health [unreadable word/words]" next previous

    18.10.1907 Freda: "Eats ravenously like an animal. Bites and kicks at anyone coming near. Extremely emaciated." next previous

    15.11.1907 Meeting at Caxton Hall that led to the foundation of the Eugenics Education Society. "Unlike the Galton Laboratory.. a popular rather than a scientific institution" (Archive). It was funded largely on the initiative of Mrs A. C. Gotto [born Sybil Katharine Burney after 1881], a widow], a committee member of the Moral Education League. She was its honorary secretary from 1907-1920. Married Neville Rolfe in 1917 and died in 1955. Galton did not join the Eugenics Education Society at first - but by October 1908 he was the President. In March 1909, James Crichton Browne, the then President, was unable to give the annual address. Montague Crackanthorpe "an old friend of Galton" gave it instead, and was President from 1909 to 1911. "Mrs Crackanthorpe" was on the Council in 1910 and 1911. The Eugenics Review was started in 1909. (Sources include G. R. Searle, 1976, who says "almost the entire biological establishment joined the Eugenics Education Society". However, I have not (so far) found Francis Wall Oliver - any Chick - Blackman - Tansley or Berkhamsted Browne amongst its members.

    November 1907 "A Defence of Magic" by Evelyn Underhill, in the Fortnightly Review, pages 751-760. This was adapted and expanded to form a chapter in her 1911 book Mysticism. In 1907 she says "All rituals and ceremonies,... must have, as the rationale of their existence, a magical - i.e., a hypnotic - character; and all persons who are naturally drawn towards ceremonial religion are in this respect really devotees of Magic." See Michael Stoeber "Evelyn Underhill on Magic, Sacrament, and Spiritual Transformation" Evelyn Underhill Association Newsletter November 2003

    1907: Birth of Audrey Blackman

    1908 Charlotte 38-39
    next previous
    Freda curled up in feeble health

    In 1908, Denis Gascoigne Lillie drew a cartoon of Frederick Frost Blackman (short and plump) and Arthur George Tansley (tall and skinny) together.

    1908 May Sinclair introductions to the Everyman editions of Jayne Eyre - Shirley - Villette - and Elizabeth Gaskell The Life of Charlotte Brontë. In 1910 she provided the introduction to The Professor

    1908: Jessie Murray became Licentiate of Medicine and Surgery of the Society of Apothecaries (LMSSA). Jessie Murray took courses in experimental psychology at University College London, the first of which started in 1908 [not clear for how long] Elizabeth Valentine by email).

    James Strachey (1887-1967), later translator of Freud, joined the Society for Psychical Research. It was through this that he learned about Freud.

    Cinematograph:
    11.1.1908 Panic at cinematographic exhibition at Barnsley, 16 children killed.
    13.1.1908 cinematograph explosion at Boyestown, Pennsylvania, over 160 killed.
    The 1911 Encyclopedia article
    Cinematograph says it "enables living or animated pictures of such subjects as an army on the march, or an express train at full speed, to be presented with marvellous distinctness and completeness of detail. Machines of this kind have been devised in enormous numbers and used for purposes of amusement under names (bioscope, biograph, kinetoscope, mutograph, &c.) formed chiefly from combinations of Greek and Latin words for life, movement, change, &c., with suffixes taken from [words meaning "to see" or "to depict"]. They have also been combined with phonographic apparatus, so that, for example, the music of a dance and the motions of the dancer are simultaneously reproduced to ear and eye. But when they are used in public places of entertainment, owing to the extreme inflammability of the celluloid film and its employment in close proximity to a powerful source of light and heat, such as is required if the pictures are to show brightly on the screen, precautions must be taken to prevent, as far as possible, the heat rays from reaching it, and effective means must be provided to extinguish it should it take fire. The production of films composed of non-inflammable material has also engaged the attention of inventors."

    The Cinematograph that Charlotte Mew attended (Bastille day 1909)
    was in the open air .

    January 1908 "An investigation of the laws of disinfection" by Harriette Chick published in the Journal of Hygiene, volume 8, no. 1. pages 92-158
    This, and/or another article later in the year by Harriette and Charles Martin (Journal of Hygiene 1908; 8: pages 654-697 ) publicised the Chick-Martin Test of the efficiency of disinfectants. Their original method contaminated water containing the typhoid bacteria with 3% dried human faeces and was carried out for 30 minutes. The previous (Rideal- Walker 1903) method had tested the death rate of typhoid bacteria in distilled water for shorter, variable, periods up to 15 minutes. The killing power of commercial disinfectants was much greater in distilled water than in the dirty environments they were supposed to work in and the Rideal-Walker test discriminated against disinfectants that took longer to work. Nowadays, the Chick-Martin Test does not use faeces. (External link - See under "Method")

    27.1.1908 Freda: "Lies curled up and will not say a word or take any notice when addressed. In feeble health." [No further entry until October] next previous

    March 1908 May Sinclair and Violet Hunt collecting in Kensington as part of Mrs Pethick Lawrence's 'Week of Self-Denial' (Suzanne Raitt 2000, pp 18+110)

    24.3.1908 Votes for Women (2, page 211) contained "How it Strikes a Mere Novelist" by May Sinclair - (Suzanne Raitt 2000, p.112)

    July 1908 Wilfred Trotter (1872-1939), surgeon at University College Hospital, published "Herd instinct and its bearing on the psychology of civilised man" in The Sociological Review. This was followed by "Sociological application of the psychology of the herd instinct" in the January 1909 issue. Trotter influenced Arthur Tansley

    May Sinclair "spent the summer of 1908 motoring in Normandy and yachting in Scotland, probably with Evelyn Underhill" (Suzanne Raitt 2000, p.113). However, Suzanne Raitt also says (page 235) that Sinclair and Underhill "seem to have met sometime in 1909".

    September 1908 Francis Wall Oliver 's fifth (final) Brittany field trip

    Berlin - 21.8.1908 - Letter from Karl Abraham to Sigmund Freud: "Dear Professor, Things are moving! On the 27th the Berlin Psycho-Analytic Society will meet for the first time. For the time being, the following gentlemen (all of them physicians) will take part: Hirschfeld, Iwan Bloch, Julius-burger, and Koerber (Chairman of the Monistenbund). I believe others will soon join in. Dr Juliusburger in particular is very keen; he is Oberarzt [senior staff physician] in a private institution and is introducing psychoanalysis in spite of his superior's opposition. (external source)

    September 1908 English edition of Iwan Bloch's The Sexual Life of Our Time In its Relations to Modern Civilisation London: William Heinemann (Medical Books Ltd). Only available to the legal and medical professions. - Mental Health Timeline

    Early October 1908 May Sinclair first met Thomas Hardy: Cycled from Dorchester to Weymouth together. (Suzanne Raitt 2000, p.113)

    28.10.1908 Freda: "Exactly the same as in above note. Feeble health." next previous

    1909 Charlotte 39-40
    next previous
    February: Freda strikes - Freda bites - June/July: Charlotte in Brittany with Elsie Chick - Letters to Ethel Oliver - August: Freda in the airing court - November: Freda up daily and is all the better for it - Requiescat published in The Nation - Ella D'Arcy thinks more beautiful than any Brontë poem -

    1909 Jessie Murray became M.B. (Bachelor of Medicine), B.S. (Bachelor of Surgery). Degrees gained at the same time from the University of Durham. - Elizabeth Valentine by email). "Miss Jessie Murray" in 1918 was "M.B" and "B.S.".

    January/February 1909 Issue one of The Englishwoman. COPAC classifies it under "Women - Suffrage - Periodicals". Having her essays and poems published in The Englishwoman led to Charlotte Mew's Saturday "Studio At Home". Known works of Charlotte Mew it published were: - The Voice (poem March 1912) - Mary Stuart in Fiction (essay April 1912) - The Changeling (childrens poem February 1913) - Men and Trees (essay February and March 1913) - Péri en Mer (poem November 1913) - The Pedlar (children's poem February 1914) - On the Road to the Sea (poem June 1914). The editor of The Englishwoman from 1914 (?) was E. M. Goodman. It was founded and edited (until 1914?) by Mrs Elisina Grant Richards (Countess Elisina de Castelvecchio? Mrs Elisina Grant Richards was born about 1874 in Florence, Italy. Shown in 1901 census as married to Grant Richards, bookpublisher, born 1872, Glasgow. They were living in Great Marlborough Street with their 11 month daughter Gioia Vivian Mary E. Richards. Elisina later became Mrs Elisina Tyler. She had a son, William, by Royall Tyler (1884-1953 - American citizen) in Paris on 17.10.1910. She died in 1959). The Englishwoman was a monthly magazine that ran from 1909 to 1921 (49 volumes "Imprint varies"). The first number "February 1909" was printed on 27.1.1909 and reprinted on 30.1.1909. Volumes one to four (the first twelve months) were published by "Grant Richards". It was then published by Sidgwick & Jackson (to 1913); Evans Brothers (to 1916) and finally (to 1921) by "The Englishwoman". There is a description of a 1913 edition "Original red paper covers, printed in black, cut flush" (Edinburgh University Library). See library catalogue, University of Western Ontario. Elisina Tyler was the close friend of Edith Wharton, who lived in Paris from 1907. They met in 1912 and became close friends working on war relief charities from 1914. See Edith Wharton and the Politics of Race. [Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.116: describes as a "short-lived monthly edited by Elisaveta Allen, the discarded wife of the publisher Grant Allen". Grant Allen (1848-1899) was the author of one of the first books published (1897) by Grant Richards (Franklin Thomas Grant Richards 1872-1948)

    8.2.1909 Freda: "She takes no notice when she is spoken to. Is very spiteful and struck one of the nurses yesterday out of spite - habits dirty - health poor." next previous

    March 1909 Catherine Amy Dawson Scott "...since Henry's death. I have got back my power of writing poetry and grown a great love of Cornwall. I have also the greatest desire to push his poetry to greater recognition. Since he went on, I have been to Cornwall 4 times... I am also writing about Cornwall. It is almost as if he had combined with me in my work and that my new love of his country was in some way due to him. I have lately been very conscious of this. I long for Cornish seas and air..."

    Catherine and Marjorie (age 11) Dawson Scott in 1909. They met Charlotte Mew in May 1912. In her eighties, Marjorie wrote of Charlotte "I remember clearly the admiration and excitement that surrounded her; in my teens I loved her and her poems"

    10.5.1909 Freda: "Lies in bed and never speaks - is spiteful and bites strikes, at [times?]. Feeble health." next previous

    June 1909 Letters from Charlotte Mew to Ethel Oliver("My dear") referenced Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.272 appear to be the July letters. Penelope Fitzgerald gives a lot of unreferenced information (?) about the plans for the holiday, including saying that it was to have been a two week holiday with Anne, but that Anne caught cold. [Anne was ill]. Instead, Charlotte went with Elsie O'Keefe [It was longer than two weeks]. Penelope Fitzgerald says "more typical lady tourist's letters couldn't be imagined". (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.97) - Which may overestimate the ability of some of us to make long descriptions of our travels vivacious and informative throughout and overlooks the specific features of Charlotte's reporting, including the detailed interest that she demonstrates in the life and customs of the people of Brittany and the effort she makes to explore this.

    Sunday 4.7.1909 Guingamp procession?

    Letters from Charlotte Mew to Ethel Oliver: ("My dear")
    The letters refer to "Elsie" as Charlotte's companion. Mary Davidow (page 71) says this was Elsie O'Keefe. Elsie O'Keefe had two children by 1913, but there is no mention of Elsie's family in the letters. Another possibility is Elsie Chick. Elsie sends her love to Ethel at the end of two of the letters, including thanks for a card. Mary Davidow identifies a "Mrs Frank" as the wife of Francis Wall Oliver. There is mention (page 295) of a "lady artist" complaining about children making a nuisance, with whom "Winifred ought to sympathize!". There is no clear mention of Elsie and art - Elsie had heard "the Bazaar realized £2,000 - and the expenses were £800" (page 286). Although this could have been an art bazaar, it could also have been a bazaar to raise funds for building restoration - or something like that. Charlotte (page 291) has had a card from Ella (Ella D'Arcy?) at Landernean saying she is going to stay somewhere in Beaumont le Roger: "I hope the experience is happier than ours". She has also heard from Maggie.

    Google map

    Elsie Chick was at London University for ten years (1905/1906- 1915) studying language and literature including English, German and Icelandic. Her post-MA year studying Icelandic was after Charlotte Mew's Men and Trees in which she refers to the (Icelandic) Edda.

    Tuesday 6.7.1909 from Hotel de Bretagne, Le Conquet [ Buffalo Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 286-288] (map). They had crossed to St Malo (map) - went by train to Dinan (map) - to Guingamp (map) next day - Le Conquet - Brest (map) - Le Conquet (map) (letter). They plan to go on to Landernean - Quimper (map) (Sunday or Monday) and Audieme.

    Wednesday 14.7.1909 from Hotel du Lion d'or, Quimper (map). [ Buffalo Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 288-292] This includes automobiles and Bastille Day celebrations with a cinematograph.

    Saturday 24.7.1909 from Hotel du Commerce, Audierne (map). [ Buffalo Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 292-295]

    Also July 1909:
    The Dawson Scotts bought a house in Southall. They moved there from Cowes on the Isle of Wight.
    May Sinclair appears to have spent most of the month on Evelyn Underhill's yacht (borrowed from her), off the coast of Dorset. May Sinclair invited Thomas Hardy to join her party, but he was in London, occupied with an operatic production of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. (Suzanne Raitt 2000, p.114. See also p.236)

    17.8.1909 Freda: "Sits in airing court with a fixed stare - never speaks - is spiteful at times." next previous

    13.11.1909 Charlotte Mew's poem Requiescat published in The Nation. Also published in Living Age 2.4.1910 volume 265, page 2. It was republished in The Rambling Sailor (1929) Requiescat is also available on the web in the reservoir to John Fraser's Voices from the cave of Being - (archive copy)

    "Looking through some of Ella's old letters, I find she wrote to me three about the Requiescat... she had seen it in The Nation and wrote at first ironically - Thanking me for sending it to her (very likely! as she'd always spit on every thing I'd done-!) and adding 'it goes into my private anthology'. And in the next, 'But you are a poet which I did not know and beg you very earnestly - not to neglect the finest of all gifts. The poem was a sight realer and more beautiful than any by the Brontë sisters whose poetical genius you think so much of - go on producing" (CM/CADS12.5.1914 - Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.96).

    17.11.1909 Freda: "Has a funny way of getting up suddenly and dancing across room or airing court - has been up daily and is all the better for it." previous

    December 1909 Marriage of Margaret Robinson to Edward Thomas Browne. "On his marriage... he made his home at "Anglefield", Berkhampstead, a house with a good garden on the outskirts of the town. Here he built a special laboratory for his work, and for the housing of his numerous collections and the fine special library on coelenterates which he had got together" (1938 obituary). The National Marine Biological Library at Plymouth have several papers published by Margaret Robinson, University College London, starting in 1892, but ending in 1910.

    At the Elstree laboratories of the Lister Institute (for which Harriette Chick worked), Thomas Carlyle Parkinson died of pneumonic plague in 1909. Bacillus pestia, the organism of plague, is very dangerous. At Elstree it was used for the production of a vaccine. "It was grown in an isolated laboratory and if any worker suspected that he had received a small splash, for instance while inoculating a horse, he immediately had a bath of lysol". After this isolated bungalows were erected to house those working on the plague, to separate them from other workers. (Chick, Hume, Macfarlane 1971, pp 102-103. See death of Charlotte Mew

    1910 Charlotte 40-41
    next previous
    Between 1910 and 1915 - Anne moves into her 64 Charlotte Street studio

    Some time between 1910 and 1915, Miss Anne Mew, artist, appeared in the Post Office Directory at 64 Charlotte Street. This is on the east side of Charlotte Street and the north corner of Tottenham Street. (map)

    Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.95 says that in 1909 Anne Mew was able to rent "6 Hogarth Studios, 64 Charlotte Street". -

    The full address is "Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square". The district (after Anne and Charlotte's deaths) became known as Fitzrovia (External link). 64 is someway south of the square, which is where Horatio Cowan had his surgery. This external panorama circles Fitzroy Square and the trees in the gardens.

    In 1910, Harriette Chick moved from studying the death rate of bacteria in disinfectant to the death rate of bacteria in hot water. She showed that both processes followed a mathematical formula similar to one for chemical processes. She theorised that the sudden death of the bacteria at a certain temperature was due to the coagulation of their proteins, and that this was a similar process to the white of an egg setting as it is boiled. In 1910, 1911 and 1912, Harriete Chick and Charles Martin published a series of articles in the Journal of Physiology "On the "Heat" Coagulation of Proteins". (See Wikipedia)

    In her 1971 history, Harriette explains the philosophic, as well as the scientific, significance of this work:

    "The importance of the work done by Chick and Martin was their demonstration that the heat coagulation of protein was an orderly process governed by established chemical laws; it removed the death of bacteria by heat or disinfection from the realms of mysterious vital forces to that of a phsico-chemical reaction. The way was thus paved for the development by which proteins became regarded as giant molecules which with suitable techniques could be studied in the laboratory as profitably as simple salts" (Chick, Hume, Macfarlane 1971, p.92

    The effort was to explain life (and death) in terms familiar to physics and chemistry. A similar objective was pursued by Edith Chick's husband Arthur Tansley in his interpretation of Freudian psychology as a system of energy forces and in his concept of the ecosystem.

    This is just one of the world-views that Charlotte Mew describes and analyses. Death is like a candle being snuffed out. But, in the poem for Edith Chick (An Ending) this metaphor is turned away from phsico-chemical reactions: life's candle is "just a spark alight for her" and God knows "what's in a look you'd go to Hell to get again".

    Charlotte described the "bacteriologist"'s approach to religion in Notes in a Brittany Convent in 1901, contrasting it with the unquestining approach of the The Little Portress. The bacteriologist "drew analogies and formulated theories" to explain the old religion. In a similar vein, Charlotte Mew described an old unquestioning society based on religion as operating as an inflexible machine.

    First edition of Madcap Jane or Youth by C.A. Dawson Scott published by Chapman Hall. A short comedy about a light headed young wife of an aristocrat who runs away to be a servant. A respectable featherweight to The Story of Anna Beames (1906 - an unmarried mother) and The Burden (1908 - adultary), it was also much more popular.

    1911 Charlotte 41-42
    next previous
    June: Charlotte and Anne in Boulogne - Letter to Ethel Oliver

    1911 The Freewoman: A Weekly Feminist Review founded by Dora Marsden and Mary Gawthorpe. The concept of the freewoman is a feminist image of Nietzsche's Übermensch It became The New Freewoman by June 1913 and The Egoist in 1914. It published Charlotte Mew's poem The Fête in 1914.

    Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness by Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941). There is an online copy of the twelth edition (1930) in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. The bibliography of this includes two works be Anne Macdonell. The Preface says that "sections of the MS. have been kindly read by the Rev Dr Inge, by Miss May Sinclair, and by Miss Eleanor Gregory; from all of whom I have received much helpful and expert advice" (EU, 14.12.1910 "Feast of St John of the Cross")
    Section 1.1. "The Point of Departure" begins "The most highly developed branches of the human family have in common one peculiar characteristic. They tend to produce - sporadically it is true, and often in the teeth of adverse external circumstances - a curious and definite type of personality; a type which refuses to be satisfied with that which other men call experience, and is inclined, in the words of its enemies, to 'deny the world in order that it may find reality'."

    1911 William McDougall Body and Mind: A History and Defence of Animism. London: Methuen, 1911.

    "Quite recently Borrel of the Pasteur Institute has stated that certain animal parasites from the skin are often to be found buried in the cell masses of cancers of the skin and breast, and he thinks, that these parasites may be the carriers of some as yet unknown cancer virus, just as the mosquito is the carrier of malaria" (1911 Encyclopedia) -

    29.4.1911 William Elijah Chick born. His grandparents were Elijah (1852-1921) and Elizabeth Chick (1881 census), who were the brother and sister in law of Samuel Chick, father of the Chick sisters. His parents were William Chick (born about 1878) and Elizabeth (nee House). William the father was the second of eight children. Two sisters were born after him before Quartus. The oldest brother Elijah, born 1876, died aged 4. The birth of "Elijah Quartus Chick" was registered in Honiton (5b 30) in the July-September quarter of 1882 - But he was known in the family as just Quartus. (Information mostly from Dorothy Lumb).

    27.6.1911 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Ethel Oliver ("My dear"). From "Café Belle Vue", 10 Place Frederic Sauvage, Boulogne". Charlotte and Anne are there. [ Buffalo Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 296-298]

    July 1911 Frances Chick married S H Wood at Branscombe Wesleyan Chapel

    July 1911 May Sinclair's The Intercessor first published in The English Review. This is a ghost story about a child who felt rejected, dies, and returns. Suzanne Raitt (2000, page 134) links May's interests in ghosts to her conviction that it is impossible to leave the past behind, and that intense childhood attachments persist. Suzanne Raitt comments "Psychoanalytic theory addressed some of the same issues as spiritualism: psychic images - usually of family members - lie concealed in the unconscious like ghostly figures in another dimension, and, like a seance, an analysis calls them up."

    The International Phytogeographical Excursion in the British Isles
    Tuesday 1.8.1911 - Wednesday 6.9.1911
    Report by Arthur Tansley in New Phytologist 10 (7-8), 271-291 which online listing dates "July 1811". Download report

    Excursion started at Cambridge. On Wednesday 2.8.1911 the party went by punts and canoes to Grantchester where Edith and Arthur Tansley gave them lunch. After a tour of Cambridge Colleges, Professor Albert Charles Seward and Frederick Frost Blackman gave them dinner in St John's College.

    Excursion organised by the Central Committee for the Survey of British Vegetation formed (in 1904?) by Arthur Tansley. Its tour of the British Isles was financed by George Claridge Druce. Committee members were Francis John Lewis, Charles Moss, Francis Wall Oliver, Marietta Pallis, W. Munn Rankin, and W.G. Smith (note 64, p. 257).

    The Committee prepared a book for the visitors which was then (late summer 1911) published as Types of British Vegetation. By members of the Central Committee for the Survey and Study of British Vegetation: edited by A. G. Tansley ... With 36 plates and 21 figures in the text. Cambridge University Press. 20 introductory pages, 416 main pages. The following summary (from (Peder Anker, 2001, page 19) of the chapter on forests is relevant to Charlotte Mew's "Men and Trees"

    "The British Isles was originally covered by forests", the authors explain, but with the introduction of the human community the forests gradually disappeared, since the human community was "the natural and inevitable enemy of the tree communities of the countries it inhabits" (pages 65 and 66). The formation and degeneration of the oak forests and woodland occupy a good part of the book, which established that a forest climax "before the beginning of the historical period" had "degenerated into heathland during the last few centuries" (pages 91 and 92). Subordinate, retrogressive, or degenerating associations of woodland had been brought about by too felling of trees, grazing, and, above all, "the absence of any definite system of re-planting" (pages 130)

    The overseas guests included Frederic Clements and Mrs Clements of Minneapolis and Henry Cowles and Mrs Cowles of Chicago. As a result of the excursion "Professors Clements and Cowles... decided to arrange an international excursion in the States in August and September, 1913". Excursions in Switzerland, Belgium and Denmark, planned to coincide with the International Congress planned for London in 1915, were presumably exploded by the world war.

    18.11.1911 Ninth "Woman's Parliament". Women demonstrators moved out of Caxton Hall to go to Parliament. In Parliament Square, the police pushed them back and the women pushed the police back. Police discipline broke and the women were violently attacked. Black Friday was documented, for the Suffragettes, in The Treatment of the Women's Deputations by the Metropolitan Police. Copy of evidence collected by Dr Jessie Murray and Mr. H. N. Brailsford, and forwarded to the Home Office by the Conciliation Committee for Women Suffrage, etc Woman's Press

    Henry Noel Brailsford (1873-1958) was a journalist and socialist author. Jessie Murray met May Sinclair through the suffrage movement. In 1922 Henry Noel Brailsford launched the The New Leader, a weekly paper of the Independent Labour Party, containing a poem by Walter de la Mare and one by Charlotte Mew.

    C.A. Dawson Scott also published Mrs Noakes, An Ordinary Woman in 1911

    C.A. Dawson Scott, Nooks and Corners of Cornwall published Eveleigh Nash, London. no date. It was mentioned in the Irish "Archaeological and Literary Miscellany", edited by the Rev. P. Power, in what appears to be its 1912 edition "From England come three interesting works on British Antiquities: "Nooks and Corners in Cornwall by Dawson Scott (Eveleigh Nash, London), "The Ruined Temple of Stonehenge" by Edgar Barclay (London, Nisbett & Co., Ltd.) [Published 1911], and Part I., Vol, I., of the "Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia" (London, H. R. Lewis). The first gives a useful resume of the Celtic remains of the Cornish peninsula..." [see pdf and link page. C.A. Dawson Scott planned a "Nooks and Corners of Devon" in the same series, but it does not appear to have materialised.

    Nooks and Corners of Cornwall

    Prehistoric remains, near Padstow, lead Mrs Scott to tell how psychic powers have combined with archaeology to see the distant past. Speaking of Tregudda Gorge (p.55) she says "The Cornish tell strange stories of these places, stories of the 'little people' whom they believe to be fairies, but who are probably the neolithic dwarf race which is said to have inhabited parts of the country. They are also firm believers in psychic faculty, though they call it by other older names". She then tells how a clairvoyant had a prehistoric bone put in his hand and saw "a little brown man dressed in skins" (p.57)... Then, discussing the pre-historic cemetery discovered Helwyn Bay in 1900, she tells how she sent a tooth from it to a friend in London who was to place it in the hand of a clairvoyant. The clairvoyant had visions of the bay in pre-historic times.

    After discussing the pre-historic tombs of the toe of Cornwall (pp 84-86), Mrs Scott says that "it is hardly a matter for surprise if the people who dwell among these relics of the immemorial past still retain some of the superstitions of their forefathers... To them witches are as real as wreckers, and they cannot believe that the 'little people' - once perhaps inhabiting those subterranean passages and huts - are gone for certain, and for ever.... (pages 86-88 on fairies and mermaids)

    1912 Charlotte 42-43
    next previous
    February: The Farmer's Bride in The Nation
    March: A new regular outlet for Charlotte's writing in The Englishwoman
    The Voice - April: Mary Stuart in Fiction
    May onwards: Catherine Amy Dawson Scott and psychic readings - Charlotte meets Marjorie, Christopher and Toby.
    Summer: Sees Fontainebleau's forest road?
    Children and young people in Charlotte Mew's life at this time include:
    Sylvia Parsons born 1894
    Marjorie Scott born December 1898
    Christopher Scott born March 1901
    (girl) O'Keeffe born 1904
    Toby Scott born June 1904
    Celia Hill born 1905 - "and the rest"
    (boy) O'Keeffe born 1908
    See - Marjorie's memories May 1912 - Children's party March 1913
    See also To a Little Child in Death (1902) - poems for children (1913-1914) - To a Child in Death (1922) - On Youth Struck Down (from an unfinished elegy)
    Later children
    Margaret Cockerell born 1908
    Christopher Cockerell born 4.6.1910
    Katharine Cockerell born summer 1911

    Walter de la Mare: The Listeners and other poems published

    Auguste Maurice Barrès, Le culte du moi (new edition) Three volumes Paris, 1910-1912: Sous l'oeil des barbares 1911 - Un homme libre 1912 - Le jardin de Bérénice 1910.
    See Charlotte Mew 1913

    Catherine Amy Dawson Scott, A Dream of Daffodils: Last poems by H.D. Lowry (64 pages); arranged for the press by G.E. Matheson and C.A. Dawson Scott; with a memoir by Edgar A. Preston. London : G.J. Glaisher, 1912. - Catherine Amy Dawson Scott Beyond (Poems, 31 pages) London : G. J. Glaisher, 1912.

    Freud, S.( 1912). "A note on the unconscious in psychoanalysis". Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 26:312-318 [S.E. 12].

    External link: The Putumayo affair - Also see Charlotte Mew 1913

    Term Vitamine coined in 1912 by Casimir Funk at the Lister Institute. In a survey of the literature on beriberi, scurvy and pellagra, he used the term for an element he argued was deficient in the diet of sufferers which was vital to life. He also suggested vitamine deficiency was responsible for rickets. Other researchers used the longer term "Accessory Factors in Normal Dietaries" - See Accessory Food Factors Committee 1919

    Max von Gruber, Hygiene des Geschlechtslebens [Hygiene of the sex life] Bücherei der Gesundheitspflege Band 13, 5. Auflage, Stuttgart 1912 - (online text in German) - "The most important task of the sons is to produce healthy grandchildren. So regarded, the sex life is not an article of shameless thoughtlessness..."

    Jessie Murray took courses in experimental psychology at University College London from 1912 to 1915. She registered for a DSc in the subject in 1918, she died before it was awarded. Elizabeth Valentine by email). - [Suzanne Raitt 2004 says that in 1913, Jessie Murray was taking a "post-graduate" degree in psychology at University College London].

    3.2.1912 Charlotte Mew's poem The Farmer's Bride published in The Nation. "When us was wed she turned afraid Of love and me and all things human; Like the shut of a winter's day. Her smile went out, and 'twasn't a woman-- More like a little, frightened fay". [fay = fairy]. "The women say that beasts in stall Look round like children at her call. I've hardly heard her speak at all."

    "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..." (Opening paragraph of Alida Monro's memoir, 1953)

    Tha Farmer's Bride was, of course, republished in The Farners Bride (1916). It was chosen for Twentieth Century Poetry in 1933 and, possibly, 1929.

    March 1912 Charlotte Mew's poem The Voice published in The Englishwoman Volume 13, page 304. With minor modifications, this was re-published as "The Call" in 1929. It is not clear who made the modifications. It is printed as The Call in Collected Poems (1953) (Where is concludes the volume) and Collected Poems and Prose (1981).

    With its possible psychic interpretations, I would expect this poem to have particularly interested Catherine Amy Dawson Scott, who met Charlotte Mew in May 1912. A note from Charlotte to Mrs Scott, appended to The Sunlit House says "I will not be psychic". The date of the note is not given.

    April 1912 Charlotte Mew's essay Mary Stuart in Fiction. published in The Englishwoman volume 14. 40

    "It is... less on their adventures and achievements than on their power of personification that the survival of great personages depends. So, for all slips of theirs, their poets and their commentators, Jeanne d'Arc still stands for Inspiration, and Mary Magdalen for Devotion, and Mary Stuart for Romance"... But, in "painting her as the woman of one passion" one must not "mistake the passion". She is not an "erotic derelict". A contemporary says: "The thing that most she thirsteth after is Victory, so that for victory's sake payne and perylls semeth pleasant unto her"... "Mary Stuart, rejecting failure, has not gone by. Losing the kingdom she so much coveted, she has captured another in the imagination of posterity. A great achievement gained at the cost of a great disaster. For had she won the crown she fought for, Mary of Scotland and England, setting back the clock for Europe, must have turned to the world another face"


    13.5.1912 Charlotte Mew met Catherine Amy Dawson Scott, who lived, with Horatio F.N. Scott, her doctor husband, in Southall. (Just west of the Hanwell County Asylum). In 1926 Catherine Dawson Scott published a book of spiritualist messages, with an introduction by May Sinclair. Her sessions at Southall, where Charlotte was a subject, may have been as much an exploration of mind and body issues as literary events.

    Marjorie was 13 in December 1911
    "In May 1912 Sappho met Charlotte Mew, described her as 'an imp with brains' invited her to tea and, as soon as she had read some of her verse, became an ardent admirer. For two years, until July 1914, Sappho's and Charlotte's friendship was warm and, since she liked children, it spilled over into the poet's friendship with us, so that I, then 13, [in December 1911] remember her very well. She was a queer, elfin like woman, shy and yet gay when she felt at ease, but often abrupt, 'farouche' and obstinate, and she could be downright rude, yet was attractive and loveable too. As she got to know us, she several times took us all three to the Zoo, or the Coliseum... and we were delighted to go. (Marjorie Watts 1987, p.55) .... Between May 1912 and July 1914 Sappho received 23 letters from Charlotte. Then the correspondence ceased abruptly, and I think the reason is clear. Charlotte was a lesbian, and Sappho was unaware of this." (Marjorie Watts 1989, p.58)

    According to Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 (p.112), as a result of public readings of her poems at Mrs Dawson Scott's house, "Charlotte, by the end of 1912, was in a modest way becoming one of the known" However, she says that "All details about these reading are from Mrs Dawson Scott's diaries for 1913" (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.273). Charlotte (in March 1913) says that publication in The Englishwoman is making her known.

    Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.111 gives this description of the readings: Charlotte

    "would never begin until she felt like it. Once she got started... Charlotte seemed possessed, and seemed not so much too be acting or reciting as a medium's body taken over by a distinct personality. She made slight gestures and used strange intonations at times, tones that were not in her usual speaking range. During In Nunhead Cemetery Sappho had 'to pinch herself black and blue'... to keep back the tears... At the end Charlotte gave her characteristic toss of the head... the painter Kathy Giles, took this as a signal and asked some questions, but Charlotte, looking over her head into the distance, seemed hardly conscious of them, and Miss Giles was told "she's not here yet".

    Freud's 1909 lectures repeatedly use the word "absence" to describe a certain hysterical state. This is the (French) word Joseph Breuer used for the states that patient "Anna O" (Bertha Pappenheim) went into in the early 1880s. The first Breuer and Freud paper was published in Vienna in January 1893. It was first commented on in Britain, a few months later, by Frederic William Henry Myers (1843-1901) of the Society for Psychical Research (Which May Sinclair joined in 1914). Myers related the changed states of consciousness found in hysteria, hypnosis and psychical phenomena. Myers suggested several levels of "subliminal" consciousness that could receive information inaccessible to the "supraliminal" (conscious) mind. (See R. D. Hinshelwood's Psychoanalysis In Britain)

    June 1912? At some time before February 1913, Charlotte was in a village near Fontainebleau whose road through the forest inspired a passage in Men and Trees (March 1913) and her poem The Forest Road

    1.7.1912 First Royal Command Variety Performance took place at the Palace Theatre, London, in the presence of King George 5th and Queen Mary. Famous musical hall performers appearing included "little Tich" (Harry Relph). I do not know if Margaret Cooper accompanied at the piano, but in July 1913 Charlotte Mew suggested Catherine Dawson Scott was mistaking her for little Tich or Margaret Cooper at the piano

    1913 Charlotte 43-44
    next previous
    Anne and Charlotte on the underground - Charlotte introduced to May Sinclair - February: The Changeling, a poem for children - Men and Trees 1 - March: Letter to Mrs Hill - studio At Home - Men and Trees 2 - Exspecto Resurrectionem - June: Charlotte in Dieppe writing The Fête - July: Letter from May Sinclair mentions Charlotte's play and compares her poems to D.H. Lawrence - Letter to Mrs Hill discussing Fame; The Quiet House; Ken and In Nunhead Cemetery - Charlotte, with May Sinclair's help, seeking publication - Letter from May Sinclair mentions Pêcheresse; The Sunlit House; Ken; In Nunhead Cemetery; The Quiet House; and Beside the Bed - October: An Old Servant - November: Péri en Mer - Medico-Psychological Clinic - December: embroidery for May at Christmas

    Bernard Hart (1879- ), was Physician in Psychological Medicine to University College Hospital from 1913 to 1947. He was the author of The Psychology of Insanity Cambridge University Press, 1912, 172 pages, and, later of The Modern Treatment of Mental and Nervous Disorders Manchester University Lectures; No. 21: Manchester University Press, 1918. About 1914, he introduced Arthur Tansley to the thories of Freud.

    "her intensely creative period from Spring 1913" [Val Warner, 1997, page 43]
    I am not clear what she bases this on - But it may refer specifically to Charlotte's poetry and assume that she wrote her poems complete shortly before we read about them in a letter or read them in a publication. If there was an intensely creative period, would it not stretch from 1912 to 1916? And how do we deal with the problem (which Val Warner herself identifies) that we know so little about the period after Temple Bar closed and before The Farmers Bride was published?

    March 1913 advertisement in The Equinox, Copied from reviews page

    POETRY AND DRAMA
    (FOUNDED 1912)

    A QUARTERLY Periodical devoted to the criticism and appreciation of Modern Poetry and Drama of all countries, published in the 15th March, June, September and December, at the Poetry Bookshop, 35 Devonshire Street, Theobald's Road, London, W.C.

    Each issue contains: Articles on subjects relating to Poetry. Original work by modern poets. Criticism of important current books of poetry, biography and the art of the theatre. A survey of American, French, Italian, and German literature, and the Drama.

    Annual Subscription 10s. 6d. net, post free. Separate copies, 2s. 6d. net each.

    Every on interested in Poetry should visit THE POETRY BOOKSHOP, at 35 Devonshire Street, Theobald's Road, W.C., three minutes from Kingsway or from the British Museum. There is no obligation to buy, seats are provided, and customers are welcome to inspect the books at their ease. They will find on the shelves copies of nearly every book of English and American poetry published, as well as most of the important reprints and new editions of standard authors and a large selection of foreign books and periodicals. Orders for foreign books or periodicals of any country are promptly and carefully executed. For further particulars 'phone 2248 Holborn, or call any time between 10 and 6 at:

    THE POETRY BOOKSHOP
    35 DEVONSHIRE STREET, THEOBALD'S ROAD, W.C.

    Biochemistry and ecology

    5.2.1913 First meeting of the Biochemical Club at which new members were elected. A rule that the club should be for men only had been overturned in 1912. "Three of the seven new members were women; they were Dr Ida Smedley - later Dr Smedley-McLean, the first woman Chairman of the Committee (1927), Dr (later Dame) Harriet Chick and Muriel Wheldale. The designation 'Club' was considered more appropriate to a group without its own scientific Journal. The saga of the acquisition of the Biochemical Journal is discussed later" (Goodwin, T.W. 1987)

    Some time in 1913, Edith Chick's husband, Arthur Tansley, helped to found the British Ecological Society "to promote and foster the study of Ecology in its widest sense." The 1911 Britannica defined oecology, or ecology as "that part of the science of biology which treats of the adaptation of plants or animals to their environment". Although the word was coined (in Germany by Ernst Haeckel) in 1866, it had not entered the 1900 English Dictionary - See Science - Chicks - Francis Wall Oliver - Arthur Tansley - Edith Chick - Brittany field trip 1904 - 1923 textbook - 1924 British Empire Exhibition - Ecosystem 1935 - Anker, P. 2001 -

    Anne and Charlotte on the underground

    "Once when [Mrs Dawson Scott] was sitting in the Edgware Line train [not Edgware until 1922], absorbed in thinking about Charlotte, both the Mew sisters unexpectedly got into the carriage, as though thought-willed at Golders Green. 'She is tiny... uses amazing slang, and has ungainly movements - a queer mixture. Has a wonderful young soul, neither quite boy nor quite girl. Under the curious husk is a peculiarly sweet, humble nature" (diaries, early 1913. Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 pages 117 and 274)

    Catherine Amy Dawson Scott's diary early spring 1913: I went to Evelyn Underhill's and met May Sinclair and asked her to come and see me. She agreed and I then asked Charlotte, who resisted, saying she didn't want to meet clever people. Eventually agreed to come. May arrived first and was annoyed, as she wanted to talk to me. However, when Charlotte came I persuaded her to read to us The Farmer's Bride, and May was so won over that she deserted me and they went away together"

    "May declined Charlotte's invitation to visit owing to a previous engagement, and it was probably not until July that the two were much in contact" [Val Warner, 1997, page 46]

    Wednesday 12.2.1913 Catherine Amy Dawson Scott and Mrs Lowry (presumably Mrs Scott's aunt, Winifred Lowry) visited Charlotte Mew

    Thursday 13.2.1913 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott [BF CM-CADS 1913]

    Friday 14.2.1913 Charlotte Mew attended the "intellectual orgy" of Mrs Scott's, with "the usual misgiving" though "very gratefully"

    17.2.1913 Charlotte Mew's poem for children The Changeling published in The Englishwoman pages 134-136. Charlotte sent this poem to Alida Monro, as a companion to The Farmer's Bride, and both were read at The Poetry Bookshop in November 1915. It was one of the poems in the 1916 collection. The web copy at poetry archive is based on Methuen's 1921 anthology

    Another poem intended for children, The Pedlar, was published in the same journal in February 1914. (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.116)] - But Charlotte shared other poems with children.

    same edition: 1913 Charlotte Mew's essay Men and Trees 1. published in The Englishwoman volume 17. 50 pages 121-128 - See British Vegetation Survey above

    February 1913: May Sinclair's novel The Combined Maze published. The first known letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew is a reponse to one Charlotte wrote about the book.

    February 1913: D. H. Lawrence, (David Herbert Lawrence, 1885-1930) Love poems and others London: Duckworth - Biography at University of Nottingham. Contents: Wedding Morn - Kisses in the Train - Cruelty and Love - Cherry Robbers - Lilies in the Fire - Coldness in Love - End of another Home Holiday - Reminder - Bet Hennef - Lightning - Song Day in Autumn - Aware - A pang of Reminiscence - A White Blossom - Red Moon Rise - Return - The Appeal - Repulsed - Dream Confused - Corot - Morning Work - Transformations - Renascence - Dog-Tired - Michael-Angelo - Violets - Whether or Not - A Collier's Wife - The Drained Cup - The Schoolmaster - A Snowy Day in School - The best of School - Afternoon in School - The Last Lesson - A Bibliography of D.H. Lawrence

    Wednesday 12.3.1913 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Mrs Hill. [ Buffalo Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 298-299]. There are three letters to Mrs Hill in Mary Davidow 1960. This, 24.7.1913 and l4.1.1915. The originals are in the The Poetry Collection, University of Buffalo. Mrs Hill has not been identified. This letter indicates that Mr and Mrs Hill had a daughter "Celia". The birth of a Celia Florence Hill was registered Hampstead in the September Quarter of 1905. (volume 1a, page 601). The letter also says Charlotte is "already thinking when you come to town of a children's party with Mrs O'Keefe's (née Millard) 2 Irish villains, Celia and the rest". At London University, Francis Wall Oliver worked with Thomas George Hill (13.2.1876 - 25?.6.1954) who was a Botanist Scientist living in his parent's house in Hanover Square in 1901. (Wikipedia on Thomas George . Other people's suggestions are: Mrs Hill had been Charlotte Mew's teacher. (She taught mathematics). (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.271: "Mrs Hill was related by marriage to the Hill family, for whom Fred Mew had built Ivy Lodge, Hampstead, where Belsize Lane meets Haverstock Hill" [That is, just north of the Hampstead Vestry Hall - Possibly based on Amice Lee's letters, but I do not think the two Hill's are the same. [Note Arthur William Hill who married Florence Lavinia Hammond in Islington in the March quarter of 1901. volume 1b page 397, is not the same, as Arthur William Hill, demonstrator in botany, still single on 31.3.1901, later connected to Kew. He never married (DNB)]

    "I have been writing polite replies to the 'little human praise' I have certainly not missed lately -- all the time struck by the generosity of people who having done big things themselves can find such kind things to say to my little ones. I am now 'Charlotte' to Mrs Sappho (Dawson Scott) and largely appreciate my new acquaintance because of the children in her home - a delightful girl of 14 who does the housekeeping and dressing of her mother to leave her free for literary work - a boy of ten and a regular footpad some years younger -- though I am not allowed to see much of them and am already thinking when you come to town of a children's party with Mrs O'Keefe's (née Millard) 2 Irish villains, Celia and the rest. The Doctor won't give me sleeping stuff so I am fighting it out myself with the selfish resolution to put business and domestic cares absolutely behind me for a time. I have a studio At Home on Saturday, to see new people, which invitation I owe to the Englishwoman things"
    [At this time, just her poems The Voice and The Changeling and her essays Mary Stuart in Fiction and the first part of Men and Trees had been published in The Englishwoman? "An At Home" (phrase in use since the mid-18th century) is a reception, between certain hours, of visitors who care to call. Who, or where it was, advertised that Charlotte (and Anne) were free to meet new people, is not clear. One such "At Home" may be the start of Men and Trees]

    March 1913 Charlotte Mew's essay Men and Trees 2. published in The Englishwoman volume 17. 51. pages 311-319

    [Berg Collection catalogue says it has twenty-nine letters from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew from 17.3.1913* to 25.8.1916] - Others probably include 4.7.1913* - 17.7.1913* - 29.7.1913* - 13.8.1913* - about August 1913* - 18.9.1913 - 17.10.1913* - 1.1.1914 - 8.3.1914* - 14.5.1914* - 6.1.1915* - 22.4.1915* - 9.6.1915 - 27.12.1915* - 4.8.1916* - [The ones with asterisks* are reproduced, in whole or in part, by Mary Davidow 1960

    Monday 17.3.1913 Letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew: "I'm so glad you like The Combined Maze. I never thought you'd read it!" [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 299-300]

    Saturday 22.3.1913 Charlotte Mew's poem Exspecto Resurrectionem published in Living Age page 706. [Reprinted from another source?]

    28.3.1913 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott. "I broke into 'Hawthorns' a fortnight ago and found Mrs Mayer upstairs , alone and too weak to make herself tea or write a postcard. She is better now but this sort of thing goes on and I don't like to think of it." [BF CM-CADS 1913] [Mrs Mayer was a mutual friend of Charlotte and Mrs Scott - see 13.5.1914 - She kept Charlotte informed about Mrs Scott after they lost contact in 1914.

    Wednesday 9.4.1913 Article in The Guardian about the new 6d political weekly called The New Statesman to be launched the following Saturday. The magazine published Charlotte Mews' essays An Old Servant (1913) and The Hay Market (1914). It is, possibly, the magazine that rejected Ken on grounds of social policy. The editor of The New Statesman from 1913 to 1931 was Clifford Sharp.

    June 1913 Dawson Scotts moved to ["Harden"] The Bank House, 6 King Street, Southall - There until war started in August 1914. "In the early summer of 1913, we had a house warming party... to which thirty people, mainly writers, came down from London" (p.53)

    June 1913 Charlotte Mew on holiday alone in Dieppe, where she wrote some of the long poem The Fête. (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 pp 124 and 126] (See 13.9.1913 and 6.4.1914).


    June 1913: The Freewoman renamed The New Freewoman. Harriet Shaw Weaver the principal shareholder. Rebecca West had contributed book reviews to The Freewoman and now became regular contributor to The New Freewoman and soon afterwards its assistant editor.

    Volume 1, Number 1. Sunday 15.6.1913. 20 pages, stapled. Contains "Trees of Gold" by Rebecca West, "Social Atavism in California" by R. W. Kauffman, "Mind in Movements (Woman's New Era)" by Francis Grierson, "The Eclipse of Woman" by F.R.A.I., "Concerning Free Love" by Theodore Schroeder, etc. - Number 3. Tuesday 15.7.1913 contains "The Belief in Personal Immorality" by Rebecca West, "The Eclipse of Woman: White Slavery" by F.R.A.I., and contributions by Godfrey Blount, Huntly Carter and others. - Number 4, Friday 1.8.1913 contains "At Valladolid" by Rebecca West, "The Eclipse of Woman" by F.R.A.I., "The Status of Women in Early Greek Times" by Edward Carpenter, and contributions by Reginald W. Kauffman, Huntly Carter, and others

    West introduced Ezra Pound, who was then the foreign correspondent for Poetry, to Marsden and Weaver. In August 1913, Ezra Pound gained control of the literary content of the magazine. He was engaged in an aggressive conflict with Harriet Monroe over the editorial policy of Poetry


    Thursday 26.6.1913 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott "Its very nice of you to ask me down again but I simply must not". Comments on their poems. Charlotte has read the last pages of Mrs Noakes. [BF CM-CADS 1913]

    Sunday 29.6.1913 Charlotte Mew went to see an exhibition of the artist Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) at the Burlington Fine Arts Club.

    4.7.1913 Letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p.300] - She would like to see more of Charlotte's poems (apart from The Farmer's Bride) and would like to "send something to the English Review"

    13.7.1913: A notice in the Observer announcing a forthcoming meeting to plan a " medico-psychological clinic in London for the treatment of diseases by means of psycho-therapy" asking for subscriptions.

    17.7.1913 Letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew. From 4 Edwards Square Studios West. [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p.301] "My dear Miss Mew: The play is splendid and so - with some differences - are all those poems. I don't know any living writer (with, possibly, the exception of D.H. Lawrence) who is writing things with such profound vitality in them. And you have qualities of tenderness and subtleties that he has not. I know exceptions will be taken to the apparent lack of metrical technique in some of the poems. All I can say is that when you read them to me the lack was not apparent; they sounded perfectly right..." She will have three typed copies of the unpublished one's made to send to Edward Garnett, Austin Harrison and Ezra Pound. "Mr Pound says that Poetry (published in Chicago) will pay you better than the English Review, but there is no reason why you shouldn't appear in both." She urges Charlotte to send her short stories to Mr Harrison, suggesting they could be "published anonymously, or under another name, if you don't want to sign them"

    The play is splendid: "She wrote a one-act play in Cornish dialect, The China Bowl, which shows her sense of drama at its best; Violet Vanbrugh intended producing it, but circumstances prevented her from doing so, and to Charlotte's intense disappointment no more was heard of it. I think from what she said this was one of the great disappointments of her life, and, characteristically, being disappointed she threw the MS into a drawer and left it there." (Alida Monro 1953, pp xviii)

    18.7.1913 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott "Miss Sinclair said she would send my things to Edward Garnett - Harrison and Pound". [BF CM-CADS 1913]

    19.7.1913 Letter from Julia Turner in The Lancet regretting that a notice had been placed in "the lay press before the medical press had been communicated with".

    24.7.1913 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Mrs Hill, discussing her poems. [ Buffalo Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 301-303] In 1953 Alida Monro quoted from this letter (Alida Monro 1953, pp xvii-xviii)

    The letter discusses Fame (published 1914) - The Quiet House (see 29.7.1913) - Ken (see 29.7.1913) - and In Nunhead Cemetery (see 29.7.1913). These all became part of The Farmer's Bride in 1916. With the exception of Fame, this may have been their first publication.

    Charlotte Mew was seeking publication - she says Ken was rejected by editors (or an editor) because "they believed in the segregation of the feeble-minded".
    See race improvement - dictionary and timeline and 1913 Mental Deficiency Act
    The three magazines that appear the most likely candidates for rejecting Ken are The Nation - The New Statesman and The Englishwoman The friendship of The Englishwoman's editor with Edith Wharton may make that a likely candidate.

    The letter also contains two of Charlotte Mew's few references to Cornwall. She says she cannot see her way to accepting Mrs Scott's invitation and then, later, that she is "dying to escape to the sea and can't bear to think of Newlyn Harbour in the sunshine." From which I infer that she knows Newlyn Harbour in the sunshine. The printed letter head is "9 Gordon Street. Gordon Square, WC"..

    The four poems discussed include two, Fame and The Quiet House, that are situated around the stairs of a house. They are subjective rather than objective poems, but the architectural structure of Charlotte's life is there - the nursery - the birds and trees outside - the intensity of colour - death and people going away - fame and longing for something else. And, in Fame, there are reminiscences of older, simpler, poems - Such as "larks that cannot praise us, knowing nothing of what we do", which seems to hark back to Mary Lamb's poem for children "The Boy and the Skylark". (external link to discussion of The Quiet House). These are the inner poems. The other two are written from the outside, one from the open space of the cemetery, the other from the world outside the church, the convent, the castle, the house and the asylum. But they are intimate, not distant, poems. She meets Ken closely on the "half-lit stair" of his house and, from then to the end of the poem, each looks into the other's eyes. And in the cold wet cemetery the passion is hot: "I will burn you back, I will burn you through, Though I am damned for it we two will lie And burn, here where the starlings fly To these white stones from the wet sky..."

    29.7.1913 Letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew. [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p.303] "Mr Harrison seems to have run away with the idea that all your poems have been published elsewhere, because of the notes attached to some of them... Please tell me whether I should be correct in saying that   Pêcheresse,   The Sunlit House (see 1895),   Ken,   In Nunhead Cemetery,   The Quiet House , and   Beside the Bed   have not been published, or indeed, sent to any other editor yet. Mr Harrison is intensely interested and wants short stories. I haven't seen Ezra Pound yet. He's been away. But he's lunching with me tomorrow; and I'll let you know about Poetry

    July 1913 to September 1913 Arthur George Tansley and Edith Tansley were the Cambridge members on the International Phytogeographic Excursion studying significant natural environments in the United States. Download New Phytologist report He wrote its report including: "Future generations will be slow to forgive us for the wholesale and often wanton destruction that goes on at present almost unchecked by any general feeling that it is an antisocial crime..." See Charlotte Mew on Men and Trees. [ External source]

    13.8.1913 Letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew. [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p. 304] She had sent five poems to Austin Harrison

    about August 1913 (no date) Letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew. [Alida Monro Collection Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p. 304] "I return the MSS I don't want and Harland's letter and some loose notes that were enclosed with the MSS. Ezra Pound has sent three of the poems to Poetry (Chicago) - Suzanne Raitt (2000, page 187) quotes more from this letter than the brief content in Mary Davidow: ... what I meant was that your duplicate mss would be safer with you than accompanying me in my wanderings ... as for 'Good-bye' I never dreamt it would be interpreted as 'Good-bye for ever'! But it is my own fault if - going to Yorkshire and Scotland for two months - I write as if I were bound for the North Pole. In November - I hope, we meet, if you are not to disgusted with my style!"

    26.8.1913 18.7.1913 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott [BF CM-CADS 1913]

    Last week of August 1913 Charlotte Mew wrote a verse with "the bat and the owl and the dusk all in". Could it have been

    "You know, at dusk, the last bird's cry,
    And round the house the flap of the bat's low flight,
    Trees that go black against the sky
    And then - how soon the night!"

    September 1913 edition of The English Review contained a short story "Khaki" by May Sinclair. Khaki enlists in the Boer War and proves he is in love with danger. (Suzanne Raitt 2000, page 159

    Tuesday 2.9.1913 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott Christopher (I infer) offered to swap on of his funny poems for one of Charlotte's sad ones. He sent a poem he had written when he was much younger. A handsome offer, Charlotte replied, "any blighter can make you cry but only the very elect can make you laugh". Se sent him a poem that, by inference, would have been On the Road to the Sea [BF CM- CADS 1913]

    4.9.1913 Charlotte Mew attempted to give up smoking.

    Saturday 6.9.1913 Day Charlotte Mew hoped to take Marjorie, Christopher and Walter to the zoo.

    Saturday 13.9.1913 Day Charlotte Mew hoped to visit the Dawson-Scott children, if they were unable to go to the zoo the Saturday before.

    13.9.1913 Mrs Dawson Scott wrote in her diary "Charlotte is writing a poem about the soul of a boy of 17" [That is The Fête. (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p.124]

    18.9.1913 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott "1 fortnight ago - (to the day)- of non-smoke has reduced me to a state of misery & stupidity beggaring description -- but fairly apparent I imagine from this scrawl. je veux mourir." [BF CM-CADS 1913]

    18.9.1913 Letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew. (Suzanne Raitt 2000, page 187 - Who says Sinclair apologised for not inviting Charlotte Mew to Yorkshire, explaining that she needed time to work on the opening chapters of The Three Sisters. "I'm not behaving worse to you than to the other friends I wanted to have here")

    28.9.1913 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott "I've looked out the few (excessively dirty) French novels I have -- and if you'd care to have Loti's Marriage de Loti -- Ramuncho - Roman d'un Spahi -- Turgenev's Bulgare, Flaubert's Mme. Bovary. Marguerite Andoux's Marie Claire - I will send them down when Carter Paterson has got over his strike. [BF CM-CADS 1913]

    16.10.1913 Charlotte Mew's essay An Old Servant published in New Statesman - Generally taken to be a description of Elizabeth Goodman, the features fit what is known about her life reasonably well.

    17.10.1913 Letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew. [Alida Monro Collection Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 304-305] -"disgust with Austin Harrison for refusing your poems!" - Suzanne Raitt (2000, page 187) references more to this letter than the brief content in Mary Davidow: "Sinclair promised in October that when the clinic was 'fairly launched' the two would spend a Sunday together". "Mew's offer to address circulars for her was met with a determined negative".

    November 1913 Charlotte Mew's poem Péri en Mer (Cameret) published in The Englishwoman 20, page 136. Péri en Mer is perished at sea. Camaret sur Mer is in Brittany. (map)

    Google map

    Cameret sur Mer is on the south of the Rade De Brest. Le Conquet, which Charlotte visited and wrote about in 1909, is at the northern entrance to the Rade. John Newton (2000, p.105) says that Charlotte "had briefly visited Camaret-sur-mer during a holiday in Brittany in 1909". He gives no reference, and I can find no evidence in Charlotte's surviving letters. I would suppose that Charlotte knew the port personally, but from visit/s we do not have letters about.

    7.11.1913 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott. She proposes to invite 1) an expert in Early English (female) 2) an expert in Old Irish (male) or 3) Mrs Clement Parsons to meet Mrs Scott when she visits the Studio after an operation. [BF CM-CADS 1913]. The expert in Early English would be Elsie Chick and the expert in Old Irish, James George OKeefe.

    19.12.1913 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott. [BF CM-CADS 1913]

    20.12.1913 Letter from Charles Spearman in The Lancet, stating that: "Occultism is not only alien to the spirit of the proposed clinic; it is in direct contradiction of it". (Quoted Suzanne Raitt 2004).

    26.12.1913 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott "Yes - the book was - is - for you - but an enclosure (also for you) must have gone in Mrs Hill's package of books and toys and I may get it back. Four days of directing envelopes and doing up parcels from noon till midnight - with only an hour or two's sleep between must be my apology for mixing things up. My sister could not get an hour off from her work even on Xmas Eve - so I had to do her shopping too this year and what I could for her when she got home dreadfully fagged -- and ill with a chill got by working in a freezing room. Her boss is a first-class devil -- and though again, I am credited witih a more or less indifferent front to these things -- the fact is that they cut me to the heart." [BF CM-CADS 1913]

    In the autumn of 1913, the Medico-Psychological Clinic was established by Jessie Murray and Julia Turner. One of the clinic founders and financial supporters was May Sinclair, one of Charlotte's letters to whom "includes an offer to address envelopes for the Clinic" (Val Warner 1981 p.x). The clinic started informally in Jessie Murray and Julia Turner's house at 14 Endsleigh Street (near Gordon Street where Charlotte Mew lived) The clinic moved to its own premises at 30 Brunswick Square in July 1914 where it sought "to provide at one convenient centre several of the different forms of treatment, both medical and psychological, that have proved useful" in working with "functional nervous diseases and ... functional disorders accompanying organic diseases". An in-patient annexe at 34 Brunswick Square opened in 1916, and in 1917 the annexe expanded into 33 Brunswick Square, with the addition of a special residential unit for shell-shocked soldiers. - The clinic closed in 1923. The clinic was often called, informally, the Brunswick Square Clinic. Information on the clinic is mostly taken from Suzanne Raitt 2004. For background see R. D. Hinshelwood 1991 and 1995 and War and the Practice of Psychotherapy: The UK Experience 1939-1960 by Edgar Jones.

    Associated with the clinic, or its training institute, at one time or another were Hugh Crichton-Miller (founder of the Tavistock Clinic) - Charles Spearman (Professor of Psychology, University College, London) - Percy Nunn (Chair of Education at the same university) - L.T. Hobhouse, (first professor of Sociology at the University of London) - W. H. B. Stoddart (Superintendent of Bethlem) - William McDougall (Reader in Mental Philosophy at Oxford) - Charles Myers - Francis Aveling (Professor of Psychology, King's College, London) (Suzanne Raitt 2004)

    Christmas 1913: Charlotte Mew embroidered a cloth as May Sinclair's Christmas present. Sydney Cockerell gave Frederick Frost Blackman a very expensive book.

    1914 Charlotte 44-45
    next previous
    February: The Pedlar: another poem for children - The Hay Market - The Forest Road written? - April: Charlotte in Dieppe again - Letter to Ethel Oliver - May: The Fête published in The Egoist - The Smile in The Theosophist - Fame - June: On the Road to the Sea - Pêcheresse - Last country summer until after the war - Mrs Dawson Scott withdraws to Cornwall - war - May Sinclair excited by war

    23.12.1913 First issue of The Egoist: An Individualist Review. London [Changed format of The Freewoman. January to June 1914, Editor: Dora Marsden. July 1914 to December 1919, Editor: Harriet S. Weaver. At this time, the American poet, Ezra Pound, was reshaping the journal more and more as a modernist literary review. (External link to notes to the James Joyce exhibition at the University of Tulsa)

    Thursday 1.1.1914 Letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew. (Suzanne Raitt 2000, page 188) "dear little cloth with... birds and beasts and fishes"... [She will call in early January] "Don't stay in. I shall be in your neighbourhood anyway".

    Saturday 17.1.1914 Postcard from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott [BF CADS 1914] - A plan for Evelyn Underhill and Kathie Giles and Mrs Scott to visit Gordon Street at 4.30 on Saturday 28th [February?]

    17.1.1914 Letter to May Sinclair about £500 she intended to make available for the Medico-Psychological Clinic ((Suzanne Raitt 2000, page 137)

    February 1914: Charlotte Mew's poem for children The Pedlar published in The Englishwoman volume 21 page 160. There is (slightly inaccurate) web copy at web books - another web copy (same mistakes?)

    Thursday 5.2.1914 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott [BF CADS 1914]. Charlotte is reading Joseph Conrad's novel Chance slowly, because she does not want to finish it. [She has read, at least, to the penultimate chapter]. "I am giving up smoking again and as I write I weep!"

    Saturday 14.2.1914 Charlotte Mew's essay The Hay Market published in New Statesman.

    Weblink to 1862 map showing Cumberland Hay Market - Haymarket, where the Theatre Royal is and where the essay starts, takes its name from a market for hay and straw that opened in the 17th century, before being moved to Cumberland market (the main subject of the essay) in 1830. On this map, the Theatre Royal is marked by a circle near the centre of the map and Cumberland Market is on the northern border, east of Regents Park, above where it says "A50". See British Library web and also A Topographical Dictionary of England, Samuel Lewis, 1831 on Alan M. Stanier's website. "The markets for hay and straw are held three times a week in Cumberland Market, near the Regent's Park; Portman Market, Paddington; at Smithfield, Whitechapel, and Southwark." Mogg's New Picture of London and Visitor's Guide to it Sights, 1844 The nearest underground station to Cumberland Market is Great Portland Street which is about 10 minutes to the South West. Camden Leisure Link. In 1913, William Roberts had a studio in Cumberland Hay Market - and then worked in Fitzroy Square. A "block of studios just built, in a blind street off Camden Town" features in Charlotte Mew's Mademoiselle.

    I first thought this was about a market on the Isle of Wight. Possibly based on memories of the Beast Market, St James Square, Newport. It contains one of Charlotte Mew's few references to the island

    18.2.1914 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott

    Val Warner, 1997, page 46 says that The Forest Road was written in February 1914. It had been discussed by friends before 8.4.1914. There is a Fontainebleau road in Men and Trees (1913) "stretching away world without end between the infinite black wall of trees". The poem may first have been published in 1916

    Sunday 15 (Thursday 19?).2.1914 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott [BF CADS 1914]

    Sunday 1.3.1914 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott [BF CADS 1914] Miss Sharp, Miss Giles, Miss Underhill. Miss Giles has painted Catherine's portrait. Charlotte proposes Margorie attend a University College Musical on Tuesday 10.3.1914.

    Sunday 8.3.1914 Letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew. [Alida Monro Collection Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p. 305] Similar to previous letters, it begins "My dear Miss Mew" and ends "May Sinclair".

    Tuesday 10.3.1914 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott [BF CADS 1914]. The Fete and Pound and Co. Mrs Moore only wants "short things". Charlotte appears to refer to herself (in good humour) as a "performing monkey" at events organised by Catherine

    Tuesday 10.3.1914 (evening) University College Musical 8pm-10pm

    Thursday 12.3.1914 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott [BF]. "The only thing I have no mercy for is hardness and deadness - and this lady has been kind to me" [Speaking of Ella. See Requiescat above. Occasion is Ella's appreciation of the Fete. Material on Anne "her own very definite gift - all going to seed" because of over-work.

    Saturday 14.3.1914 Private viewing at Royal Society of British Artists. Charlotte hoped Miss Giles would go with Anne.

    Monday 16.3.1914 Catherine Amy Dawson Scott wrote:

    "I think this ought to be a marked day in our lives. Charlotte came down to read her poems to Evelyn Underhill and Kathie Giles. Charlotte sat with the little table before her, and on it were her papers and cigarettes, and she smoked, and she smoked all the time and, in her wonderful way, read us 5 poems. It was an enchanting hour! She was a little nervous when she began, but after her first poem forgot herself. At the end Evelyn Underhill turned to me with 'Magnificent'.

    And Kathie said, 'I will go to the ends of the earth any time to hear your Charlotte tell her poems - she is a modern piper, and I will follow her piping'." (Marjorie Watts 1987, pp 56- 57)

    Saturday 21.3.1914 The New Weekly, volume one, number 1. This included the first publication of "The Year's Awakening; a poem" by Thomas Hardy, as well as work by John Galsworthy, Edmund Gosse, E.M.Forster ("Adrift in India") and Edward Thomas. It was edited by Rolfe Arnold Scott-James (21.12.1878-3.11.1959) Poems published by Charlotte Mew: Fame (30.5.1914) and Pêcheresse (25.7.1914). The New Weekly ceased publication with the war. It ran for five months. Scott James enlisted 1914-1919, but Charlotte Mew wrote to him 10.2.1916. Scott-James wrote an article "The New Weekly: An Episode in Literary Journalism" in The London Magazine March 1956.

    Monday 30.3.1914 Charlotte read to Mrs Moore her "first attempt at unrhymed stuff". [The only poem in The Farmer's Bride that does not rhyme is The Forest Road] - Charlotte does not "care for it".

    Wednesday 1.4.1914 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott [BF CADS 1914] - Spending the afternoon helping a friend [Elsie Chick] "clear up" her MA thesis on Old English Poetry "about which I know nothing".

    Friday 4.4.1914 Charlotte Mew hears from Mrs Moore that she thinks Scott James will take "some of" the verses.

    Sunday 5.4.1914 Charlotte Mew in Dieppe again.

    Monday 6.4.1914 "Monday afternoon I spent in a high garden (up a great flight of steps) overlooking the quay".

    Tuesday 7.4.1914 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott from Dieppe. [BF CADS 1914] She mentions Florence Mary [Parsons] being shocked that Charlotte did not open a book "the whole time I was there"

    Wednesday 8.4.1914 [Letter from Charlotte Mew, At the Hôtel du Commerce, Dieppe to "My dear" [Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 believes to be Ethel Oliver] [ Buffalo Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 305-287] In 1953 Alida Monro quoted from this letter (Alida Monro 1953, p.xvii), but said it was from Boulogne in 1911.

    "...heard from Mrs Scott today when they start for Cornwall. Dr Scott says the Forest Road was so deeply realised that it made him feel the writer was mad! - a professional point of view!"....

    "I heard from Normandie (a very polite note) that they would do me for 8/s., but really one must be here. The Square is a pure delight and when one hasn't too many holidays, it makes all the difference to be in the right place. And I should never have done the Fête verses if I hadn't been here last year. One realizes the place much more alone I think."

    Just before she left London she had heard that her poems Fame and Pêcheresse had been accepted by The New Weekly. (See Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 pages 132-133 and 275)

    Friday 24.4.1914 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Marjorie, Christopher and Walter [BF CADS 1914]

    Friday 1.5.1914 Charlotte Mew's poem The Fête published in The Egoist - The Egoist

    The war years changed many things in Charlotte Mew's life: Including stopping her trips to France. The poems that Alida Monro groups together as "Early Poems" (some of which are from France) as well as those she groups as "Poems from France" may all date from before the war. "Poems from France" (with dates of first known publication) are The Narrow Door (1916) - The Fête (1916) - Pêcheresse (1914) - Jour Des Mortes (1916) - Madeleine in Church (1916) - Le Sacré-Coeur (1921) - Monsieur Qui Passe (1929).

    See Aglaë

    The war years may have confined Charlotte Mew largely to the London area. in April 1919 she wrote that she had not seen "summer in the country" since 1914.

    An alleged rupture between Charlotte Mew and Catherine Dawson Scott is dated just before the start of the war. Whatever the personal substance to this suggestion, war also disrupts relationships, and this may have happened true of some of Charlotte's other relationships.

    Friday 8.5.1914 Charlotte Mew's story The Smile published in The Theosophist volume 35.

    Tuesday 12.5.1914 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott

    Tuesday 12.5.1914 Mrs Moore persuaded Charlotte Mew to "spout my verses to a friend of hers".

    Wednesday 13.5.1914 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott [BF CADS 1914] This letter mentions that Mrs Mayer had given her a "long eulogy of Eulalia" (Ulalia - Mrs Scott's unpublished masterpiece, finished July 1912) - The changed spelling, matching eulogy, is a play on words to complement Mrs Scott: Eulalia is well spoken.

    Thursday 14.5.1914 Letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew from 1 Blenheim Road, NW. [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 307-308]. Unlike the earlier letters, it begins "My dear:" and ends "Always yours, May Sinclair". See 1915 [ Theophilus E. M. Boll suggests that Charlotte Mew attempted a sexual assault on May Sinclair at the time of the 14.5.1914 letter. If she did, it seems to have made no discernable difference to their relationship. Suzanne Raitt (2000 page 190) suggests that if this alleged assault ever happened, it was after August 1916].

    Tuesday 19.5.1914: 4.30 Day that May Sinclair proposed (14.5.1914) that Charlotte Mew should "try your luck again... when I've asked the Aldingtons and Evelyn Stuart-Moore. It will be awfully nice if you'll come"

    Thursday 21.5.1914 University College Musical

    Friday 22.5.1914 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott [BF CADS 1914] - From which I conclude that Mrs Scott and Marjorie accepted Charlotte's invitation to a cold supper followed by a trip to the musical, the day before. Marjorie lost a "precious book" which, it seems, Charlotte returned.

    Saturday 30.5.1914 Charlotte Mew's poem Fame published in The New Weekly page 334

    June 1914 Charlotte Mew's poem On the Road to the Sea published in The Englishwoman volume 22 pages 300-302. It was not included in the 1916 collection, but was in 1921. There is a web copy at web books The poem was discussed by Florence Hardy and Charlotte Mew, who suggested that it might be clearer (or darker) if these words were put at the head of it: La beauté des jeunes femmes est distribuée sur les diverses parties. Quand elles vieillissent, la beauté se fixe sur leur visage [The beauty of young women is distributed through all their parts. As they grow older, the beauty is fixed in their face]. The poem in The Englishwoman does not specify the gender of the two people in it, but the poem in the second edition of The Farmer's Bride has the line "I who make other women smile" instead of "I who make others smile"

    Saturday 13.6.1914 Possible date of issue of The New Weekly in which Leonard Woolf wrote a review of Freud's Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), recently translated into English by Abraham Arden Brill - "In preparation", Leonard Woolf had also read The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), tranalated by Brill the year before, "and what particularly struck him was Freud's 'wide imaginative power', his 'great subtlety of mind, a broad and sweeping imagination more characteristic of the poet than the scientist'" (external source). Both books had been published in London and New York.

    Friday 26.6.1914 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Catherine Amy Dawson Scott [BF CADS 1914] - Charlotte says she must get the Caddis-Worm, but must also read the Life of Francis Thompson which she has had for a week without time to read. [Mrs Scott's The Caddis-Worm is about Catherine Blake who submits to her bullying doctor husband until circumstances allow her to achieve independence for herself and her children. (Arthur St John Adcock)] The next correspondence I know with Charlotte Mew is 1917.

    Arthur St John Adcock, in 1928, says that one of Mrs Dawson's sons had delicate health and that, shortly before the publication of The Caddis-Worm in 1914, she took him to a little known part of Cornwall where they lived and slept outdoors for a "long sojourn". This came natural to them because (he says) Mrs Dawson Scott was descended from Johnny Armstrong of Gilnockie, whose mother was a gypsy. The stay stimulated a series of novels set in Cornwall, beginning with Wastralls in 1919 - Marjorie Watts, in 1987 (chapter 13), says that her mother was speculating in the value of land at Constantine Bay, in Cornwall, and designed and built a bungalow on one of the strips of land she bought on a lane called "The Wastralls". This was completed in "the summer of 1914" and called "Wastehills". At Easter 1914 the family "camped" in the nearly completed bungalow. Mrs Dawson Scott appears to have mainly lived there until shortly after the outbreak of war in August 1914 when she took a series of lodgings in London as the base for her organisation of the "Women's Defence Relief Corps".

    July 1914

    Alleged rupture between Charlotte Mew and Catherine Amy Dawson Scott

    Friday 3.7.1914 Postcard from May Sinclair to Mrs Scott, giving directions to her home 1 Blenheim Road, St John's Wood, and hoping for a visit about 4 "so that we can talk".

    Sunday 12.7.1914: Mrs Scott: "Spent afternoon and evening with May Sinclair. She is a dear, so gentle, conscientious, anxious - and so clever. A very sympathetic personality. She must have been a very pretty girl - she looks pretty still. I had thought we had nothing in common, but we talked like old friends"

    Marjorie Watts (1987) says "On that day Sappho learned that Charlotte had been bothering and annoying May. This was a great shock she wrote:"

    Mrs Scott continued: "All the geniuses I have met have been unsound sexually ... Ella d'Arcy was immensely over-sexed, practically a prostitute. Charlotte is evidently a pervert. Is then genius merely one form of sex? Genius creates, just as sex does, and in genius perhaps the sex instinct is always atrophied, flawed, damaged, because all the real stuff has gone into the genius"

    Saturday 25.7.1914 Marjorie Watts (1987): "we all went down to Cornwall for the summer holidays, after which, the war disrupted our lives. There is no evidence that Charlotte and Sappho had any contact [until 1917] ... although Charlotte and May Sinclair remained friends.

    Charlotte Mew told Mrs Hill (12.3.1913) that her main interest in the Dawson Scotts was the children. Mrs Scott was concerned to protect her children against perverts (see Noel Coward in 1918). If she suggested to Charlotte that she should keep away from her children, that would explain Charlotte not continuing writing

    Saturday 25.7.1914 Charlotte Mew's poem Pêcheresse published in The New Weekly page 174. The pêcheresse (sinner - female) will not confess her one night of love [not sex] - she cherishes it. Written before 29.7.1913. The poem was re-published in the 1916 collection.

    The last verse is:

    "Just so the long days come and go,
    Yet this one sin I will not tell
    Though Mary's heart is as frozen snow
    And all nights are cold for one warmed to well.
    But, oh! ma Doué! the nights of Hell"

    ma Doué = mon dieu = my God, - but as said in Brittany. Searching the web for it brings some interesting pictures: April 1895 - another (not Brittany) - Brittany box bed - Breton photographer

    Sylvia Parsons would recite the last line in comment on her nights.

    August 1914 C.A Dawson Scott's story The Purse of Fortunatus - A Turkish Story published in The Theosophist volume 35, p.724 - [She also made two contributions during the war]

    Val Warner (1997, p. xvi) suggests that "after July 1914 Mew apparently published nothing in magazines during the war years, until July 1919. In 1915 she added the last stanzas to Madeleine in Church and probably wrote the short story Spine". Charlotte wrote "The Gipsy" on the manuscript. Val Warner thinks it was probably intended for Henry Savage's The Gypsy. On grounds of style, she also dates The Wheat at this time.

    "Tansley was studying the relation between Alpine and Mediterranean vegetation in the Alps when the war broke out... Tansley discovered he was too old to enrol as a soldier and that there was hardly any teaching at the universities, so he was assigned to do routine clerking in one of the government ministries. In his leisure time he cultivated a friendship with two young psychologists named Wilfred Trotter and Bernard Hart, who introduced him to the work of Freud" (Peder Anker, 2001, page 19)

    Purity in danger - Edith to the rescue

    I dreamed that I was in a sub-tropical country, separated from my friends, standing alone in a small shack or shed which was open on one side so that I looked out on a wide open space surrounded by bush or scrub. In the edge of the bush I could see a number of savages armed with spears and the long pointed shields used by some South African native tribes. They occupied the whole extent of the bush-edge abutting on the open space, but they showed no sign of open hostility. I myself had a loaded rifle, but realised that I was quite unable to escape in face of the number of armed savages who blocked the way.

    Then my wife appeared in the open space, dressed entirely in white, and advanced towards me quite unhindered by the savages, of who she seems unaware. Before she reached me the dream, which up to then had been singularly clear and vivid, became confused, and though three was some suggestion that I fired the rifle, but with no knowledge of who or what I fired at, I awoke.


    May Sinclair and the First World War - a two page extract from Suzanne Raitt 2000
    25.9.1914 to 13.10.1914 May Sinclair in Belgium with a voluntary ambulance group.

    1915 Charlotte 45-46
    next previous
    Spring: Cousin Richard marries - January: Letter to Mrs Hill - Charlotte on the grief of war - Reading aloud and discussing the draft of her poem about a prostitute with May Sinclair - May and June war poems - June: May Sinclair compares Charlotte to imagists and encourages her to publish her poems - Iron-grey suite - Death of cousin Fanny - November: reading of The Changeling and The Farmer's Bride at The Poetry Bookshop. Charlotte in low spirits - Harold Monro suggests a book of her poems - Birth of nephew Peter

    Frederick Cayley Robinson (1862-1927) produced murals (four panels) for Middlesex Hospital from 1915 to 1920. (external source) - They were commissioned (1910 or 1911) by the South African millionaire Sir Edmund Davis on the themes of "Orphans" and "The Doctor". The first orphan was completed in 1915 (Simon Reynolds. Oxford DNB online). See article by J.H. Baron 1994 - Sydney Cockerell took Anne Mew to see on 6.11.1918

    In the January/March quarter of 1915, Richard P. Mew married Margaret Crump at Hastings. The birth of a Peter Mew (born 22.12.1915) was registered on the Isle of Wight in the January/March quarter of 1916. Richard Percy Mew, and his wife, were alive in 1958, when both shared memories of Charlotte with Mary Davidow. He may have died about 1966. Peter Mew was at "Regent House, Circular Road", Telephone Seaview 2105 in 1964 and at "Heathway, Buckbury Lane, Staplers, Newport" Telephone 3667, from 1965 to 1971. The (1884?) photograph of the Mew sisters was reproduced in 1978 courtesy of "Peter, John and Richard Mew". The death of Peter Mew (born 22.12.1915) was registered on the Isle of Wight in April 1995.

    Monday 4.1.1915 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Mrs Hill: -

    "I seem in the way of poetical criticism now, as yesterday Miss Sinclair turned up with a French poem of her own and we had three hours 'with the poets', ourselves included"

    Much of the letter is about Mrs Hill's poems about the war and about the anxiety of a mother (Mrs Crackanthorpe) and wife ("an old servant") about their men going to war. A. [Anne?] is spending a "cruelly wet week-end at Berkamstead". Charlotte is "so glad" that Mrs Hill has "found someone to take Celia" and hopes "Mr Hill isn't fagged out".

    In a 1918 letter, Florence Hardy says Mrs Crackanthorpe was a great friend of Charlotte's who would help her if she could. I think she is Blanche Alethea Elizabeth Crackanthorpe (born Holt about 1847), the wife of Montague Hughes Crackanthorpe, barrister and eugenicist, who had just died. They lived in 1881 at 29 Rutland Gate, London and in 1900 at 65 Rutland Gate. From 1888 they had their country seat at Newbiggin Hall, Westmoreland. Before 1888, when they inherited Newbiggin Hall, their name was Cookson. Francis Galton lived at 42 Rutland Gate. In the 1915 letter to Mrs Hill, Charlotte says that Mrs Crackanthorpe's son "went out" on 17.10.1914 and came back wounded on 17.12.1914. I think this is their youngest son, Oliver Montague, (22.4.1876-11.8.1934) who was a Captain in the Border Regiment (Carlisle). The body of the eldest son, Hubert Montague, born 12.5.1870, was pulled from the river Seine on 24.12.1896. He was a writer involved in The Yellow Book amongst other projects. The middle son was Dayrell Crackanthorpe who was British Chargé d'Affaires at Belgrade in 1914.

    Wednesday 6.1.1915 Letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew. [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p.310] Similar to subsequent letters, this begins "My dear Charlotte" and ends "Love, always yours, May Sinclair". [Compare above]. "...Finish -- finish your Courtesan" [Madeleine in Church?] "She's magnificent. The last verses are all there -- coiled up in a lobe of your brain asleep and waiting to be waked -- just like darling Tommy" [May's black cat] "in his basket". Presently you'll hear them stirring in their sleep and soon after, the poem will finish itself. I'm a little like you (in this) that I can't tell how fine a thing is till I've shut myself up alone with it -- but even as you read the last poem I could see how great it was. I shouldn't say 'even', for you read furiously well: I never knew anyone who could get out the passion of a thing as you can. But this time I felt that it was there -- depths and depths of passion and of sheer beauty..."

    Tuesday 19.1.1915 Miss Dorothy Chick, surgeon, left Paddington Station for the Serbian front.

    February 1915 May Sinclair's short story "The Pinprick" published in Harper's Magazine (London and New York)

    13.4.1915 Death of Lucy Harrison. Some of the information about her is taken from Lucy Harrison 1855 to 1915, a booklet about her produced by The Mount School.

    Spring 1915 Typhus on the Serbian front. 40% of those who caught it died.

    April 1915 Australian troops arrived at Gallipoli December 1915 Australian troops withdrew from Gallipoli - Beriberi, a deficiency disease, amongst Australian troops evacuated from Gallipoli led to Harriette Chick finding suitable supplies. Dried egg and Marmite were sent (Chick, Hume, Macfarlane 1971 p.126)

    22.4.1915 At sunrise, gas (chlorine) was used (by German forces) as a weapon on the Western front, for the first time. This was during the "second battle of Ypres" (April 1915-May 1915). "Losses during the Second Battle of Ypres are estimated at 69,000 Allied troops (59,000 British, 10,000 French), against 35,000 German, the difference in numbers explained by the use of chlorine gas." (external source)

    22.4.1915 Letter from May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew from Reeth, Richmond, Yorkshire: [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 310-311] "I liked those three stories of yours immensely -- especially Mark Stafford's Wife. It is one of the few good tales of that sort. Your style in this story reminds me of Henry James, and in Mademoiselle of Henry Harland..." Charlotte has read another story [not old] to May that May describes as "miles better"... "much more concentrated"... "entirely free of any 'flavours' but your own". There is no indication of what this is.

    1.5.1915: A special imagist number of The Egoist included a poem "After the Retreat" by May Sinclair and an essay (pages 77-80), "The Imagists Discussed" by Harold Monro, critical of imagist poetry.

    The two following poems by Charlotte Mew may not have been published until 1929. A manuscript and a typescript of the first are both dated 23.5.1915.

    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

    26.6.1915 T.S. Eliot married Vivian Haigh-Wood 1889-1947

    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)

    1916 Charlotte 46-47
    next previous
    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

    February 1916 May Sinclair's Tasker Jevons - The Real Story published by Hutchinson. Published in New York as The Belfry

    May Sinclair spent most of 1916 in Yorkshire working on A Defence of Idealism

    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

    [Probably best to refer to this as the "second 500" to distinguish from the "new edition" in 1921 - which was followed by a "third edition" in 1929]

    The 1916 edition (and the second 500) was what we might now call a paperback, or even a magazine. The 1921 edition was a what we might now call a hardback, bound in boards. "Paper wrappers" does not mean a dust jacket. It is a thick paper or thin card binding (depending on how you describe it!). I have a fragile copy of the second 500 which I am pleased has survived so long. It was not designed to last. My copies of the 1921 and 1929 editions are reasonably robust books. OLDIS has useful definitions of wrapper and chapbook.

    The 1916 and 1921 editions have the poems in the same order, but the type, page layout, page numbers, and some punctuation, differ. The 1921 and 1929 editions also differ from one another, but the differences are not so pronounced. See editions of 2000.

    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.

    21.12.1916 Death of Daniel Oliver, Ethel Oliver's father. Mary Davidow says that Winifred and Ethel Oliver moved to 2 The Grove, Isleworth (Middlesex) after the death of their parents. I do not know when Hannah Oliver died. (map). The Grove is to the west of Kew Gardens. It is now in a conservation area. See external website.

    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.

    1917 Charlotte 47-48
    next previous
    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: Siegfried Sassoon wounded - subsequently sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital, near Edinburgh, suffering from Shell Shock. He resumed fighting in the spring of 1918. A head wound in July 1918 ended his army service. His first article in the Daily Herald was 2.4.1919 and he met Charlotte Mew in May 1919

    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"

    1918 Charlotte 48-49
    next previous
    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]

    27.6.1918 Siegfried Sassoon's first volume of (anti) war poems Counter-Attack published. Heineman, London. Thirty nine poems. Price 2/6. 1,500 copies printed. A soft cover and poor quality binding and paper. - Sydney Cotterell wrote to Sassoon in praise of it on 6.7.1918 [Cockerell Diaries - BF]

    Summer 1918: May Sinclair, E.M. Delafield, G.B. Stern, Geoffrey Holdsworth and Noel Coward stayed in the neighbourhood of the Dawson-Scotts in Cornwall. G.B. Stern (nicknamed Peter) came down in July and stayed on a farm. Geoffrey Holdsworth (who G.B. Stern married) and Noel Coward had written to G.B. Stern admiring her novels. They came to visit her and stayed on another farm. They had some of their meals with the Dawson Scotts. The day before Noel Coward arrived, Sappho was warned about his homosexuality. She explained "as much as she could" to Marjorie and told her to "keep a protecting eye" on Toby "then a good looking and charming 14 year old". Mrs Scott had "a horror of any kind of 'perversion'." - Marjorie Watts (1987) chapter 16.

    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

    [Berg Collection catalogue says it has 13 letters from Florence Hardy to Charlotte Mew from 24.9.1918 to 27.5.1925

    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

    20.11.1918 Gabriel (William Park) Atkin and Siegfried Sassoon meet. Sassoon described December 1918 to June 1919 of his life as "First seven months of my affair with Gabriel. A fair amount of poetry done. Interest in Herald job"

    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.

    Charlotte also gave a copy of her 1921 "new edition" to Florence.

    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]

    1919 Charlotte 49-50
    next previous
    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

    January 1919 Serialisation of May Sinclair's novel Mary Oliver: A Life began in The Little Review. Book published later by Cassell in London and Macmillan in New York.
    The novel is semi- autobiographical. See July 1919 - December 1919

    In 1919 Harriette Chick became the Secretary to the new Accessory Food Factors Committee set up by the Medical Research Committee and the Lister Institute. The first monograph produced (1919) was called Report on the Present State of Knowledge Concerning Accessory Food Factors (Vitamines). The Wellcome Library catalogue lists a 107 page book with this title. A bookseller (Richard Ford) lists a seven page HMSO pamphlet (also 1919) by "Harriette Chick and others" called The Importance of Accessory Factors in the Food: Some facts concerning nutrition for the guidance of those engaged in administration of food relief to Famine-stricken districts. He comments "This pamphlet spreads word of the "new" knowledge about vitamins to a world in recovery from World War 1. One of the authors, Harriette Chick, helped spread the word to Vienna and Eastern Europe between 1919 and 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.

    From April 1919 to February 1921, The Athenaeum was edited by John Middleton Murry

    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)

    Friday 2.5.1919 Sydney Cockerell met the Hardys somewhere

    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 - BF: "Will you let me bring Siegfried Sassoon to tea with you on Friday next week, or would you like it better to be taken out to tea to meet him?"]

    Friday 16.5.1919 Day that Sydney Cockerell asked to bring Siegfried Sassoon to tea - Or take them all out to tea.

    Saturday 17.5.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] Poems by an earlier Charlotte he has introduced her to.

    Monday 19.5.1919 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell: She writes, of his ability to experience such enthusiasm, "I felt much the same when I first found Jefferies and Henry Vaughan but I don't remember anything like it since."

    June 1919 Siegfried Sassoon's Picture Show was a privately printed collection 34 poems, mostly anti-war. A public American addition with extra poems was published in 1920. Siegfried Sassoon described June 1919 to January 1920 of his life as "Very little poetry. Climax of bad health and discontent with G. [Gabriel Atkin]. Dissatisfaction with Herald job, and life in town"

    Wednesday 11.6.1919 A book review by Charlotte Mew in The Daily Herald. [I do not know the subject. It is not in her collected works. Nor do I know if there were any others.]

    15.6.1919 Letter G.B. Stern to May Sinclair about the autobiographical content of Mary Oliver (Suzanne Raitt 2000 pp 19 - 44 - 216 - 240)

    Peace treaty with Germany signed at Versailles on Thursday 19.6.1919 included provision for reparations

    July 1919: Charlotte Mew's poem Sea Love published on the last page (32) of the first number of The Monthly Chapbook. Sea Love was republished in the second edition of The Farmers Bride in 1921 and in Modern American and British Poetry in 1922. Alida read it on the wireless on 24.8.1926. It was chosen for Twentieth Century Poetry in 1933 and, possibly, 1929.


    Alida Monro reproduced this corrected manuscript of Sea Love in the 1953 Collected Poems, p. xviii. The manuscript is now in the [ Buffalo Collection, along with another one that does not have corrections.

    Twenty-Three New Poems By Contemporary Poets being The Monthly Chapbook Number One, Volume One July 1919. With poems by John Alford - Herbert Read - W P R Kerr - Walter De La Mare - Osbert Sitwell - H D - Siegfried Sassoon - D H Lawrence - F S Flint - S Sitwell - W J Turner - Rodney Pasley - Harold Munro - T Sturge Moore - Edith Sitwell - Robert Nichols - R Holman - Rose Macaulay - Douglas Goldring - Frederic Manning - W H Davies - Richard Aldington - Charlotte Mew.

    6.7.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] He writes from the Hardy's house (Max Gate). He (and his wife) invite Charlotte to Cambridge, but the next letters are about her inability to go because of illness.

    Wednesday 9.7.1919 Death, in the morning, of Sylvia Parsons. Later the same day, Florence Parsons wrote to Charlotte, and told her that the funeral service would be at 11am on Saturday 12.7.1919 at St Saviours Church, Warwick Avenue. On 23.7.1919, Florence re-read Charlotte's letter of sympathy and wrote to her a letter from which the details of Sylvia's illness are taken. She will be returning to London on 23.9.1919 and hopes Charlotte will visit her.

    Wednesday 9.7.1919 Letter from "Your loving, F. Parsons" to "My dear Charlotte" (above) [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p.334]

    Sunday 13.7.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] Charlotte has been unwell.

    Wednesday 16.7.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] Charlotte is ill.

    Wednesday 23.7.1919 Letter from "Yours F. P." to "My dear Charlotte" (above) [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p.334-335]

    25.7.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] He cannot visit the day after. Hopes Charlotte is better.

    24.8.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] Siegfried Sassoon has shown him the Poetry Bookshop publication poem. He wants to see the poem she wrote out for Thomas Hardy [Which is? The next poem they discuss is Song. Perhaps this had already been written out for Hardy's birthday book?]

    J. Howard Woolmer had a copy of the second 500 of The Farmer's Bride "with Mew's then unpublished poem "Love, Love Today" written out on the verso of the title page in Siegfried Sassoon's hand" (Woolmer 1988. A16a)

    28.8.1919 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell - [Berg Collection - Writing about Song she says it was "written for music, and not quite 20th century!" and "perhaps I shall one day put an air to it" (Newton 2000, p.118)

    30.8.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] About the writing of Song

    Monday 1.9.1919 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell.

    9.9.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] More about the writing of Song

    Saturday 20.9.1919 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell

    "two days ago my favourite cousin descended on us with the sudden announcement that she was going into a convent.."

    The favourite cousin appears to have been Gertrude Mary Mew and to have become Sister Mary Magdalene. Mary Davidow (1960 page 109), who met her, says "Sister Mary Magdalen, Charlotte Mew's 'favourite cousin', reported that were it not for Confession, Charlotte would have become a Roman Catholic quite readily."

    Saturday 27.9.1919: [Not Sunday 7.9.1919] Charlotte Mew: The Cenotaph (BBC copy) Westminster Gazette

    Cenotaph: empty tomb. This one "will stand in our Market-place".
    See above 19.7.1919
    Aftermath website discusses the poem in the context of other poetry written in reflection on the war. Mary Davidow (1960 page 93) says that Siegfried Sassoon "praised the poem highly". She is probably basing this on the letter of Sydney Cockerell. Siegfried Sassoon made his own copy of the poem. It would seem likely to have been salient in his thoughts when he wrote, in 1924, that the future of civilisation struggles to survive in the eyes of poets. The cult of self, criticised in Men and Trees (1913), is, in The Cenotaph, represented as that which could destroy civilisation - not the basis of civilisation as Auguste Barrès (and many others) had argued.

    Late September 1919: Start of National Rail Strike that prevented Florence Hardy visiting London and Charlotte Mew. The strike was over by 11.10.1919.

    2.10.1919 Thomas Hardy's 79th birthday, for which his poet friends prepared a book.

    5.10.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF]

    12.10.1919 Mrs Frances Wood (Frances Chick) died, aged 35, at 21 Endsleigh Street. This is the same address that her sister, Dorothy Chick, died at earlier in the year. Cremated at Golders Green. (Family Bible: Watts boxes). - See above

    13.10.1919 Siegfried Sassoon's War Poems published. Heineman, London. "Of these 64 poems, 12 are now published for the first time. The remainder are selected from two previous volumes" [The two previous being Counter Attack and Picture Show

    about 18.10.1919? Siegfried Sassoon delivered the bound copy of poems to Thomas Hardy that had been prepared as a birthday tribute.

    22.10.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF]

    Friday 24.10.1919: Charlotte Mew's poem Song published in The Athenaeum page 1058. "Love, Love to-day... Wise maids know how soon grows sere The greenest leaf of Spring". - The poem was written for music, and it found its music: "Love, love today my dear [music] : song" (No. 2 in F) music by Laura G. Lemon, words by Charlotte Mew, was published London: Bosworth in 1922 [Aberdeen University Library] The Berg Collection has a copy of the poem hand-written and signed (no date) by Charlotte Mew. The 1919 poem may also be the "Song" that Mary Davidow's 1960 bibliography says was published in the The Literary Digest (New York) 17.1.1920. It was republished in the second edition of The Farmers Bride in 1921. It was included in the American anthology Modern British Poetry and the British A New Anthology of Modern Verse (1941)

    Another poem that Charlotte Mew called Song was published in 1902

    28.10.1919 Letter from Florence Hardy to Charlotte Mew. [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 336-337] She has been to visit a niece of Thomas Hardy's first wife, in "an asylum at Woodbury" [Devon - I cannot identify]. "We have just read your poem in the Westminster -- The Cenotaph." Both think it very fine. She thanks Charlotte for the address of Miss Jacobs, a typist, who has done some typing for Florence "splendidly".

    28.10.1919 Letter from Thomas Hardy to Charlotte Mew. Thanking her for "the beautiful poem you wrote in the volume made up by my poet friends". [identified? as Love, Love to-day]

    31.10.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF]

    Autumn 1919 Harriette Chick and Elsie Dalyell (external link) went to Austria (Vienna) to investigate the possibility that diseases were caused by vitamin deficiencies. (Chick, Hume, Macfarlane 1971 p.155)

    The Vienna Medical School (external link) had been cut off from scientific developments in the western world during the war. (Chick, Hume, Macfarlane 1971 p.155)

    The science of radiography had advanced sufficiently to enable the expert to make a precise diagnosis of rickets from X-ray pictures of the growing ends of the ling bones" (Chick, Hume, Macfarlane 1971 p.157)

    November 1919: Siegfried Sassoon's second? visit to the Hardys. [Next in February 1921]

    5.11.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] Sends her a note from SS [Siegfried Sassoon], who "does not take the trouble to copy out a poem as long as the Cenotaph unless he is genuinely moved by it"... "Shame on you for not having sent me Margaret Sackville's article". [(Lady) Margaret Sackville - Children's poet, peace campaigner and aristocratic friend of the Labour leader, Ramsey MacDonald. See 22.12.1921 and January 1922]

    11.11.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF]

    Monday 17.11.1919 Possible date of a letter from Charlotte Mew to Florence Hardy which starts "The Royal Society of Literature has sent me a ticket for this week's meeting, and Mr Cockerell tells me I owe this to your kind thought. It is a very kind one... I shall go to hear Gosse on Wednesday and think how nice it was of you to remember and give me the chance...". Mary Davidow (1960) dates the letter 17.10.1919. That was a Friday. We have not traced a lecture by Edmund Gosse, but he chaired a lecture on 19.11.1919. [Florence and Charlotte both wrote for children]. [Berg Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 335-336]

    Children's dreams: "one little boy dreamed his mother washed him and put him through the mangle, but when she began to iron him, he woke up. But I'm afraid neither Labour nor Capital nor the 'New Germany' could see the point of it!" [George Young's The New Germany appears to have been published early in 1920. Its content may have been based on his reports from Berlin in The Daily News and Leader

    Wednesday 19.11.1919 Charlotte Mew may have gone to hear a lecture at the Royal Society of Literature. The list of Papers 'read before the Society' includes: "November 19th, 1919. Edmund Gosse, Esq., C.B.,in the chair. A Paper was read on Wordsworth, and his Life's Work, by the Rt. Hon. Lord Charnwood, Hon. Treasurer." [See some helpful people] I believe Lord Charnwood is Godfrey Rathbone Benson (1864-1945)

    Springtide of Life: Poems of Childhood (Heinemann, 1918) was a selection made from the work of Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) by Edmund Gosse and illustrated by Arthur Rackham. In his introduction, Edmund Gosse quotes Wordsworth "Heaven lies about us in our infancy" saying that Rackham and Swinburne both understood that and that Rackham's "delicate and romantic fancy is in sensitive harmony with Swinburne's". (external link)

    24.11.1919 Letter from Florence Parsons to Charlotte Mew [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p.337] 17 Blomfield Road, W.9. "My dear Charlotte, Will you for love of Sylvia who loved you use her cigarette case? Affectionately, Florence Mary Parsons".

    28.11.1919 [Two] Letter [s] from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF]

    14.12.1919 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF]

    21.12.1919 Letter from Florence Parsons to Charlotte Mew [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 337-338]

    1920 Charlotte 50-51
    next previous
    Sassoon promotes in the United States - March: Marriage of Alida Klementaski to Harold Monro - July: I Have Been Through the Gates - September: Cockerell shares confidences - vacation in Devon

    1920 First edition of The New Psychology and its Relation to Life by Arthur Tansley George Allen and Unwin. 283 pages. "The human mind, Tansley argues, follows the laws of biology, and these laws are... best expressed in Freud's psychology. Tansley saw in his [Freud's] psychology a theory of how psychic energies search for an unconscious equilibrium within the mind and ultimately within society" ... "The primary force of the mind or the instincts is an ability to form systems in the form of either ego systems or social systems. The primary instinct creates an ego system that roughly corresponds to an equilibrium of psychic energy in the brain's network of channels. The herd instinct, on the other hand, creates social systems because the human by (biological) definition is 'a gregarious animal'" (Peder Anker, 2001, pages 24 and 28)

    Siegfried Sassoon described February 1920 to August 1920 of his life as "In America. No poetry. Gap in English affairs.

    From January 1920 to August 1920 Siegfried Sassoon went on a lecture tour (reading his war poems) of the USA. He spent "quite a bit of time" time with Louis Untermeyer and his wife, Jean Starr. One evening, he read aloud to them the whole of "Madeleine in Church". According to Louis Untermeyer's report, Sassoon read "with a beauty, and poignance" [Falkenberg 2005 p.36] - See Charlotte Mew in America - 1921 - 1922 - April 1922 - 1924 - 1925 - 1930 - 1936 - 1939 - 1970

    2.2.1920 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection BF] "Why so touchy?" The letter contrasts "Gower Street" (presumably London University) with Cambridge.

    Sunday 28.3.1920 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Alida (Klementaski) Monro congratulating her on her marriage to Harold Monro. [Berg Collection]

    "Against all his instincts, but out of a sense of obligation, Monro married Alida on 27 March 1920. She had by then discovered he was drinking heavily, a weakness exacerbated by the war, and she soon realized that he had male lovers. She never lived with him, but he took a house for her in Bloomsbury and they spent weekends together in the country; he always had a cottage somewhere, rural escapes being important to him." (Dominic Hibberd Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

    12.4.1920 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] "Am I still in disgrace?"

    15?.4.1920 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] The bookshop marriage - Recent acquisitions of The Fitzwilliam.

    28.4.1920 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF]

    July 1920 Charlotte Mew's poem I Have Been Through the Gates published in number 13 of The Chapbook (on page 3? - It was the first poem). 13 New Poems by Contemporary Poets (Also Pins for Wings by Emanuel Morgan).

    Siegfried Sassoon described September 1920 to January 1921 of his life as "Fresh start. Gradual change of attitude toward G. [Gabriel Atkin] (in direction of unselfishness). Definite though sterile period of work at poetry"

    September 1920 Early death of Jessie Murray from cancer.

    5.9.1920 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] Charlotte to go on vacation - confidential G.B.S. letters -

    9.9.1920 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell - [Berg Collection - BF] From New Commercial Hotel, Axminster. Devon. Comfortable quarters - perfect weather - expects to move on in a day or to. G.B.S. letters are safe.

    26.9.1920 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell - [Berg Collection - BF] She is reading letters of Lady Burne-Jones (Georgina Macdonald 1840-1920) which Sydney has lent her. Anne is in Norfolk.

    9.10.1920 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell - [Berg Collection - BF]

    9.10.1920 Letter from May Sinclair to Arthur St John Adcock, concerning an essay about May drafted by Catherine Amy Dawson Scott for The Bookman. "I'm afraid I do object, strongly, to much of the personal part of it, and I must beg of you to omit the passages I've erased" (Suzanne Raitt 2000 p.5)

    10.10.1920 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell - [Berg Collection - BF]

    17.10.1920 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell - [Berg Collection - BF]

    Sydney Cockerell sailed to New York

    30.11.1920 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell - [Berg Collection - BF] Welcome home letter

    5.12.1920 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell - [Berg Collection - BF]

    1921 Charlotte 51-52
    next previous
    Changeling in Methuen anthology - February? Expanded Farmer's Bride - Saturday Market in USA - Reviews - August: Parody - December: Financial problems as tenancy comes to an end - and Wek dies.

    In 1921, "with falling circulation", the The Athenaeum was incorporated into the The Nation. The Athenaeum had published Charlotte Mew's "Song" in October 1919. At that time its editor was John Middleton Murray

    An Anthology of Modern Verse. Chosen by A. M. [Sir Algernon Methuen.] With an introduction by Robert Lynd. London : Methuen & Co., 1921, included The Changeling by Charlotte Mew.

    Siegfried Sassoon's third? visit to the Hardys. 17.2.1921 to 22.2.1921

    19.2.1921: Letter from Florence Hardy to Charlotte Mew. [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 338-339] How much she enjoyed seeing Charlotte, and meeting Anne, last time she was in town. "Such a happy hour". "...seeing you does me a great deal of good".

    24.2.1921 Possible date that Charlotte Mew sent a copy of The Farmer's Bride to Florence Hardy - See below - which appears to be a mistake.

    Woolmer 1988, A16b dates the new edition of The Farmer's Bride April 1921 - It appears to be earlier. It cost 4/-. The first edition measured 8½ inches x 6¾ - This edition measured 7¾ x 6½ - As did the 1929 edition
    The Farmer's Bride. New edition with eleven new poems London: The Poetry bookshop. 59 pages. Also published in America as Charlotte Mew: Saturday Market. New York: Macmillan,

    The additional poems (highlighting those that may not have been published previously) were: On the Road to the Sea (1914) - The Sunlit House (Written before 29.7.1913) - The Shade- Catchers - Le Sacré-Coeur - Song (1919) - Saturday Market - Arracombe Wood - Sea Love (1919) - The Road to Kerity - I Have Been Through the Gates (1919 - The Cenotaph (1919).

    The Author begs to thank the Editors of The Nation - The Westminster Gazette - The New Weekly - The Englishwoman - The Egoist - The Graphic - The Athenaeum - and The Monthly Chapbook for permission to reprint some of the poems in this book.
    Charlotte Mew in America The occasional story or poem in Living Age did not create a presence for Charlotte Mew in the United States. In Britain The Englishwoman and then The Poetry Bookshop and her poetry collection gave her a presence or even fame in some circles. Her poetry collection appeared in the United States in 1921 when, according to one report, she "immediately received wide critical recognition". Saturday Market was reviewed in the New York Evening Post - the New York Bookman - Poetry (Chicago), and, no doubt, elsewhere in the USA.

    In the USA, Charlotte's presence was institutionalised by the inclusion of a selection of her poems, with an introductory essay, in Louis Untermeyer's Modern British Poetry (1925). Louis Untermeyer had been introduced to Charlotte Mew's poetry by Siegfried Sassoon in 1920. He began a correspondence with Charlotte at the same time as he wrote the review of Saturday Market for the New York Evening Post.

    The publication of Saturday Market also stimulated John Chipman Farrar, editor of The Bookman, to publish The Rambling Sailor and to contact Charlotte for a new poem to publish. He secured To a Child in Death, which he republished in The Bookman Anthology of Verse 1922, with a brief introduction referring to her "distaste for revealment of biographical detail".

    Charlotte Mew also resisted Louis Untermeyer's efforts to find out about her life, but he overcame this by creating the romantic image of the secretive hermit. Sometime in 1922, Untermeyer published two of Charlotte's poems in his new Modern American and British Poetry. In the winter of 1924, Untermeyer and his wife visited Charlotte in London. Charlotte and Anne were helped to entertain them by Siegfried Sassoon. This may be the occasion when Charlotte gave Louis Untermeyer some of her manuscripts. The following February (1925) his revised Modern British Poetry was published with five of her poems and an extended tribute to her.

    After her death, Charlotte Mew's American presence increased rather than decreased. Untermeyer's anthologies were used in schools and colleges throughout the United States, and so generations of Americans read his postmortem on the reclusive British poetess forced to live in poverty in Bloomsbury whilst she pined for the countryside which she saw only occasionally, notably on a weekend trip to see Thomas Hardy. British readers, by contrast, would need to secure one of the Poetry Bookshop's collections of Charlotte Mew and her publisher said that less than six booksellers ordered a copy between 1939 and 1948.

    One of the Americans introduced to Charlotte Mew by Untermeyer's introduction and selection, was Mary Davidow, who went on the research a substantial biography of the poet.

    2.3.1921: Letter from Florence Hardy to Charlotte Mew. [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 339-340] - "My dear Charlotte Mew; (If I may venture)". Thanking Charlotte for the gift of the new edition of The Farmer's Bride

    2.4.1921 "New Poetry" (anonymous) Review of Saturday Market, by Charlotte Mew. New Statesman 2 April 1921: 759. (Peggy Parris bibliography)

    4.4.1921 Edith Sitwell, review of The Farmer's Bride in the Daily Herald quoted Mary Davidow 1960, pp 93-94

    "In each poem we find the record of some great and terrible emotional experience, some ardent spirituality, controlled and made understandable by intellect and by an infallible certainty for the right expression"

    16.4.1921 Siegfried Sassoon's The Case for the Miners published in The Nation. It was republished in Recreations, when Charlotte Mew commented favourably on its sentiments. British miners were locked out of the pits on 1.4.1921, when they refused to accept an agreement that would mean a substantial reduction in wages. On 15.4.1921 the revolutionary implications of the conflict were lost when railyway and transport unions decide not to strike in sympathy. The miners conflict continued to 28.6.1921, when the miners accepted an agreement.

    May 1921: Wilfred Rowland Childe, Review of The Farmer's Bride. Voices May 1921: 92 (Peggy Parris bibliography)

    25.5.1921, review of The Farmer's Bride in the Southport Guardian quoted Mary Davidow 1960, pp 93-94

    "one of the best of contemporary women poets, individual in style and in outlook, skilled in metrical forms, and fresh in expression"

    26.5.1921, review of The Farmer's Bride in The Sheffield Telegraph quoted Mary Davidow 1960, p.94

    "full of restrained tenderness and pathos... forceful phrasing which rings absolutely sincere, stirring one knows not what divine sense of tears, voicing one knows not what insistent 'obstinate questionings of sense and outward things'. There is poetry here..."

    July l921: W. H. Chesson, Review of The Farmer's Bride. The Bookman July l921: 181. (Peggy Parris bibliography) - Wilfrid Hugh Chesson (1893-1946) is described as an "English" literary critic, so I suspect this is the London Bookman.

    [Berg Collection has eight letters from Louis Untermeyer and two from Mrs. Jean S. Untermeyer to Charlotte Mew dated "24.7.1921" to 16.2.1925]

    22.7.1921 Letter from Louis Untermeyer to Charlotte Mew. [Berg Collection] He considered ignorance of Charlotte Mew's poems in America "little short of criminal". This letter appears to be the source of our knowledge that Siegfired Sassoon read Madeleine in Church to Untemeyer a year before. [Falkenberg 2005 p.36]

    23.7.1921 "The Poems of Charlotte Mew". Louis Untermeyer's review of Saturday Market in The New York Evening Post 23.7.1921 (See Peggy Parris bibliography)

    America

    27.7.1921 (anonymous?) Review of The Farmer's Bride, by Charlotte Mew, Nation 27 July l921: 104. (Peggy Parris bibliography)

    4.8.1921 E.V. Knox's parody of Charlotte Mew in Punch

    The Circus Clown

    The moonlight drips on the parlour floor;
    I shall go mad if no one wipes it up.
    When I was one year old Nurse used to say,
    "It's no more use to cry when milk is spilt
    Than cry about the moon." There were big bars
    Across the nursery window. You said once,
    "Life is all bars on which we beat in vain
    Praying for drinks." I smiled when you said that.
    I wonder why it was you made me smile.
    I think because you had a funny face,
    White as the moonlight, and a red, red nose,
    And the moon dripped upon the floor like this
    Two years ago. The floor looked just the same.
    There is something very terrible about a floor.

    And then the fête...
    The sparrows twittered in the dusty square;
    One only saw the plane-trees and the pump.
    The curé said we mustn't roll our eyes
    Or wink to little boys across the square.
    He could not say we must not watch the moon.

    The band came up the street, the lions, the bears,
    O noise of roundabouts, eternal swing!
    Où est mon chapeau? Il est sur la table.
    I had my hair done in a pigtail then.
    O noise of roundabouts, eternal swing!
    You held a paper hoop. My head went round,
    Oh, round and round! Why did you stare so hard?
    I sometimes think a hoop is like the moon.
    Qu est la mèchante fille? Elle est partie.
    The girl had a green ribbon in her hair.

    The forest road...
    It stretches away into shadows infinite.
    The boughs are like crossed bars, crossed window bars.
    The moon drips through them. Are not those wolves' eyes,
    Green in the dusk? I always hated green.
    Green is a terrible colour, and so is red.
    There are red roses in the garden now,
    Red roses dans le jardin de ma tante,
    Shrilling a passionate pain amongst the green.
    Why can I never walk in gardens now
    Without remembering your red, red nose?

    You must have meant me to come out to you;
    No bird could coo-ee quite so loud as that.
    Perhaps I have a delicate chest. Perhaps
    I ought not to have gone in those thin shoes.
    I have had measles twice, loved only once.
    Ah love! But love hurts more than measles do.
    Why did you send me back? I could have gone
    All round the world with that white caravan
    And watched you smile. You said you liked my hair;
    Mine was so long that I could sit on it.
    As-tu le ruban vert de mademoiselle?

    And still the sparrows twitter in the square,
    And no one but the curé comes and goes
    Under the dusty plane-trees. And at night
    The moonlight drips. You will never come again.
    But would you know me if you came again?
    The little girl she has grown so big. Who knows?
    Ah, God? why did they make me bob my hair?

    Reproduced by Mary Davidow (1960) pp 95-96. She also reproduces a letter to her (4.11.1958) from E.V. Knox





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    September 1921 Charlotte Mew refused to supply biographical information to Louis Untermeyer [Falkenberg 2005 p.36]. Untermeyer provided biographical introductions in his anthology of British poets. He found his way round the problem by introducing Charlotte Mew with an essay in tribute and describing her as an exceedingly reticent and hermit-like poet.

    September 1921: Frank Swinnerton, Two Women Poets. A review of Saturday Market, by Charlotte Mew. The Bookman (London) 54 (Sept. 1921): 66. - [Although Frank Swinnerton is a London critic, this appears, from the volume number, to be the New York Bookman - Which would fit in with the USA title "Saturday Market" being used]

    2.10.1921: (24.2.1921?) Letter from Florence Hardy to Charlotte Mew. [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 341-342] Her sister [Eva Dugdale?] had been to tea with Charlotte - white geraniums - She will be in London - Mr Cockerell pursues people and wears himself out.

    5.10.1921 Foundation Dinner of PEN. Those present, apart from Catherine Amy Dawson Scott and Marjorie Dawson Scott, included Rebecca West - May Sinclair - Violet Hunt - Austin Harrison - Netta Syrett

    24.10.1921 Date on copy of The Farmers Bride in the Hardy library inscribed to Florence Emily Hardy. Sold in 1938 [MG Sale/307] to Frederick B. Adams. Not stated where dispersed to .

    ---. The Farmer's Bride and Other Poems. London: Poetry Bookshop, 1921. ('A New Edition with Eleven New Poems') Presentation inscription to Florence Emily Hardy from Charlotte Mew 24 Oct. 1921. (MG Sale/307; Adams)

    8.12.1921: Extract from a lawyer's letter respecting Mrs Mew's tenancy of 9 Gordon Street, Gordon Square:

    "Our client is about 90 years of age and we understand is an invalid and constantly under the Doctor's care. She is tenant for life of certain trust property which brings in a net income of approximately 300 pounds. Out of this sum she has to provide for the maintenance and support of a daughter who is and has been for some time past confined in the Isle of Wight County Hospital the expense of which amounts to roughly 130 pounds a year. Our client also has to support two other daughters one of whom is very delicate and is a great expense to her. On the death of Mrs Mew the trust property is divisible amongst her three daughters. We understand that one of the daughters does some occasional light work which brings her in a very trifling income."

    18.12.1921 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell

    22.12.1921 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] He has asked Margaret Sackville to send Charlotte her "sheaf of Epitaphs" ... "uncompromising eulogy of your poems".

    Saturday 31.12.1922 Charlotte Mew arrived at the Cockerell's house in Cambridge "to spend the weekend with us". [Cockerell Diaries - BF]

    The death of Wek

    Alida Monro (1953 pages x-xi) says Charlotte "had one companion in her house - a parrot, Willie, who was said to be at least ninety years old and might have been older. He was a very noisy bird and made great difficulties at her tea parties when he took a dislike to some guest, usually a man, and would not be silenced.

    She and Anne had an enormous affection for this bird, and when he was ill, as he often was in his later years, Charlotte would frequent the parrot house at the Zoo any moment of the day, and sometimes at night if she could knock up the parrot man, to get help for him.

    However, as time went on his foot became worse and worse until he could not stand on his perch, and there came a day when I was summoned by Charlotte and told that the parrot man had said that Willie must be put to sleep and that I was the person to do it, as he could not stand men and a veterinary surgeon was therefore out of the question.

    It was a terrible moment when I was led by the two sisters to a room at the back of the house in complete darkness except for a candle, given a sponge, a large bottle of chloroform and several big blankets, and told that the chloroform was to be put on the sponge, the sponge put into the cage, and the blankets tucked well round to cut off all air so that Willie might be anaesthetised and die. This was done, and the dreary procession of three went downstairs to wait the period prescribed by the chemist as necessary to ensure his death.

    At the given time I went upstairs, took off the blankets, and put in my hand in the dark to remove the corpse from the floor of the cage, only to receive a smart nip on the ringer which nearly caused me to scream hysterically.

    However, I decided that the two sisters could stand no more, and bravely put in a hand, took the parrot by his neck - he was very weak - and held it till he was dead. I then placed the corpse in the little box waiting to receive him, and went downstairs to report that all was over.

    This death fortunately occurred just at the time that the lease of Gordon Street was up

    1922 Charlotte 52-53
    next previous
    January: Kate Cockerell's illuminations - Lady Margaret Sackville comes to tea - February: The Rambling Sailor - March: Mews move to Delancey Street - April: To a Child in Death first published in the USA - September: Anthologised in the USA - October: Old Shepherd's Prayer in a Labour paper - November: General Election, but Charlotte not entitled to vote - December: Mrs Mew's fractured thigh - Dorothy Hawksley

    1922 May Sinclair The New Idealism Macmillan in London and New York.

    Arthur George Tansley Elements of Plant Biology London; New York : George Allen & Unwin Ltd.: Dodd, Mead & Company

    Katherine Mansfield's collection of short stories: The Garden Party and Other Stories

    Louis Untermeyer included Beside the Bed and Sea Love in his Modern American and British Poetry. [Falkenberg 2005 p.36]. I assume that it was for this that he had asked Charlotte for biographical details in September 1921. In April 1922, the (New York) bookman published To a Child in Death. It included this in its Anthology (after September 1922), with an introduction that suggests Charlotte also refused it biographical details. America

    In 1922 the south side of Euston Square Gardens began to be demolished to make way for buildings. In this (1950s) map, the site of the southern gardens is between Euston Road and Endsleigh Gardens. South of that is Gordon Square. The 1862 map beneath it (taken from the Motco site) shows Euston Square on both sides of Euston Road.

    This involved the removal of some London Plane Trees. Charlotte Mew's emotional response to this is expressed in the following poem and in The Trees Are Down.

    Domus Caedet Arborem

    Ever since the great planes were murdered at the end of the gardens
    The city, to me, at night has the look of a Spirit brooding crime;
    As if dark houses watching the trees from dark windows
    Were simply biding their time

    Domus Caedet Arborem was published in The Rambling Sailor in 1929 and in Recent Poetry in December 1933.

    In 1922, the lease expired on 9 Gordon Street, and the Mews had to move. It is possible that this was part of a general re-development of the district.

    3.1.1922 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell. [BF] - Charlotte leaves a note of thanks for two days she has spent with the Cockerell's. Writes about Kate's illuminations.

    24.1.1922 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell - [Berg Collection - BF] "Lady Margaret Sackville came here to tea on Thursday & gave me a delightful hour".

    27.1.1922 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew. [Berg Collection - BF] Glad Charlotte and Margaret Sackville have met "at last"

    February 1922: Charlotte Mew's poem The Rambling Sailor in The Chapbook. Twelve New Poems by Contemporary Poets. Charlotte Mew's poem is the fifth. [(Woolmer 1988, E2.25: Note "This is issues is printed on much cheaper paper than the other issues"). Also published in The Literary Digest 1.4.1922: 38; and then in The Bookman volume 57, pages 423-423 in June 1923

    March 1922: Mews moved from 9 Gordon Street to 86 Delancey Street, Camden Town. (map) - Three year lease (Letter 29.5.1924)

    Arthur Tansley was in Vienna for three months from March to June 1922, being psychoanlaysed by Freud. Tansley lived in the house of the late botanist, Wiesner. In 1923 Tansley resigned his university lectureship at Cambridge and "emigrated to Vienna with his family, where they stayed for six months. Here Freud analyzed his anxious dreams about being lost among South African native tribes only to be saved by his wife" (Peder Anker, 2001, pages 28-29)

    April 1922: Charlotte Mew's poem To a Child in Death in The Bookman volume 55 (therefore New York), page 117. [Not Temple Bar as in the Peggy Paris online list. A different poem with a similar title was published in 1901]

    Children mattered to Charlotte Mew. Perhaps it illustrates how little we know about her life that we do not seem to have any clues as to which child's death (if any) triggered the poem in 1901 or 1922.

    9.4.1922 Letter from Louis Untermeyer to Charlotte Mew. [Berg Collection] He asks if he and his wife could have a photograph of her. "Already in reply to his request for biographical information in September, she had declined" . In the same letter he said he had seen To a Child in Death in The Bookman and would like to include it in his next anthology. [Falkenberg 2005, p.36] - See description Jean Starr Untermeyer's description of Charlotte Mew, who she saw once, briefly, in 1924, matches a photograph of her. Suzanne Raitt (2000, plate 16) dates the picture, without explanation, as "in 1923"

    6.4.1922 Freud wrote to Ernest Jones in London: "Tansley has started analysis last Saturday. I find a charming man in him, a nice type of the English scientist. It might be a gain to win him over to our science at the loss of botany." (external link)

    The Wellcome Library has "Carbons (torn out of book) of letters from Mary Chick, c/o British Relief Mission , Hofburg I, Vienna, to Mr and Mrs Ensor about relief work with Austrian children, May-June 1920."

    1.5.1922 Date on inscription in a copy of Poems from the works of Charles Cotton selected and decorated by Claud Lovat Fraser, The Poetry Bookshop: "For Charlotte Mew from Harold Monro - 1 May 1922". [Offered for sale by Ulysses bookseller, London September 2007 at £150

    [Berg Collection has ten letters from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell dated 9.5.1922 to 24.2.1928 - The Adams collection also has letters]

    9.5.1922 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell. [BF] From "86 Delancey Street, N.W.1" Charlotte wishes Kate could illuminate a small book of Walter de la Mare's poems. His Song of the Mad Prince has been running through her head.

    9.5.1922 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell [?]

    June 1922 Marion Strobel, Review of Saturday Market. Poetry [Chicago] XX June 1922: 152-155. (Peggy Parris bibliography) - Saturday Market, by Charlotte Mew, Volume 19, June 1922, Page 152 (Poetry index)

    2.6.1922 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew. [Berg Collection - BF]

    5.6.1922 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell [Berg Collection - BF] Very hot weather. Sydney had given Charlotte a copy of Thomas Hardy's Late Lyrics and of his sister (Olive)'s French Garden "I haven't got beyond the illustrations - but these - rabbits and mice and bacteria are delightful. - and the watering can is nearly human".

    22.6.1922 to 28.6.1922 Siegfried Sassoon staying in a Dorchester hotel and visiting the Hardy's during the day. On June 24 "A nice Colonel's wife came to tea - from Weymouth. T.H. was very bright and jolly." On June 26 "Colonel and Mrs Ingles came to tea..." Sassoon mentioned Gosse's dislike of death and Hardy's face became a little subdued. "Mrs Ingles evidently thought my remark tactless"

    [Berg Collection has 28 letters and two postcards from Charlotte Mew to Ethel Robinson Inglis from 29.6.1922 to 19.1.1928. It also has a letter from Ethel Oliver to Mrs Inglis after Charlotte's death.

    17.7.1922 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew. [Berg Collection - BF]

    25.7.1922 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Mrs Inglis. [Berg Collection - BF]. Thanking her for a letter and box of flowers from her garden. Sweet Williams (of all "the old garden things... my favourites") - little country roses - pansies. Anne is going to paint some of them. The letter refers to Mrs Inglis's trip to town having been cut short - So maybe Charlotte had entertained Mrs Inglis at Florence Hardy's request?

    Charlotte writes "I too have a sister who isn't strong and so I know how one gets called for." Is she thinking of Anne or Freda?

    September 1922 (or shortly after) The Bookman Anthology of Verse 1922, edited by John Chipman Farrar (1896-1974), New York, George H. Doran company, included To a Child in Death - "While the majority of the poets represented are American, the work of several notable Englishmen is included." Online edition - entry on Charlotte Mew America
    The anthology has this entry on Charlotte Mew: "With one volume of poems published in her native England and reprinted here under the title Saturday Market, Charlotte Mew immediately received wide critical recognition last year. Her dramatic poems, with their simplicity and force, her carefully-constructed and yet poignant lyrics, were impressive even though their volume was slender. When I read this book, I wrote to a friend in England to see if he could secure a poem for me. Miss Mew replied, cordially, and this fine lyric was the result. She has the Englishwoman's distaste for revealment of biographical detail; but her strong, penetrating, strikingly original work speaks tellingly of her."

    14.8.1922 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell. [BF] From "Delancey House, 86 Delancey Street, N.W.1" - Charlotte cannot join her in Sussex. - "The last two days my heart has gone wrong again". - See also 29.5.1924 and 21.11.1927.

    14.8.1922 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew. [Berg Collection - BF]








    6.10.1922 First edition of The New Leader, a weekly paper of the Independent Labour Party, edited by Henry Noel Brailsford, contained Walter de la Mare's poem The Widow and Charlotte Mew's poem Old Shepherd's Prayer. It also contained articles by J. Ramsay MacDonald, H. N. Brailsford, T. F. Powys, G. D. H. Cole, and H. G. Wells, as well as various news items. (16 pages) [Information from John Eggeling of Todmorden Books, who sold a copy on ebay for £26 on 30.7.2007 - See helpful people]

    October 1922 Shorter Lyrics of the Twentieth Century, 1900- 1922 "Selected with a Foreword by W.H. Davies". The Poetry Bookshop. Included lyrics by Charlotte Mew.

    22.10.1922 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew. [Berg Collection - BF]

    30.11.1922 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Mrs Inglis. [Berg Collection - BF] - I send you a small poem in a Labour paper -

    December 1922 "Mrs Mew fell and fractured her thigh" (Mary Davidow 1960 p.98)

    22.12.1922 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew. [Berg Collection - BF] He has "asked Dorothy Hawksley to find out how things have been going and to let me know."

    25.12.1922 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew. [Berg Collection - BF] Mrs Mew now in hospital

    Between 1922 and 1926, the City and South London Railway was rebuilt and linked with the Hampstead Railway at Camden Town, with extensions to Hendon Central (1923), Edgware (1924) and Morden (1926) (external link)

    1923 Charlotte 53-54
    next previous
    The Rambling Sailor anthologised in Britain - Last flurry of poems - January: The Trees are Down - February: Fin de Fête - March In the Fields - May: Death of Charlotte's mother - Charlotte self administers peroxide - November: Harley Street opinion - December: Meal with Walter de la Mare - General Election: Charlotte Mew's first chance to vote - Civil List pension
    The Best Poems of 1922, selected by Thomas Moult and decorated by Philip Hagreen. Published: London : J. Cape, 1923. 145 pages - Included Charlotte Mew's The Rambling Sailor - Said to be "The first of a series of annual volumes in which the best contemporary English and American poetry published in periodicals is assembled, attractively bound and decorated by a contemporary artist"

    Arthur George Tansley Practical Plant Ecology: A Guide for Beginners in Field Study of Plant Communities London; New York : George Allen & Unwin Ltd.: Dodd, Mead & Company, - Provided an alternative to Bower's textbook in Botany and Clements Research Methods in Ecology.

    1923 The Psychology of Self-Consciousness: By Julia Turner, B.A. (London). Kegan Paul, Trench, Trbner & Co., 1923. 243 pages)

    5.1.1923 Estimate to Dr Blackman, St John's College, Cambridge re Upper Cross, Storey's Way Cambridge, for fireplaces for: Day Nursery - Night Nursery - Bedroom No 1 - Bedroom No 2 - Bedromm No 3 - Bedroom No 5 - Drawing Rooom - Dining Room. (Watts boxes)

    January 1923: Charlotte Mew's poem The Trees Are Down published in The Chapbook (See 1922). This edition contained poetry and prose. There was an item by "The Recorder" which was Alida Monro.

    18.1.1923: Letter referring to true quiet of a Quaker household

    17.2.1923 Charlotte Mew's poem Fin de Fête published in The Sphere

    February 1923 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Mrs Inglis. [Berg Collection - BF]

    March 1923 Charlotte Mew's poem In the Fields published in The Sphere. It was republished in an American anthology in 1925 and The Rambling Sailor in 1929.

    5.4.1923 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew

    12.5.1923 Death of Anna Maria Mew, Charlotte's mother. Her age given as 79, which has to be wrong because she was four years old when the 1841 census was taken. She died at St Peters Harbour, 10 Greville Place.

    In 1917: St. Peter's Harbour; 10 Greville Place, Kilburn; "Permanent home for women over 60. From 15s. to £2 2s" (Herbert Fry's Royal Guide to the London Charities edited by John Lane, 1917

    Her home address was 86 Delancey Street, St Pancras [NW] and C.M. Mew her daughter, of the same address, "present at the death", notified it at North Marylebone, St Marylebone, on 14.5.1923. The causes of death were 1) Toxaemia, 2) Partial obstruction of bowel [and] Exhaustion. Certified by C.H. Harbinson, BA, MB. [Comment: Possibly bowel cancer leading to blood poisoning (toxaemia). Exhaustion of the body from the pain.]

    18.5.1923: Letter from Florence Hardy to Charlotte Mew. [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p.344] She has just heard from Mr Cockerell the news of the death of their mother

    30.5.1923 Letter from Arthur Tansley to Frederic Clements, in which he says "It is likely I shall take my whole family with me to Vienna". They moved in October.

    8.11.1923 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] Anne has told him the advice that a Harley Street specialist has given Charlotte. It would have been his own diagnosis. "Only I don't know what you might have done to yourself with that ridiculous peroxide."

    Wednesday 5.12.1923 Sydney Cockerell arranged a meal for Charlotte and Anne Mew, Alida Monro, Florence Hardy and Walter de la Mare. [Cockerell Diaries - BF]

    17.12.1923 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell from 86 Delancey Street. [BF, probably Adams collection]. "Anthology windfall" 25.11.1923 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew - BF] Anne, but not Charlotte, has spent Christmas with the Cockerell's. Sydney had lunch with Conrad on Friday and found "he was a keen admirer of your poetry".

    Saturday 29.12.1923 Sydney Cockerell notified that a Civil List Pension of £75 a year had been awarded to Charlotte Mew "in recognition of her poetical works". [Cockerell Diaries - BF]

    In 1923 Leon Isserlis (1881-1966) published The Relation between Home Conditions and the Intelligence of School Children ... From data collected by ... Mrs Frances Wood (Catalogued "B.Sc." and as having died in 1919). [Medical Research Council. Special Report Series. no. 74. London. 28 pages]. Leon Isserlis studied statistics under Karl Pearson from 1912-1915 (external link)

    1924 Charlotte 54-55
    next previous
    January: Peter Pan - Siegfied Sassoon makes contact- the future of civilisation - May: Kate Cockerell's painting The Wood at World's End - December: Lunch with Sassoon who then helps with Charlotte's American guests

    1924 Julia Turner Human Psychology as Seen Through the Dream London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. - 196 pages

    Thursday 3.1.1924 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Katharine Cockerell. [BF] - aged 13. She has booked tickets for Peter Pan, at the Adelphi Theatre, on Friday 11.1.1924. Katharine also invited to tea at "my sister's Studio" after the show.

    Peter Pan was at the Adelphi Theatre in the winter of 1923-1924 with Gladys Cooper as Peter Pan - Franklin Dyall as Captain Cook - Stella-Patrick Campbell as Mrs Darling, and in the winter of 1924-1925, with Ian Hunter as Captain Cook. George Shelton played the bumbling pirate Smee in every production from the first, in 1904, to 1929. External links: 1 - 2

    Siegfried Sassoon's Recreations was a collection of poems privately printed on handmade paper at the Chiswick Press in 1923. Blue paper boards, plain vellum spine. It was a limited edition of 75 copies. The book contains twenty-one new poems and three that were first published in Picture Show. Most copies were distributed by the author among his friends in June, 1923. A copy inscribed to Reginald Turner, dated "17.9.23" has been offered for sale (September 2007) at £1,050

    Thursday 3.1.1924 Letter from Siegfried Sassoon, from 54 Tufton Street, SW1, to Charlotte Mew: "Dear Miss Mew, This is good news, though you deserve a more generous reward from the country you have served so nobly by your poetry. In an age like this, poets are more than ever a fortunate (though irritable) race. They carry the world on their shoulders, so it seems to me. And in their eyes the future of civilisation struggles to survive. I wish more of them were as intensely aware of their responsibility as you are, and sustained it so nobly. Forgive this effusiveness, but I feel very strongly about what you have done in verse." [See above, The Cenotaph] - He sends her a copy of his latest book [ Recreations]

    7.1.1924 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Siegfried Sassoon. [Siegfried Sassoon Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p.348] She finds beauty in his poems Falling Asleep and Limitation. "Professor Brown" may refer to Early Chronology (162) and "the gentlemen peeling plovers' eggs" to The Case for the Miners. The Case for the Miners appears to be the stimulus of this comment "Pity and Beauty may be the divinest things but there is, too, something divine and wholesome and cleansing in righteous anger". Charlotte is pleased that Sassoon has written to her as it gives her an opportunity to thank him for recomending her work to Louis Untermeyer

    Wednesday 23.4.1924 British Empire Exhibition opened at Wembley by George 5th. The Imperial Botanical Conference, hosted by the Department of Botany at the Imperial College of Science and Technology at South Kensington, was timed to coincide. "... debates were centered around genetic approaches (with William Bateson as the main collaborator), ecological approaches (with Tansley and Chipp as the main contributors), or a blend of both." (Peder Anker, 2001, page 34)

    Siegfried Sassoon's Afterthought on the Opening of the British Empire Exhibition. Charlotte Mew thought he wasted his effort.

    Tuesday 13.5.1924 Samuel Chick Limited established by an "agreement" of Samuel Chick to sell "certain herediments in the Parish of St Marylebone" to the company (at a price of £1). The Report 5.8.1924 shows the Directors as Samuel Chick "Lace Merchant" - Emma Chick - James Hooley Chick "Lace Merchant" - and Mary Chick. All of whom lived at Chestergate, 30 Park Hill, Ealing, W5. The Manager was Samuel Chick and the Secretary, Oscar Marshall at 5 Newman Street. There were 12,000 shares and the Chick papers (Watts boxes) suggest that these were all held by members of the family.

    Wenesday 28.5.1924 Letter from Kate Cockerell to Charlotte Mew. [Berg Collection BF] She wants Charlotte to visit

    29.5.1924 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell from "Hogarth Studios, 64 Charlotte Street, W.1." [BF] House at Delancey Street empty. Charlotte cannot visit because she is so tied up with legal, tenancy and domestic matters. "Plus which my heart which hasn't been working properly this year is getting restive - and I can only do everything at half speed." Anne is with friends in Chester for a week and may be going on to Buckinghamshire.

    Mrs Florence Kingsford Cockerell had exhibited a painting called The Wood at World's End, with deer emerging from the wood to a pool of water, at an exhibition of the Institute of Painters in Water-colours. Newspaper cutting enclosed with Charlotte's letter suggests this is the first work exhibited since her marriage. It is an addition to illuminations of "beasts, and birds, and flower-life", by Florence Kingsford, that have included Canticle to the Sun by St Francis of Assisi.

    30.9.1924 Florence Hardy operated on for a the removal of a tumour - In the nursing home, recuperating afterwards - Florence's principle visitors were Charlotte Mew and Sydney Cockerell. She began writing to both on first name terms. (Millgate, 1995/1996)

    3.10.1924 Letter to Florence Hardy from Charlotte Mew

    5.10.1924 Charlotte Mew visited Florence Hardy - Also letter to Florence Hardy from Charlotte Mew

    Fitzroy House - 7.10.1924 - envelope marked for hand delivery

    My dear Charlotte

    I have so loved reading the magnificent poems you so kindly sent. I think Here Lies a Prisoner is my favourite. It is so strong and so clear cut - I love "frozen breath of his silenced soul". May I take that home to show T.H. I will not lose it I faithfully promise (no I will copy it if you don't object).

    Fin de Féte I do not like quite so much as some others of yours - though of course I do like it. And the same with The Rambling Sailor which, though it is fine, I admit does not appeal to me so much as Hurt Not the Trees. How T.H, would love that. But I fear if he read it never again would a one bough be lopped of the trees that hem us round and make some of our rooms so dark and depressing. I have read the poem again since I wrote those last words and it is more and more wonderful. There is no other living poet - man or woman - who could have written just that poem. Thank you so much for sending them.

    It did me so much good to see you again here. It was so good of you to come. I am writing this at 6.30 in the morning - having watched the dawn and listened to the milk carts rattling by. I am ashamed to confess that I am rather enjoying these last few days.

    I am so looking forward to seeing your sister.

    With love - and please do make me proud by calling me Florence.

    Always yours affectionately. F.E.H

    7.10.1924 Anne Mew collected the poems and books, by arrangement.

    "It was not until the end of 1924, when I visited England to give a lieder recital in London's Aeolian Hall, that I met Charlotte Mew. By that time I knew her "The Farmer's Bride" and "Madeleine in Church" and was eager to meet a woman at once so passionate and reserved, with whom I already felt in sympathetic relationship" (Jean Starr Untermeyer 1965, p.108)

    30.11.1924 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Berg Collection - BF] - He and Siegfried Sassoon had travelled back from Dorchester together on Friday. "He had been writing something about you for Berlin and was seeing that afternoon somebody connected with a sort of American Golden Treasury in order to make sure that you were properly represented. He told me that the Poet Laureate had joined the band of your admirers."

    Tuesday 2.12.1924 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell [Berg Collection]

    Thursday 11.12.1924 Sydney Cockerell, Charlotte and Anne Mew, Dorothy Hawksley, Siegfried Sassoon and Stephen Gooden lunched at the Gobelins from 1.15 to 3pm. Cockerell wrote "I wanted Charlotte and Sassoon to be friends and they got on capitally" [Diaries - BF]

    Thursday 11.12.1924 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell from "64 Charlotte Street, W1" [BF] On Saturday (4pm) she has some "exhausting Americans" visiting, who Siegfried Sassoon has "promised to come and help me with". - Charlotte suffering from a "sort of permanent Influenza"

    Saturday 13.12.1924 Visit of Louis and Jean Starr Untermeyer - Was this the occasion that Charlotte gave Louis Untermeyer manuscripts of her poems, including To a Child in Death (which he had already seen in April 1922), In the Fields (published May 1923), and Old Shepherd's Prayer (published October 1922)?

    Jean Starr Untermeyer:

    "Several years before, while visiting America, Siegfried Sassoon had read to us some poems of Charlotte Mew. Although at this moment I have no access to her letters and photographs, I feel sure that 1924 was the year of our first meeting with this gifted poet. Whether the connection was first established by correspondence or the meeting arranged by Alida Klamentaski, her close friend, I do not remember. But we met for tea at Miss Mew's flat in London, and immediately I felt a wave of almost electrical attraction. I still recall the impact of that white and narrow face, the bones showing almost as luminous through the flesh as in the face of Duse, framed in glistening white hair and punctuated by dark, burning eyes in which the tragic sense was deep-seated, but which could brighten instantly with her ready humour."

    Jean Starr Untermeyer appears to be comparing an unfinished painting of the Italian actress Eleanora Duse (1859-1924) by John Singer Sargent (about 1893) with the photograph of Charlotte Mew that appears at the front of The Rambling Sailor (1929) and Collected Poems of Charlotte Mew (1953)
    The painting was sold by Christie's (London) on 24.7.1925 (lot 137). The Untermeyer's had asked Charlotte for a photograph on 9.4.1922. It is possible that a photograph of the Sargent painting appeared in the newspapers at the time of the sale and that Jean Starr Untermeyer was struck by the resemblance.

    "Her nature is best deduced by a reading of her poems - such as I Have Been Through the Gates - Sea Love - and Beside the Bed - and I should not be successful if I tried to capture her quality in a sentence. So I recommend these poems, which face the world so realistically and so compassionately. Passionate as she surely was, her demeanour was controlled and British enough. I saw her only this one time, and actually could not converse alone with her. But we corresponded, and though the letters kept mostly to human generalities and to literature, I felt some mutual recognition had taken place." (Jean Starr Untermeyer 1965, pp 113-114)

    Sunday 14.12.1924 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell: Siegfried Sassoon "angelically came and helped me with the Untermeyers at teatime yesterday"

    1925 Charlotte 55-56
    next previous
    January: Moorland Night - February: American anthology includes In the Fields - March: Sassoon sends his new book - April: Business in the country - Charlotte hopes Sassoon will call - December: Samuel Chick bequest to Charlotte and Anne - Anne becoming ill

    24.1.1925 Charlotte Mew's poem Moorland Night published in The Nation and Athenaeum - Republished in The Rambling Sailor (1929). It was chosen for Twentieth Century Poetry in 1933 and, possibly, 1929.

    February 1925 Louis Untermeyer's revised Modern British Poetry includes five poems by Charlotte Mew, with an introductory tribute. America

    "...in the second week of February 1925, 'the thoroughly revised' Modern British Poetry went to the printer. The expanded group of Mew's poems, with the extended Tribute, would include In the Fields - To a Child in Death - Sea Love - I Have Been Through the Gates - Song. The editor calls particular attention to the longer poems that could not, because of their length, be included. The expanded tribute reads, in part, 'One of the most amazing figures in modern poetry is Charlotte Mew. An exceedingly reticent person as well as a hermit-like poet, she has published only one book, yet that small collection contains some of the finest poetry of our times". [Falkenberg 2005 p.36]

    Siegfried Sassoon Lingual Exercises for Advanced Vocabularians is a book of poems privately printed at the University Press, Cambridge, in March 1925. It was in a limited edition of 99. Brown buckram with gilt title on spine. A "large wooden box" of the poems arrived at Sassoon's lodgings in Tufton Street on 27.3.1925. Sassoon lodged with Walter Turner, and Australian art critic, and his wife, Delphine.

    4.4.1925 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Siegfried Sassoon [Siegfried Sassoon Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p.349] - thanking him for his new book. But "I remember... your... Dreamer and Dug-Out and wish your next book might be in words of one syllable". She thinks he wastes "good powder and shot" on the Anglican clergy and Wembleys [Afterthoughts on the Opening of the British Empire Exhibition p.127 and Lady Lucres [Breach of Decorum p.135]

    Siegfried Sassoon Selected Poems (Heinemann: 1925, 75 pages). The selection included nothing beyond those included in Picture Show (1919-1920), so excluded the peacetime satires of Recreations and Lingual Exercises.

    29.4.1925 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Siegfried Sassoon [Siegfried Sassoon Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 p.350] - Selected Poems arrived on Monday night. Beauty and horror side by side. Mentions Invocation - Idyll - At Carnoy - Before the Battle - Wraiths - A Poplar and the Moon - "the two last - to me - the most unforgettable of all". - She has just got back from staying with friends - has been down with a touch of flue since Monday - when she is all right, she expects "any day to have to go to the country on business" [Which may mean family business on the Isle of Wight] - "when I'm finally back I shall ask you to come to see me - and hope you will"

    21.5.1925 Letter from Florence Hardy to Charlotte Mew. [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 350-351]

    27.5.1925 Letter from Florence Hardy to Charlotte Mew. [Alida Monro Collection - Mary Davidow 1960 pp 351-352]

    7.9.1925 Letter from May Sinclair to Arthur St John Adcock that she was unable to write an article he suggested. "I'm no good at that sort of autobiographical stunt" (Suzanne Raitt 2000 p.5)

    20.11.1925 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell. [BF] [??]

    6.12.1925 Death of Samuel Chick the father, aged 84, at Chestergate, Ealing. Interred at Perivale 9.12.1925 (Family Bible: Watts boxes).

    Order of Service for the funeral of Samuel Chick June 7th 1841 died December 6th 1925 - Congregational Church Ealing Green, Rev WY Fullerton Assisted by Rev Witton Rix.

    Epitome of the will of Samuel Chick Esq, dated 29th Sept 1924, testator died December 6th 1925. Executors Trustees, Emma Chick, James Hooley Chick, Mary Chick, Samuel Hooley Ackroyd (his nephew). Samuel Hooley Ackroyd was a Civil Servant who lived at 22 Webster Gardens, Ealing. He died in January 1948.

    The epitome of the will says: "To Charlotte Mew and her sister Ann Mew lately residing in Gordon Street, £25 each." (Watts boxes)

    Addresses: of 5 Newman Street, Oxford Street, London - of Chestergate, Park Hill, Ealing, Middlesex - of Hazelwood, Branscombe Beer, Devon. "Lace Merchant". A JP for Devon.

    Dorothy Lumb has one of the ten copies of "The Recollections of William Elijah Chick" (a book). This only refers briefly to events of his childhood and his Chick cousins, but contains the following. Eric (Stallard) was William Elijah's step brother, his father having remarried when he returned from the first world war. The holiday recollections must, therefore, relate to between 1920 and 1925

    "During the Sidmouth holidays, we got poshed up and tramped to Branscombe, to call on Uncle Samuel and his unmarried daughter Harriette. Eric and I followed the guns, over the cliff, hunting rabbits. The house is called Hazelwood. Thirty years later, Dame Harriette accorded my family the pleasure of having it as a holiday home on several occasions."

    around Christmas 1925 Anne Mew "who began to show signs of ill health around Christmas of 1925, was, by Autumn of 1926, in great physical discomfort" (Mary Davidow 1960 p.102)

    1926 Charlotte 56-57
    next previous
    Writing Aglaë - Dorothy Hawksley - May: Youth struck down - June: Professor Grierson gets Do Dreams Lie Deeper? - Staying with the Hardys and writing in Devon - August: Sea Love on the BBC - October: Aglaë abandoned - November: Chichester - Christmas with the Brownes - Anne in a nursing home

    1926 is the year the National Portrait Gallery gives for its Dorothy Hawksley portrait of Charlotte Mew.

    The watercolour measures 11 inches by 7 and three-quarter inches (279 mm x 197 mm). It is not on display, but there is a picture of it on the gallery's web. Dorothy Hawksley gave the portrait to the nation in 1947.

    The publishers of Penelope Fitzgerald's story, "Charlotte Mew and her Friends", used an image (left) of part of Dorothy Hawksley's picture, re-shaded yellowy-green, as their cover.

    "Euston Square... together with Seymour Place, was partly erected in 1813, but not completed until 1831. Inasmuch as it actually forms a part of Euston Road it can hardly considered a square at all, and moreover, the southern portion, which until 1926 was still an open garden, is now partly covered by the handsome building of the Society of Friends..." (Clunn, H.P. 1962 p. 151)

    From Four who are Dead. H. F. N. Scott - H. D. Lowry - George Dawson - W. T. Stead. Messages to C. A. Dawson Scott. With an introduction by May Sinclair published in 1926 London: Arrowsmith. 192 pages

    Siegfried Sassoon Satirical Poems (Heinemann: 1926)

    1926 Retirement of James George O'Keeffe from foreign service. J.G. O'Keeffe, 1 Dynevor Road. Richmond 3845 is in the London telephone directory from 1927 to 1935

    New Year 1926: Dorothy Hawksley gave Charlotte and Anne a cyclamen that was still flowering on 28.4.1926.

    March/April 1926 Dorothy Hawksley on a windy hillside somewhere - Not on a Mediterranean cruise.

    Wednesday 28.4.1926 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Dorothy Hawksley from 86 Delancey Street. (Mary Davidow 1960 pp 353-354). This, and other letters (not reproduced) were given to Mary Davidow by Dorothy Hawksley.

    Monday 3.5.1926 or Tuesday 4.5.1926 Charlotte and Anne hoped Dorothy Hawksley would come to tea at the Studio (4.30)

    Sunday 30.5.1926 Two friends of Charlotte and Anne Mew were in a motor smash. They were "children of a very old friend who had just launched them after giving up her art and life to them". The girl, aged 22 and a half, [born December 1903?] was killed. The boy, aged 18 [born summer 1906?], was badly injured. The mother "now broken" was the artist Anne and Charlotte had wanted Dorothy Hawksley to meet. [Suggestion made by Mary Davidow that this is Elsie O'Keefe]

    The circumstances seem so appropriate that I would think On Youth Struck Down (From an unfinished elegy) was written after this event. It was first published in The Rambling Sailor (1929)

    Wednesday 2.6.1926 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell. [BF]

    Tuesday 15.6.1926 Charlotte Mew sent Herbert Grierson "Do Dreams Lie Deeper" in response to his request of a poem.

    Tuesday 22.6.1926 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell - "I have just had the nicest of nice letters from Professor Grierson after sending him a scrap of verse for his: Women Students' Miscellany."

    "Margaret Chick, in the summer of 1926, ran into Miss Mew in Devon. Charlotte Mew explained that she was staying with the Hardys, but was at Beer Beach for the day hoping to get a bit of writing "off", alluding most likely to the unfinished story [Aglaë] in the Charlotte Mew collection at the Lockwood Memorial Library, University of Buffalo." (Mary Davidow 1960 p.91)

    The port that is described in the story seems to be Barfleur, in Normandy. A straight road runs from here to St Pierre Eglise (see external map), which is mentioned on page 318.

    Val Warner (1997, pp xvii-xviii) says that Charlotte marked the story "abandoned October 1926". So Aglaë appears to be the last of Charlotte Mew's major works: Her unfinished story - But the images in the story recall pre-1914 poems - Pêcheresse which uses Brittany dialect - The Narrow Door - See Language

    The story is the recollection of the life of Aunt Aglaë, who, at "close on fifty years" [near Charlotte's age?] is "slowly dying" in the house on the inner harbour where her family have lived for generations. Germaine, her younger sister, married the fisherman Raymond, and gave birth to Odette, but Aglaë remained single. Germaine has emotions and needs, but claims that Aglae was born old and passionless. But there are different levels, or dimensions, of consciousness, different levels of interaction and the story tells the vigour and passion that moves within the wax exterior. When Germaine's second lover, Leroux, suggests Aglaë was Raymond's lover and Odette's mother, he is physically wrong. But Odette has in other respects become Odette's mother and, after his death, Raymond shares her bed and she takes possession of him.

    Tuesday 24.8.1926 Charlotte Mew's poem Sea Love read by Alida Monro on wireless - (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 pp 207 + 282)

    October 1926 Charlotte abandons Aglaë

    Wednesday 27.10.1926 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Alida Monro referenced (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 pp 212 + 283 - BL Add MSS 57756) - He did not know Charlotte had gone away and did not know where she had gone - He is unwilling to invest money in The Poetry Bookshop. Penelope Fitzgerald says (no referencing) that Charlotte and Anne had terminated the lease at Delancey Street, put the furniture into store, and booked two rooms until the spring at St George's House, opposite Chichester Cathedral. She says that occupation of Anne's studio was an emergency measure when they returned in November. However, the move from Delancey Street to Hogarth Studios appears to date from the spring of 1924

    "When the Devonshire Street lease ran out in 1926 the The Poetry Bookshop moved to 38 Great Russell Street, opposite the British Museum. Financial troubles soon forced a further move to the rear of the building." (Oxford Dictionary National Biography) In Great Russell Street, The Poetry Bookshop shared premises with the publisher Kegan Paul. [In 1927 "Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd" were at 38 Great Russell Street, WC1]. Harold Monro died in 1932

    Do Dreams Lie Deeper? published in Atalanta's Garland being the Book of the Edinburgh University Women's Union {Date on "Prefatory Note" September 1926 - See some helpful people - The book has 14 introductory pages, 191 main pages. Charlotte's poem is page 150 of the main pages. Atalanta's Garland is an anthology published to celebrate the twenty-first anniversary of the Edinburgh University Women's Union. The contributors include A.W. Mair Greek Elegiacs - Katherine Mansfield Two Unpublished Sketches: 1) Little Jean, 2) Lucien - Hilaire Belloc Thoughts in the Manner of the Ancients - W.H. Davies Two Poems: 1) Where Shall We Live, 2) Contented Hearts - Virginia Woolf A Women's College from the Outside (story) - T.B. Simpson George Square - Ethel Colburn Mayne The Lower Road - Walter de la Mare The Snail: a poem - Cecile Walton Atalanta in Caledonia: Notes on Women's Contribution to the Arts in Scotland - Fredegond Shove Three Poems: 1) May Morning, 2) Hymn at Night in Lyme Regis, 3) Fragment - Lucie Delarue Mardrus Conte de Fées - Charles Murray Eight Versions in Scots from the Greek Anthology - John Brandane Koechlin: a play in one act -Jessie M.King The Dropping of a Pebble - Irene Forbes-Mosse Die Leuchter der Königin (story in German) - B.D. A Students' Union of 1398 - Marion Angus Two Poems: 1) World's Love, 2) Singin' Water - Rachel Annand Taylor A Renaissance Girlhood - Thomas Sturge Moore - A Recension: In devout and grateful admiration of Henry Killigrew - Ada Negri L'Usignolo - J.P. Lamb, Charles Nodier, and Fanny Kelly - Edwin Muir On the impoverishment of language (essay), Hugh McDiarmid Hungry Waters (lyrics with music by F.G. Scott) - Pauline Smith An Old Couple: From a South African Diary - Charlotte Mew Do Dreams Lie Deeper: a poem - Emilia Pardo Bazá Eterna Ley (story in Spanish) - Violet Jacob The Bold Wooer: a poem - Mary G. Dickins Madam - Naomi Mitchison Charilas, in Exile, remembers Sparta - Neil Munro Ballantrae - Gordon Bottomley (as below) - Frances Storrs Johnston In the Path of the Pioneer Medical Woman - Sylvia Lynd Early Morning

    November 1926 Anne and Charlotte went to Chichester.

    27.11.1926 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell - "Perhaps Grierson sent you a copy of Atalanta's Garland but anyhow here is an extract from it which may or mayn't interest you".

    I would guess that the extract was:
    To Miss May Morris in Kelmscott,
    with a copy of Poems of Thirty Years
    By Gordon Bottomley.

    In the still house so far from here
    The night-long tumult of the weir
    Sounds as it sounded long ago
    To you and to those Others who
    With you in company were set:
    Tonight Their lights are gleaming yet,
    Their place by your life are warm,
    By you the House still works their charm
    Ah, as you heard the sounds they heard
    And live as they lived, lit and stirred
    By rarer powers than men now know,
    Would that my book by you might go
    Into their consciousness and say
    Their vision lights me to, and pray
    That, by your cognisance to me
    From them might pass that energy
    Which was Their spirits, like a flame
    Of blessing on my book from Them

    [page 181. The permission of Miss May Morris was given for the verses to be printed (p. vii)]

    Anne and Charlotte spent Christmas with Professor Browne and family at Berkhamstead. (Mary Davidow 1960 p.102)

    30.12.1926 Anne entered a nursing home at 2 Nottingham Place. She returned to Hogarth Studios about a month later. (Mary Davidow 1960 p.103)

    1927 Charlotte 57-58
    next previous
    June: Death of Anne Mew - September/October: Staying with Kate Cockerell - October: Biographies for Kate - November: Heart strain and a private worry - November/December: Staying with Winifred and Ethel Oliver

    William C. Hartmann's Who's Who in Occultism, New Thought Psychism and Spiritualism. Second edition 1927. The Occult Press, Jamaica, N.Y. U.S.A. (archive copy) contains this entry:
    Scott, Mrs. C. A. Dawson. Writer. Has written many successful Novels, Founder of the P.E.N. Club. Author: "From Four Who are Dead." Has developed personal psychic powers. For personal experience, see "Light," June 4, 1927, p. 268. Address: 125, Alexandra Rd., N.W. 8, London.

    2.1.1927: Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell. [Berg Collection BF. Referenced Mary Davidow 1960 p.103] - mentions a fund and that Anne would be pleased to see him at 2 Nottingham Place

    3.1.1927: Letter and Post Card from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell. [Berg Collection BF Letter referenced Mary Davidow 1960 p.103] Oliphant's St. Francis of Assisi

    5.1.1927: Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell. [Berg Collection BF Referenced Mary Davidow 1960 p.103] "brutal finality" - "I got St Francis for her".

    30.1.1927: Letter from Anne Mew to Sydney Cockerell. [Berg Collection BF. She is leaving the nursing home on that day.

    19.3.1927 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Mrs Inglis. [Berg Collection - BF]

    27.4.1927 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew. [Berg Collection - BF] Relates to Anne moving from the studio into a nursing home

    7.5.2007 Letter from Alida Monro to Harold Monro quoted (below) (Penelope Fitzgerald 1988 p. 215. No referencing, but inference from other referencing suggests the British Library

    "Last night Charlotte Mew came round and said that though Anne could not speak she was always writing down that she wanted to see me and so I had to go. I have never seen anyone so near death before and because of her illness (some wasting liver disease) she has no flesh on her at all hardly and looks like a skeleton. She could just speak and I talked of our flight to Paris and the robbery practised by the French porters, which interested her.

    Queer how, looking towards the gas fire, and talking of the spring warmth we shall soon be feeling, she should have murmured 'I shan't want a fire soon.' As I talked to her and she shut her eyes I felt they were sealed on her face and would never open, but they did. Aunty Mew says that Dr says any moment she may go down to earthly mould. Poor little Mew, it is more tragic than I can tell you - Her rough little harsh voice and wilful ways hiding enormous depth of feeling - now she will be entirely alone and her relation with Anne has been one of complete love, and I imagine the love of sisters (or brothers) more marvellous than any other as there can be no fleshly implications or sexual complexities, Alas -"

    24.5.1927 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Mrs Inglis. [Berg Collection - BF]

    Dr Horatio Cowan, the doctor involved in Anne Mew's and Charlotte Mew's treatment had his consulting room in Fitzroy Square (Penelope Fitzgerald). In the 1901 Census, Horatio W? A. Cowan, aged 26, born Inverness, "Doctor of Medicine", with his wife, Alma B. Cowan, aged 21, born London, were living, with a female general domestic and a page boy as servants, at 32 Fitzroy Square. They were the only occupiers.

    Saturday 18.6.1927 Death of Anne Mew (Caroline Frances Anne Mew), aged 53 years, at 43 Priory Road. She was "of 64 Charlotte Street, St Pancras, Spinster, Artist (Retired)" and her death was registered in Hampstead by "C.M. Mew, Sister, 64 Charlotte Street W." on Monday 20.6.1927,. The causes of death were "1, Carcinoma of Uterus and Liver. 2. Haemorrhage and Exhaustion. No P.M. Certified H.A. Cowan MRCS" [Comment: The cancer would have started in the womb and spread to the liver, making it fatal. Bleeding from the womb and exhaustion from the pain have contributed to the death.]

    She was buried in Hampstead Cemetery, Fortune Green Road.

    Charlotte stayed with the Olivers after the funeral. (Mary Davidow 1960 pp 103-104)

    25.6.1927: Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell. [Berg Collection - Meynell, V. 1940 p.321]

    Charlotte was at Hogarth Studios in August (Mary Davidow 1960 p.104)

    16.8.1927: Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell. [Berg Collection BF]

    18.9.1927 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell from 64 Charlotte Street, W1 [BF]

    23.9.1927 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell from 64 Charlotte Street, W1 [BF]

    25.9.2007? to 8.10.2007 Sydney Cockerell in Greece

    28.9.1927 Charlotte Mew staying with Kate Cockerell in Cambridge whilst Sydney Cockerell away. Charlotte returned on 10.10.1927 [BF]

    11.10.1927 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell. [BF] [??]

    Georges Jean-Aubry Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters published: London: Heinemann, 1927 in two volumes

    27.10.1927 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell. [Berg Collection BF] - Kate should ask Sydney for the Conrad biography whilst waiting for Charlotte to find Mrs Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte with large enough print. [Taking "GB's Life" as "CB's Life". Alida Monro was "as hypnotised as I am by them" and had a small print 1857 edition in two volumes - Which corresponds to the second edition of Mrs Gaskell]

    21.11.1927 Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell. [Berg Collection BF] Charlotte has "been a bit ill myself (throat and heart strain) and on the top had a private worry which absorbed normal activities.". She has gone somewhere "to pick up a bit and enjoy the winter trees."

    Charlotte returned to the Olivers in November and stayed with them over Christmas. (Mary Davidow 1960 p.104)

    1928 Charlotte 58-
    previous
    January: Death of Thomas Hardy - February: Charlotte, not sufficiently insane to be certified, agrees to Beaumont Street nursing home - March: Suicide of Charlotte Mew in nursing home -

    During 1928: Michael Tippett's String Quartet No. 2 in F major (revised 1930) Songs for voice and piano, on texts by Charlotte Mary Mew (Sea Love; Afternoon Tea; Arracombe Wood) Sonata in C minor - (external link)

    Charlotte was at Hogarth Studios in January (Mary Davidow 1960 p.104)

    7.1.1928: Letter from Charlotte Mew to Sydney Cockerell. [Berg Collection BF]

    11.1.1928 Death of Thomas Hardy

    21.1.1928 Death of Edward Herne Kendall , aged 84, Paddington Infirmary. The name of the institution is not on the death certificate, just the address "285 Harrow Road". Possibly omitted because stigma still attached to a poor law institution, even one becoming a hospital. He was "of 73 Saltram Crescent" (that is nearby to the north) "formerly an Architects Assistant". Death was notified on 9.2.1928 by R.H. Dyer "Occupier 285 Harrow Road". The cause of death were "1.a. Myocardial Degeneration, b. Arteriosclerosis". There was no post-mortem. Death was certified by F.A. Bryning MB. [Comment: His heart had been giving him problems for some time and his arteries were clotted] - (weblink to British History Online with details of Paddington Infirmary]

    23.1.1928 Letter from Sydney Cockerell to Charlotte Mew [Adams collection - Davidow 1960 354]. Being offered for sale in 2007 by Cohort Rare Books, Clarks Summit, PA, U.S.A. Price: £3792.27 for Charlotte Mew's poem Fin de Fete copied in pencil by Thomas Hardy, with a printed copy of the poem, the covering letter from Sydney Cockerell (23.1.1928) with a separate postscript stating that "we found no other poem of any sort copied out by T.H.". Mounted on card in a blue case with the bookplate of Frederick B. Adams. The bookseller says "This was thought to be the only poem copied out in his hand that Hardy ever wrote. There was, however, a translation in Fleurs du Mal that Hardy made."

    Death of Charlotte Mew

    Alida Monro (1953), page xi, says "Charlotte was so overcome by Anne's death that she was inconsolable, and after a short time her nerves became very bad. She was unable to sleep, and so tortured herself with the idea that as she had not had a vein opened in Anne's wrist her sister might have been buried alive, that medical help had to be sought. As a result she went into a nursing home in Beaumont Street for a rest and medical supervision..."

    Penelope Fitzgerald 1988, page 223, says that Charlotte consulted Dr Horatio Cowan about the "little black specks which could be seen everywhere in the studio", which she thought could have caused Anne's death.

    The black spots may have been mentally associated with the "black rotundities" that Charlotte the humorist joked about after Charlotte the bacteriologist looked at malaria germs through a microscope - and related to the tuberculosis germs that killed her brother in an asylum. Cancer also killed her father. If cancer is not infectious, it would not be caused by germs. But infection seems to have been a question: In 1930 a committee on "infectious diseases in mental hospitals" reported on a comparison of cancer cases in patients and the general population.

    Penelope Fitzgerald 1988, page 223, continues that Dr Cowan had the specks analysed and found them to be soot. Dr Cowan sent Charlotte to a "mental specialist" to find out whether or not, on the evidence, she could be certified. The specialist said that she could not. Dr Cowan then tried to persuade her to enter an asylum... as a voluntary patient, but she refused. The nursing home was Dr Cowan's recommendation. The matron was "Miss Lutch". (page 224 and 226). (No references, but indication (page 226) that it is from Dr Cowan's report at the inquest).

    Henderson and Gillespie's A Text-Book of Psychiatry (1927) advice on certification.. Voluntary treatment in a (London) asylum, at this time, would have been in a private asylum, such as Brooke House, Chiswick House, Peckham House or Northumberland House (twenty four hours notice if she wanted to leave) or, possibly, treatment at the Maudsley Hospital.

    "On [Wednesday] 15 February 1928 Charlotte went into a nursing home in Beaumont Street for treatment for neurasthenia" (Val Warner 1981 p.xiii)

    28.2.1928 [24.2.1928?] Letter from Charlotte Mew to Kate Cockerell from 37 Beaumont Street, Marleybone. W.1. [BF]

    "On [Saturday] 24 March she killed herself there by drinking half a bottle of lysol. At the inquest her doctor said that after Anne's death 'she became obsessed with the idea that her room and belongings were infected by the germ which she thought had killed her sister." (Val Warner 1981 p.xiii)

    External link: death by Lysol - death in lysol poisoning occurs in about 3-4 hours" - "During the 1930s, it was a common choice of the suicides by poisoning" - See also Lysol 1909

    Saturday 24.3.1928 Death of Charlotte Mary Mew, aged 53 Years [This has to be wrong. Maybe a typing error when the copy was made], at 37 Beaumont Street. She was "of 64 Charlotte Street, St Pancras, Spinster, Poetess, Daughter of Frederick Mew, Architect". An Inquest was held Wednesday 28.3.1928 and the Registrar for All Souls, St Marylebone was informed of the death by "Certificate received from H.R. Oswald, Coroner for London" on Thursday 29.3.1928. The cause of death was "Swallowing Lysol poison. Killed herself while of unsound mind". There had been a Post Mortem.

    She was buried with Anne in Hampstead Cemetery, Fortune Green Road, London, NW6

    Charlotte Mew's will (3.1.1928) named James George O'Keefe (Mary Davidow's spelling) and Ethel Oliver her executers. No literary executer was named in the will. (Davidow, M. 1960 page 109). [Val Warner, 1997, page 44, also says Ethel Oliver was Charlotte Mew's executer]. "There were a number of small legacies and gifts... £2,200 was set aside for Freda's maintenance, and the rest of the estate was divided between Florence Ellen Mew, Ethel Louisa Mew and Katherine Righton". Penelope Fitzgerald 1988, page 222)

    25.3.1928 Letter from F.F.Blackman to "My dear Cockerell" gives him the news of Charlotte Mew's death.

    29.3.1928 Letter from Alida Monro to Sydney C. Cockerell. [British Library 57755 638 - BF] She has just been to Charlotte's funeral. Ethel Oliver and James O'Keeffe were "chary" of publishing work still in manuscript. Alida wanted to write to Ethel asking that all manuscripts could be seen by Sydney Cockerell or herself.

    29.3.1928 Sydney C. Cockerell, "Miss Charlotte Mew: A Poet of Rare Quality." Obituary. The Times p.21a. Says Charlotte had "periods of overwhelming depression" (Val Warner 1975) - Louis Untermeyer quoted from the obituary.

    Elsie Blackman wrote to Sydney Cockerell thanking him for the obituary and saying "In later years I have seen little of her..." - "It seems an irony to say with Ethel Oliver - 'How pleased Charlotte would have been to read it'" - "there were about a dozen people at the cemetery and many of her favourite red flowers."

    At the cemetery [guesses included]: Ethel Oliver, Elsie Blackman, James O'Keeffe, Elsie O'Keeffe, Mrs Hill, Alida Monro, Katherine Righton - Some cousins from the Isle of Wight. Mrs Hill probably knew Elsie O'Keeffe, which is how she would have heard about the funeral. In putting the collection of posthumous poems together, Alida Monro also attempted to put together a reconstruction of Charlotte's life, Ethel Oliver and Mrs Hill appear to have passed on to Alida the letters they had kept of Charlotte's, presumably to help with the life story. Alida made some use of them in her 1953 biography. By 1958/1959, when Mary Davidow used them, they had found their way to the Lockwood Library in New York - I suggest by way of sale (by Alida) to George Sims.

    Three weeks after Charlotte Mew's death: A letter from Ethel Oliver to Alida Monro. (Acquired by Frederick B. Adams in 1987. He wrote to Penelope Fitzgerald about it on 22.8.1987.

    28.3.1928 Letter from Ethel Oliver, from 2 The Grove, Isleworth to Mrs Inglis. [Berg Collection - BF]

    The letters from Charlotte Mew to Mrs Inglis were sold by Alida Monro to George Sims in the 1950s. He appears to have sold them to the Berg Collection in New York. I would guess that Sydney Cockerell, or possibly Ethel Oliver, secured the letters from Mrs Inglis to help Alida with her biographical reconstruction.

    28.3.1928 One page letter from Siegfried Sassoon to Edith Sitwell mentions Charlotte Mew. Berg Collection catalogue

    4.4.1928 One page letter from Alida Monro to Sydney C. Cockerell. [Berg Collection catalogue]

    4.4.1928 One page letter from Siegfried Sassoon to Sydney C. Cockerell. [Berg Collection catalogue]

    11.4.1928 Letter from Alida Monro to Sydney C. Cockerell. [British Library 57755 638 - BF]

    16.4.1928 Letter from Alida Monro to Sydney C. Cockerell. [British Library 57755 638 - BF]

    May 1928 Charlotte Mew's poem "Sunlit House" republished in The Bookman volume 74 (therefore London), pages 112-113. [ "The Sunlit House" was one of the additional published poems in Saturday Market (1921), but was written before 29.7.1913 [Was this re-published as a memorial to Charlotte?]

    21.5.1928 Letter from Alida Monro to Sydney C. Cockerell. [British Library 57755 638 - BF]

    7.6.1928? Letter from Alida Monro to Sydney C. Cockerell. [British Library 57755 638 - BF]

    6.8.1928 One page letter from James George O'Keefe to Sydney C. Cockerell. [Berg Collection catalogue]

    21.11.1928 Letter from W.B. (William Bowers?) Dalton to F.F. Blackman Esq. Upper Cross, Storey's Way, Cambridge, who had bought a piece of Dalton's stoneware pottery from the Art And Craft exhibition at the Academy. "I hope you will get as much pleasure from it as I had in its making" (Watts boxes)

    Sometime in 1928, Sigmund Freud is reputed to have said, to Professor Becker in Berlin,
    "The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious. What I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied."
    He is quoted in R. Lehrman in "Freud's Contributions to Science" (in the journal Harofe Haivri Volume 1 (1940) and then cited by Lionel Trilling in "Freud and Literature" (in The Liberal Imagination 1940).

     

    1929

    27.2.1929 Stamp on Poetry Bookshop specimen of poems

    28.2.1929 One page letter from Ethel Oliver to Alida Monro [Berg Collection catalogue]. Also later 2 page letter and a five page letter of 16.6.1929 [The folder contains the three letters and a "newspaper clipping of her obituary notice" - Is that Ethel Oliver's obituary notice?]

    The Rambling Sailor (May 1929) was preceded by a four page prospectus on blue paper quoting from the Times obituary.

    Alida's first account of Charlotte Mew

    The two page Introductory Note to The Rambling Sailor by "A.K." [Alida Monro] has several mistakes about the dates and order of events in Charlotte's life. The book was produced at a very difficult time in Alida's life.

    Charlotte Mary Mew was born in London on the 15th November 1870, the daughter of an architect. She passed the whole of her life except for brief intervals in the heart of Bloomsbury.

    While she was still young her father died and left her and her mother and family in financial difficulties. Her temperament was keyed very low, and the tribulations and batterings of her personal life, including the poverty that dogged her all her days, were probably responsible for the fact that many of the poems in her first book, The Farmer's Bride, and indeed in this second book of posthumous poems, show an intense preoccupation with death and disaster either physical or spiritual.

    In 1922, through the united efforts of Thomas Hardy (who thought her one of the best poets of the time), John Masefield and Walter de la Mare, she received a Civil List pension of seventy-five pounds a year. This was helpful in mitigating the strain of poverty, but no sooner was the financial burden alleviated than her mother died, and her own health broke down. Both these trials were overcome and all seemed ready for a return to productive life when her beloved sister was stricken with a fatal illness and died after some months of agony. For a time it seemed she could repulse this last attack of Fate, but subsequently it became evident that her resistance had given way and she died in a nursing home, by her own hand, on the 24th March, 1928.

    No pen portrait can convey the deep charm and rare wit that were the continual delight of Charlotte Mew's intimates ; nor can the passionate sincerity and truth with which she faced the onslaughts of life be portrayed except through her poems. The following quotations, which are taken from her volume, The Farmer's Bride, exemplify this point:-

    No subterfuges were possible for her, no lurking in stealthy byways stalking the hope of better things in a Better World. She was always conscious she once admitted of what seemed to her an Earthly Presence, a bond, an actual contact with the earth, of a knowledge of final peace in the heart of things. Moorland Sanctuary may be taken as her own expression of her belief. She read many times, to the writer of this note, a poem (which has not been found among her papers) which described how a Breton shepherd one night left his sheep to lay himself at the feet of a Wayside Calvary, and the next morning passers-by found a heap of leaves - all that was left of him. She finished the poem with her characteristic toss of the head, and the admission that for her part, such a death, perhaps in a wood, was all she asked. But Death came to her in the heart of London, surrounded by no trees, no birds, nothing but grey bricks and greyer life.

    It is not proposed in this brief note to offer a critical estimate of her work. The fact that she was awarded a Civil List pension is sufficient evidence of the esteem in which it was held by sensitive critics. Among Thomas Hardy's papers was found copied from The Sphere, the poem Fin de Fete.

    The best of her early poems and those most indicative of her tragic personality are included in this volume, in a separate section. All of them appeared in Temple Bar, to which periodical she contributed verse and prose for a number of years in her early life. She also contributed essays, poems and stories to The Yellow Book, The Englishwoman, The Nation, The New Statesman, The Chapbook, etc.

    Charlotte Mew's dislike of publicity was extreme and her defiant reserve, in later years, placed every obstacle in the way of those who desired to secure her friendship. However, to those she loved and trusted she gave loyalty and companionship without stint.

    A. K.

    May 1929 - The Poetry Bookshop published a reprint of the 1921 edition of The Farmer's Bride and a new collection of poems by Charlotte Mew, with the title The Rambling Sailor (price 3/6d)

    There are 45 pages with thirty two poems.

    The Rambling Sailor is the same size book as The Farmer's Bride. It is also the same colour in its dustjacket. The Farmer's Bride, however, had this colour boards - It did not have a dustjacket.

    The photograph of Charlotte Mew used as a frontispiece (below) is the same as used as the frontispiece of the
    1953 Collected Poems This photograph of the inside is from the Itinerant Librarian's blog - See helpful people

    Charlotte Mew: The Rambling Sailor. London: Poetry Bookshop, 1929. Contains (with year of first publication or writing when known and highlighting those that may not have been published previously):

    In the Fields (1923 and 1925) - From a Window (external web copy) - Not for that City (1902) - Rooms - Monsieur Qui Passe (Quai Voltaire) (external web copy) - Do Dreams Lie Deeper? 1926 - Domus Caedet Arborem - Fin de Fête (1923) - Again - Epitaph - "Friend  Wherefore  ?" - I so Liked Spring (external web copy) - Here Lies a Prisoner (written by 1924) - May, 1915 - June, 1915 - Ne Me Tangito (external web copy) - Old Shepherd's Prayer 1922 - My Heart is Lame - On Youth Struck Down (From an unfinished elegy) (possibly written 1926 - The Rambling Sailor (1922) - The Call (1912) - Absence (external web copy) - The Trees are Down (1923) - Smile, Death - To a Child in Death (1922) - Moorland Night (1925) -

    PLUS early poems printed at the end: At the Convent Gate (1902) - Requiescat (1909) - The Little Portress (St Gilda de Rhuys) (1903) - Afternoon Tea - She was a Sinner - Song (1902).

    On Youth Struck Down was chosen for Twentieth Century Poetry in 1933 and, possibly, 1929 - My Heart is Lame was quoted by Rex Whister to Lady Caroline Paget in a letter (possibly 1936-1937)

    Ne me tangito One of two poems explicitly about Mary of Magdala. The other being She was a Sinner. In the same thought space is Madeleine in Church, part of which is about Mary - But dialogues between flesh and spirit pervade much of Charlotte Mew's writing. Why does she call it Ne me tangito instead of the Vulgate's "noli me tangere" - (John 20:17 dicit ei Iesus noli me tangere... Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not) - Is ne me tangito a future tense implying never touch me? Help - anyone know Latin?

    12.6.1929 Hambert Wolfe, review of The Rambling Sailor in The Observer (Davidow, M. 1960 page 265)

    21.6.1929 Edith Sitwell, review of The Farmer's Bride and The Rambling Sailor in Time and Tide (Davidow, M. 1960 page 266)

    4.6.1929 R. J. Lythgoe and K. Tansley "The Relation of the Critical Frequency of Flicker to the Adaptation of the Eye" Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character (1905-1934) Volume 105, Number 734. Lithgoe was a Beit Memorial Research Fellow. (He and?) Tansley "Department of Physiology, University College, London". The paper was communicated by Sir John Parsons FRS and received on 14.3.1929.

    Richard James Lythgoe and Katharine Tansley: The Adaptation of the Eye: its Relation to the Critical Frequency of Flicker (Reports of the Committee upon the Physiology of Vision. 4) Medical Research Council. Special Report Series. no. 134. London, 1929. - See also 1.11.1933 - 1.4.1936 and 1965

    October 1929 The Survival League founded in London by Mrs C. A. Dawson Scott to affirm the unity of all religions and spread the knowledge of the scientific demonstrability of survival after death. 1929 also saw the publication of Is this Wilson?: messages accredited to Woodrow Wilson - received by Mrs. C.A. Dawson Scott; with an introduction by Edward S. Martin. New York : E.P. Dutton, 1929. 165 pages

    November 1929: Second impression of The Rambling Sailor

    1930

    [United States] Revised edition of Louis Untermeyer's anthology Modern British Poetry] Betty Falkenberg (2005 p.37) says the same eleven poems by Charlotte Mew were published in 1930 and 1936. I expect the introduction was also the same (See 1936).

    William McDougall's autobiography: "William McDougall", in Carl Murchison (editor) A History of Psychology in Autobiography Volume 1. New York: Russell and Russell (1930): pages 191-223. - ~ External link to archive of autobiography

    Chick sisters bought Hazelwood

    21.4.1930 Death of the poet laureate, Robert Bridges. He was succeeded by John Masefield.

    1931

    3.3.1931 Death of Emma Chick, aged 86. She was the chairman of Samuel Chick Limited from the death of her husband to her own death.

    Estate Duty papers Emma Chick died 3.3.1931. Will made, 10.8.1930. Codicil 5.2.1931. (Watts boxes)

    1932

    The Guide to Psychic Knowledge (32 pages). Edited by Mrs. C. A. Dawson Scott. London and Bradford: E. Shaw & Co., [1932.]. Also The Guide to Psychic Knowledge. No. 2. Questions from people on this side of death. Answers from people on that side of death (43 pages) Edited by C. A. Dawson Scott. London : C. W. Daniel, 1932.

    Emma Chick will and Probate dated 1932 (Watts boxes)

    12.3.1932 One page letter from Siegfried Sassoon to Edith Sitwell mentions Charlotte Mew. Berg Collection catalogue

    16.3.1932 Death of Harold Monro at Broadstairs, Kent. - "Harold Monro's later poems were bitter in tone as he dealt with loneliness arising from his alcoholism and bisexuality. During his final two years he was suffering from very poor health and crippling pain."

    21.3.1932 Letter from Alida Monro to Sydney C. Cockerell. She has been "fitfully employed" on her "memoir" of Charlotte. [British Library 57755 638 - BF]

    1933

    25.3.1933 Three page letter from Virginia Moore to Sydney C. Cockerell, relating to Charlotte Mew. [Berg Collection catalogue]

    1.11.1933 Katharine Tansley: "Factors Affecting the Development and Regeneration of Visual Purple in the Mammalian Retina" Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character (1905-1934) Volume 114, Number 786. Katherine: "The Strangeways Research Laboratory, Cambridge and The Department of Physiology, University College, London". The paper was communicated by C.E. Lovett Evans FRS and received on 21.8.1933.

    8.11.1933 Death of James Hooley Chick, "after a distressingly painful illness of several months duration" at The London Clinic and Nursing Home, Devonshire Place. Funeral service at Golders Green Crematorium 11.11.1933 attended by "many members of the regiment and the Masonic Master (Fitzroy Lodge), Major C.A.J. Whyte. J.H.C.'s will instructed that "my body shall be cremated and that no service of any kind whatsoever shall be held over my ashes". His executers were Samuel Hooley Ackroyd and Alexander Wright.

    Mary Chick became Chairman of Samuel Chick Limited. Margaret Chick and Edith Tansley were the other two Directors.

    Probate will Samuel (James?) Hooley Chick. Will 2.9.1933. Death 8.11.1933. (Watts boxes)

    The Collected Poems of Harold Monro edited by Alida Monro. With a biographical sketch by F.S. Flint and a critical note by T.S. Eliot. With a portrait. London: Cobden-Sanderson. 1933.

    Twentieth Century Poetry: An Anthology chosen by Harold Monro Revised and enlarged by Alida Monro. London : Chatto and Windus, 1933. 266 pages. Original 1929 - Wikipedia lists the poets included - This has Harold Monro's introduction, but Alida does not provide one of her own to show how it has been revised and enlarged. The poems by Charlotte Mew (in order of appearance) are Moorland Night from 1925 (p.56) - On Youth Struck Down from 1929 (p.142) - Sea Love from 1919 (p.142) - The Farmer's Bride from 1912 (p.209) - Song - 1902 (p.226)

    December 1933 Recent Poetry, 1923-1933 Edited by Alida Klemantaski Monro. London: G. Howe and The Poetry Bookshop, 1933. 12 introductory pages. 211 main pages. The poems by Charlotte Mew (in order of appearance) are Fin de Fête - The Rambling Sailor and Domus Caedet Arborem

    1934

    5.1.1934 Announcement that The Survival League had established "The International Institute for Psychical Research" with Mrs. C. A. Dawson Scott as its Organising Secretary. The Secretarial office (pro tem.) was at 125 Alexandra Road, London, N.W.8. (Telephone Maida Vale 2191) Mrs Dawson Scott's home address. It was "formed for the purpose of investigating psychic phenomena on strictly scientific lines". (external source)

    4.11.1934 or 5.11.1934 Death of Catherine Amy Dawson Scott. She had ceased being secretary to The Survival League and The International Institute for Psychical Research a few months before.

    19.12.1934 Letter to O.L. Marshall, 5 Newman Street, that it would be necessary (under Samuel Chick's will) to appoint two new trustees (in addition to Miss Chick and Mr Ackroyd) if the "Chick's Executers Auction Sale" was to go ahead. Presumably relates to Barbara Wood Trustees

    1935

    Tansley, A. G. 1935. "The use and abuse of vegetational concepts and terms." Ecology 16: 284-307 introduces his concept of the "ecosystem" - Peder Anker, 2001 argues that the concept was developed as a "mechanistic view of ecology" in opposition to the "idealistic ecology" of Smuts' "politics of holism"

    22.6.1935 Unsigned letter from Mrs Monro giving notice of the closing down of the Poetry Bookshop - In California Collection [A two paged letter, mechanically reproduced. The letters were addressed and signed individually by Alida Monro and sent to friends of the bookshop. (Woolmer 1988, G12). The letter said that she had kept the bookshop open since Harold's death, "trying to persuade herself that the moment had not come". She would remain living upstairs and would be delighted to see any of them "as if the Bookshop were still in existence". (Woolmer 1988, p.xxvii). Alida Monro remained at the Russell Street address until 1939. After closure, Alida Monro kept the basement for storing Poetry Bookshop publications. Flooding caused by an air raid in 1941 led to many being pulped (Woolmer 1988, p.xiv). - In 1953, T.S. Eliot helped the Poetry Society open a bookshop in Earl's Court Square, but this has now closed. (external source).

    1936

    Frederick Frost Blackman retired from his readership at St John's College, Cambridge.

    1.4.1936 L. E. Bayliss, R. J. Lythgoe and Katharine Tansley "Some New Forms of Visual Purple Found in Sea Fishes with a Note on the Visual Cells of Origin" Journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990) Volume 120, Number 816

    30.6.1936 The Directors (Mary Chick - Margaret Chick - Edith Tansley) of Samuel Chick Limited appointed Samuel Hooley Ackroyd as the fourth Director

    On 1.1.1936, "Harold Gould Busk and Nancy Busk" sold Fairlee House and South Fairlee Farm, Whippingham to "the Mayor etc. of Newport". On 15.12.1936, Newport let "a piece of land at South Fairlee Farm" to the Isle of Wight County Council for "egg laying trials" and on 25.10.1937, Newport agreed to two telegraph poles being erected on their "property known as South Fairlee Farm". (Isle of Wight Archives)

    1936 The section on Charlotte Mew in Louis Untermeyer's revised Modern British Poetry contained: In the Fields - Sea Love - I Have Been Through the Gates - To a Child in Death - Song - The Farmer's Bride - Beside the Bed - An extract from Madeleine in Church - Again - Old Shepherd's Prayer - The Trees are Down - The introduction is probably the same as in 1930. This is, presumably, the edition that inspired Mary Davidow America

    Charlotte (Mary) Mew was born November 15, 1869, the daughter of an architect of distinction, who died when she was an infant. Little is generally known of her life except that it was a long struggle not only with poverty but with adversity and private sorrows that finally overcame her. In her late fifties, through the joint efforts of Hardy, De la Mare, and Masefield, she was granted a Civil List pension. Though she loved the country, she was forced to live almost continually in London, in the very heart of Bloomsbury, becoming more and more of a recluse. One of her few excursions was a week-end at Max Gate, where she was the guest of Thomas Hardy, who considered her the best woman poet of her day. The death of her mother was a blow from which she never recovered; the death of her sister hastened her end. As Sydney C. Cockerell wrote,

    "Charlotte and Anne Mew had more than a little in them of what made another Charlotte and Anne, and their sister Emily, what they were. They were indeed like two Bronte sisters reincarnate".

    Charlotte Mew died by her own hand in a nursing home March 24, 1928. In the obituary note which Sydney Cockerell wrote for the London Times few new facts came to light. It was learned that Charlotte Mew wrote much more than was suspected, but

    "how much she destroyed at house-movings and during periods of overwhelming depression, we shall never know. There can be no doubt that her fastidious self-criticism proved fatal to much work that was really good, and that the printed poems are far less than a tithe of what she composed. These first appeared in various periodicals. In 1916, seventeen of them were collected into a thin volume which was issued by the Poetry Book Shop for a shilling. In 1921 this volume, named The Farmer's Bride, after the opening poem, was re-issued with the addition of 11 new poems, 28 in all. Perhaps not more than another 20 have seen the light. But, although the visible output was so small, the quality was in each case poignant and arresting. These poems are written as though with the life-blood of a noble and passionate heart."

    One of Charlotte Mew's first discoverers was Alida Klemantaski (later Mrs. Harold Monro), who was not only responsible for the publication of The Farmer's Bride, but for the printing of the posthumous The Rambling Sailor (1929) to which she furnished a Memoir. The first book was brought out in America under the title of Saturday Market in 1921. Had Miss Mew printed nothing but the original booklet, it would have been sufficient to rank her among the most distinctive and intense of living poets. Hers is the distillation, the essence of emotion, rather than the stirring up of passion. Her most remarkable work is in dramatic projections and monologues (unfortunately too long to quote) like "The Changeling," with its fantastic pathos, and that powerful meditation, "Madeleine in Church." But lyrics as swift as "Sea Love," or as ageless as "Song," with its simple finality, or as hymn-like as "I Have Been Through the Gates" are equally sure of their place in English literature. They are, in common with all of Charlotte Mew's work, disturbing in their direct beauty; full of a speech that is noble and profound without ever becoming pompous. Apart from her other qualities (not the least of which is her control of an unusually long and extraordinarily flexible line) Miss Mew's work is a series of triumphs in condensation.

    "To a Child in Death", a strangely premonitory poem, "In the Fields", and "Old Shepherd's Prayer" are among those given in manuscript by Charlotte Mew to the editor shortly before her death. These, with thirty other posthumous poems, appeared in The Rambling Sailor.

    1937

    Peter F. Blackman a young apprentice at the British Thomson Houston Co. in Rugby, along with John Westcott.

    Dictionary of National Biography entry for Charlotte Mew, by A. Monro, Sources given as The Times, 29.3.1928 and personal knowledge. Includes:
    "She was educated privately, and later attended lectures at University College, London."

    Sometime in 1937, Sydney Cockerell retired from the Fitzwilliam Museum and moved to London to live at 21 Kew Gardens Road, Richmond, Surrey, where he died in 1962. Kate Cockerell required a nurse from about 1942. She died in 1949. At her request, Dorothy Hawksley helped look after Sydney for the rest of his life. He was bedridden from 1951. In 1956 he sold most of his manuscript and printed book collection (raising over £80,000). (external link). However, he kept "a wonderful series of books illuminated by his late wife, Kate Kingsford" (Christian, J. 2005 p.2)

    17.10.1937 Death of Florence Hardy. Her will included a clause that led to the creation of a 'Thomas Hardy Memorial Collection' in the Dorset County Museum.

    6.12.1937 Death of James George O'Keefe

    10.12.1937 Death of Edward Thomas Browne at Anglefield", aged 72, "following a short illness". Obituary by E. J. Allen in the Journal of the Marine Biological Association volume 22, pages 405-410, in 1938. Margaret Browne died shortly afterwards: (Notice of death in Telegraph 29.3.1938)

    1938

    Death of Mary Chick. She would have been aged about 65. Her last will was dated 5.9.1935, but had a codicil dated 17.10.1938. Margaret Chick signed the Annual Report of Samuel Chick Limited in June 1939, but as "Director", not "Chairman"

    Watts boxes contain a file "Early Work and Present Post of the Contributors to the Blackman Book. 1938"

    May Morris (1862-1938), William Morris's youngest daughter, died. As a result of her death, Morris and Company closed.

    26.5.1938 Sale of the bulk of Thomas Hardy's Max Gate library by the London auction house of Hodgson & Co. - MG Sale: "A Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Hardy, O.M. London: Hodgson & Co., 26 May 1938" - Richard Purdy and Frederick B. Adams both made numerous purchases. See Hardy library

    1939

    Mary Davidow graduated, Bachelor of Education, from Rhode Island College. "It was while I was an undergraduate that I first read Charlotte Mew's poetry in Untermeyer's Modern British Poetry wherein he states, in his biographical sketch of the poet, that 'little is known of her life except that it was a long struggle not only with poverty but with adversity and private sorrow that finally overcame her'. The reader of her poetry is, therefore, inclined to look to the poems for, among other things, expression of autobiographical significance. But the poems tell only enough to arouse curiosity..." (Davidow, M. 1960 page v)

    F. W. Oliver "Libyan Flowers" Journal Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London (1938-1996) Issue Volume 2, Number 2, 1939

    1.1.1939 A. G. Tansley's obituary of Harry Church (1865-1937) Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society (1932-1954) Volume 2, Number 7

    1939/1940 I can count on the fingers of one hand the booksellers who have ordered copies during the past eight years (Alida Monro in 1948).

    "Mrs Alida Monro" moved in 1939 from 38 Great Russell Street, WC1, Telephone Museum 2249 (her telephone book entry since 1933, following Harold's death) to Greanlea House Telephone Sidlesham 24 in 1939 and then Haise Farm House Telephone Sidlesham 240 from 1940 to 1969 - Sidlesham is in West Sussex, south of Chichester (GENUKI link)

    1940

    Viola Meynell (editor) Friends of a Lifetime - Letters to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell. London: Jonathan Cape, 1940. 384 pages.

    1.9.1941 A. G. Tansley's obituary of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society (1932-1954) Issue Volume 3, Number 9

    A New Anthology of Modern Verse, 1920-1940. Chosen and with an introduction by C. Day Lewis and L. A. G. Strong. Methuen & Co., 1941 included (pages 131-132) Song by Charlotte Mew.

    During the second world war the Bloomsbury Squares were made public spaces by the Bedford Estate. Railings were removed from all but Bedford Square. They were taken down in Russell Square, Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury Square, Woburn Square and Gordon Square. (Clunn, H.P. 1962 p. 149)

    Gordon Square was laid out about 1820 by Thomas Cubitt, but (1958) had been "mostly rebuilt at various times". Originally the property of the Duke of Bedford, it is now managed by the University of London.

    Tavistock Square is older. It was also laid out by Thomas Cubitt, and a range of his buildings (1826) survived on the west side of the square in 1956

    To the north of Gordon Square and Tavistock Square are squares of buildings, bounded on the west by Gordon Street, on the east by Woburn Place. These used to end, on the north, with:

    Euston Square Gardens (south). Euston Square, on either side of the main road, was constructed between 1813 and 1833.

    In 1958, Euston Square Gardens (north) still fronted the original doric arch of Euston Station.

    Bloomsbury walk

    Links here are mostly external - I will move towards making this a summary of the present squares and their history with reference to Charlotte Mew.

    1944 Harriette Chick made a Dame of the British Empire. "The name she has always been called by in my family was "Dame Harriette", although residents of Branscombe always spoke of her as "Miss Chick" (Dorothy Lumb).

    27.6.1944 Letter from Arthur Tansley to Sydney C. Cockerell concerning the sanity of the Mew sisters. [Berg Collection BF]

    1945

    Mervyn Horder (1910-1997) was Chairman and Managing Director of Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., general publishers, from 1945-1970

    1946

    Twentieth Century Poetry: An Anthology chosen by Harold Monro Revised and enlarged by Alida Monro. London : Chatto and Windus, 1946. 266 pages. Original 1929

    1946 Royal Charter to the Arts Council of Great Britain. It began collecting literary manuscripts in 1963

    15.1.1946 Birth in Middlesex of Val Warner, poet and editor and historian of Charlotte Mew. Educated at State Schools, she worked in France before studying Modern History at Oxford University. Having begun to write poetry after graduation, she chose part time work and sometimes poverty as the price for writing. A part time teacher 1968-1971, freelance proof- reader and copy editor 1971-1977. Carcanet published a pamphlet of her poems, These Yellow Photos, in 1971, and a full collection Under the Penthouse in 1973. She was one of the six young (under 30) British poets who received an Eric Gregory Award for Poetry in 1975, money which "helped me". 1975 also saw the publication of her translations of the Brittany poet, Tristan Corbière (18.7.1845 - 1.3.1875), who wrote "moving, realistic descriptions of the peasants and sailors" of Brittany, and her first work on Charlotte Mew "Mary Magdalene and the Bride. The Work of Charlotte Mew" in Poetry Nation. Writer in residence University of Swansea 1977-1978. Writer in residence University of Dundee 1979-1981. In 1981 Carcanet, in association with Virago, published her scholarly Collected Poems and Collected Prose of Charlotte Mew, with "an abridgement by the publisher" of her "fully annotated study" as an introduction. Val Warner lived "in Scotland another seven years, living very cheaply in rural North-east Fife, subsisting on a sack of oats every 3 months but getting a great deal of writing done". The second full collection of her poems, Before Lunch, was published in 1986. In 1997 Carcanet published a slim Collected Poems and Selected Prose of Charlotte Mew with an extended study of Charlotte by Val Warner and in February 1998, Tooting Idyll, "Val Warner's first new collection in eleven years". Shortly after this she was hosting young writers workshops in Willesden Library. Val Warner has been a member of the Writers in Prison Committee of English PEN since 1998 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1999.

    30.6.1946 Annual Report of Samuel Chick Limited gives Directors names as Margaret Chick - Edith Tansley - S.H. Ackroyd.

    30.6.1947 Annual Report of Samuel Chick Limited said Mr [O.L.] Marshall (Director) unable to attend as "very ill indeed" and the retiring director Mr S.H. Ackroyd was not seeking re-election owing to ill health.

    " Frederick Frost Blackman, M.A., D.Sc. (London), F.R.S., Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and formerly Reader in Botany in the University of Cambridge, was born on July 25, 1866, and died at his home in Cambridge, England, on January 30, 1947, in his 81st year." (external link to memorial biography)

    January 1948 Death of Samuel Hooley Ackroyd.

    30.6.1948 Annual Report of Samuel Chick Limited gave Directors as "Miss Margaret Chick - Mrs Edith Tansley - Mrs Margaret Tomlinson, MA - P.F. Blackman, Esq."

    Envelope Macclesfield, 6.7.1948 Cheshire - Mrs Blackman, 34 Storey's Way, Cambridge - "Dear Elsie, thank you for your interesting letter of the 28th to which I am sorry I have not replied more promptly. The card you describe, must I think, be a memorial card of Grandmother Hooley's mother, Elisabeth Wood. From Frank (?) (Watts boxes)

    The poet Patric Thomas Dickinson (1914-1994) worked for the BBC from 1942 to 1948. Peggy Parris's Bibliography includes Dickinson, Patric. "A Note on Charlotte Mew." The Nineteenth Century and After July 1948: 42-47. The British Library has correspondence from 1948 to 1957 between Patric Dickinson and Sydney Cockerell. Apparently Patric Dickinson regreted the survival of this correspondence.

    July 1948 A letter in The Listener from Sir Sydney Cockerell, prompted after hearing on the radio Patric Dickinson's "warm tribute" to Miss Mew. "Charlotte Mew's two slim volumes are now practically unobtainable, and little has been heard of her of late"

    Alida Monro wrote to The Listener

    "My attention has been directed to a letter from Sir Sydney Cockerell... in which he states that the two volumes of poems by Charlotte Mew are "practically unobtainable"! May I as the publisher of the books be allowed space to correct this statement. Ever since we at The Poetry Bookshop, issued The Farmer's Bride in 1916 and the The Rambling Sailor in 1929, they have been continuously in print, and are obtainable at the present time from any bookseller who wishes to get them. The address given on the title page of both volumes still finds me. Although The Poetry Bookshop closed down the bookselling department before the war, there was never any idea of losing the imprint. All the publications of The Poetry Bookshop which I still wish to keep in print are to be had from me at my home address... It is significant that I can count on the fingers of one hand the booksellers who have ordered copies during the past eight years... Both myself and my husband, the late Harold Monro, were indefatigable in giving Readings from the works of poets in whom we believed and because of our unique position as specialists in poetry we were able to exert an influence on the sale of poetry ancient and modern..."

    24?.7.1948 Letter from Alida Monro to Sydney C. Cockerell. [British Library 57755 638 - BF]

    1951

    I'm afraid she is dead to...

    In 1951 Miss K.H. Righton gave two paintings by Henry Thomas Jarman (1871- 1956) to the National Museums and Libraries of Wales - "Bacchus Kidnapped" and "Autumn Landscape". In 1957, the museums and galleries bought another painting by Henry Thomas Jarman: a portrait of "Reverend Howell Elvet Lewis (1860-1953)". Mary Davidow (1960 page 356) says that (in 1958?) "Kate Righton's nephew pointed out to me that the Iarmans' studio was in the same building as... Miss Righton's studio, and that the two women were quite friendly". She reproduces two letters from "Margaret Iarman" (Herefordshire, 19.1.1959 on page 356) and "F.M. Iarman" (Herefordshire 10.3.1959 on page 360).

    "19.1.1959: Please forgive my delay in replying to your letter of October 1958. I had my sister very ill at the time and she passed away in November. Both the Miss Mews were very charming but a certain shyness prevented one from getting to know them. Both they and their friend, Miss Righton, were much older than myself and belonged to the Victorian era which seemed always to keep them apart, and a certain air of mystery about the Miss Mews which one didn't dare penetrate! ! They had a very lovely old house in one of the old and fashionable London Squares when I first met them at Miss Righton's Studio, and my husband and I dined there. Their mother was alive at the time but she didn't appear at dinner! Later on they had a small flat and Anne's studio where we occasionally went for tea. I once met there Mrs Monro... My husband was asked to paint Charlotte's portrait, but C. would not consent to sit for it, a great disappointment, as the portrait was intended for Fitzwilliam Museum. Blackwood's Magazine years ago included some of Charlotte's short stories. Miss Righton had some of them."

    10.3.1959"...Oh, one other person who, in a round about way, may be helpful; T.S. Eliot's first wife was a Miss Haigh-Wood, and she as a small child was bridesmaid to a Mrs O'Keefe; the latter was a sister of Evelyn Millard. Mrs O'Keefe was friendly with the Mews. I'm afraid she is dead to..."

    The following telephone directory entries may be relevant:

    K. H. Righton, 45 Heath Hurst Road, NW3 Hampstead 2706 in 1943 and 1946

    Margaret F. Jarman, Deaconess, 5 Brook Moors, Pontesbury 371 Exchange: Brook. 1959. Directory: Warwick, Shropshire, Hereford, Stafford, Worcester

    Henry T Jarman, 7 Sherriff Road, NW6. Maida Vale 8334 1935 to 1939

    1952

    Margaret Chick, Letter 1952, Park Hill Ealing, compulsory purchase of Newman Street. (Watts boxes)

    1953

    Spring 1953 Alida Monro opens the parcel of Charlotte Mew's typescripts that she has not looked inside since she secured them after Charlotte's funeral in 1928 - An alternative interpretation of the introductory editorial note in The Cornhill Magazine (below) is that one of Sydney Cockerell's ladies opened the parcel.

    Summer 1953 Collected Poems of Charlotte Mew - With a Biographical Memoir by Alida Monro. London: Duckworth, 1953 .

    Alida Monro, "Charlotte Mew: A Memoir." In Collected Poems of Charlotte Mew by Charlotte Mew. London: Duckworth, 1953 pages vii to xx, was also published in the Third Quarter 1953 issue of The Adelphi.

    Third Quarter 1953 George Sims wrote to Alida Monro, care of The Adelphi. He received a reply from her home. Haise Farm, Sidlesham Common, Chichester. Sussex. After further correspondence they met at Scott's restaurant in Picadilly Circus. Their friendship lasted "until her death" and resulted in him buying "a great deal of manuscript material and many original letters from the Poetry Bookshop archives" (Simms, G. 1999 pp 148-147)

    Autumn 1953 A previously unpublished Charlotte Mew short story, A Fatal Fidelity, published in Cornhill Magazine Autumn - No 997, pages 67-80. A warm, humorous story around gravestones, with a happy ending in Southend for the bereaved. One wonders why (if?) it was not published earlier.

    Introductory editorial note (pages 66-67)

    "Charlotte Mew's reputation has rested hitherto on two ' slim volumes * of poems published by the Poetry Bookshop, The Farmer's Bride (1916) and The Rambling Sailor (1929). A Georgian poet in date, though not in spirit, her terror of publicity and passionate mistrust of her fellow-men placed every possible obstacle in the way of those who sought her personal friendship, and she has remained a solitary, somewhat dimly apprehended figure standing outside the main literary currents of her time.

    Apart from the fact that she received a Civil List pension in 1923 (her sponsors being Thomas Hardy, John Masefield and Walter de la Mare] and died by her own hand in 1928, few literary historians know much in detail of the circumstances of her life. These were exceptionally distressing: left almost penniless by her architect father, she carried for more than thirty years the responsibility of caring for her mother, two sisters and an elder brother, all of whom were ill one way or another, in body or mind; and in the end her own health broke under the strain of her accumulated misfortunes. She passed the whole of her life, except for brief holidays, in Bloomsbury and Camden Town.

    A Fatal Fidelity, still in its original yellowing typescript, came to light only this spring, in a forgotten parcel of her papers, together with a one-act play in Cornish dialect and file copies of various contributions to the journals (such as The Nation under Massingham's editorship, and Temple Bar) which habitually printed her prose sketches. Perhaps it had been rejected by these very journals owing to its extra length: perhaps it was an early work submitted before her name was well known. At all events it is undated, and it is impossible even to guess at the date either from internal evidence or by scrutiny of the typescript itself: this has a few pencilled corrections in the author's own hand, but offers no more clues than the address 9 Gordon Street, W.C., where Charlotte Mew lived continuously from about 1880 up to the early 1920s. The author's temperament was keyed very low and the agreeable, wry irony of A Fatal Fidelity exhibits about as sanguine a view of life, as near comedy as is to be found anywhere in her writings.

    Charlotte Mew's Collected Poems are being reissued this summer by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., with a new biographical memoir by her friend Mrs Harold Monro, who is one of the few people able to give an intimate picture of Charlotte Mew as she lived."

    Tuesday 27.10.1953 typed notes of Marianne Moore to Macmillan, New York, respecting Collected Poems of Charlotte Mew. With her papers at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia.

    Thursday 12.11.1953 Previously unpublished Charlotte Mew play The China Bowl (developed from, but simpler than and different from, the story), broadcast on the BBC West Region. The text of the BBC version is reproduced in Warner 1981, pages 419-455. An (almost identical) typescript of Charlotte Mew's (in the British Library) is reproduced in Warner 1997 pages 104-124. This, I take it, is the typescript discovered in the forgotten parcel.. The stage directions for the BBC version begins:

    "The living room of a fisherman's cottage in Cornwall some forty years ago."

    Charlotte Mew's typescript begins

    "SCENE: Living room of a fisherman's cottage in Cornwall"

    The original story makes no mention of Cornwall. The reference to "some forty years ago" suggests that, in 1953, it was thought the play was set about 1913. This is inconsistent with internal dates (and so, not inferred from them), and might suggest Alida Monro (or whoever) thought the play was written to be performed about forty years before.

    Also in 1953: First edition of The Popular Poodle by Clara Bowring and Alida Monro

    1954

    Collected Poems. Charlotte Mary Mew. New York, Macmillan 1954. The Duckworth, London, edition was also available in the United States

    20.2.1954: A previously unpublished Charlotte Mew short story, The Wheat, published in Time and Tide pages 237 to 238.

    Analytic Studies in Plant Respiration - Nine articles by Frederick Frost Blackman, only three of which were previously published, published as a memorial volume, edited by Dr John Barker (a former student), with a portrait. Cambridge University Press.

    Richard Little Purdy, Thomas Hardy: A Bibliographical Study. London: Oxford University Press, 1954. This was revised by Charles P.C. Pettit in a new edition published by Oak Knoll Press of New Castle Delaware in 2002. - Catalogue of his Thomas Hardy collection at Yale

    1955

    Death of Charles James Martin (9.1.1866-15.2.1955), long-time colleague of Harriette Chick - (archive)

    July 1955 Review of Charlotte Mew's Collected Poems in Poetry 86:240-41 (July 1955). John Holmes (1904-1962)

    25.11.1955 Death of Sir Arthur Tansley (84 years old) "in the house at Grantchester just outside Cambridge where he had lived since 1907".

    1956

    F.W. Leakey, "Baudelaire et Kendall" Revue de litterature comparee, Trentieme Annee, no.1, 1956, pp 53-63

    Viola Meynell (editor) The Best of Friends. Further letters to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956. 308 pages

    18.7.1956 32nd Annual General Meeting of Samuel Chick Limited held at 50 Great Portland Street, W1. Margaret Chick received a Director's salary of £200. Her report includes "A Bill has been passed through Parliament to enable the Postmaster general to compulsory acquire the land necessary for the creation of the General Post Office, which includes the whole of the properties owned by the Company in Newman Street. While no definite information is available, it is understood that the site on which the Company's properties are situated will not be required for some years." In the financiaL year 1955/1956 the company received a total of £25,744..18/8d from numbers one to six Newman Street, 12/14 Mortimer Street, 48/49 Wells Street, 28/32 Ridinghouse Street and 92/94/96 Oxford Street. (Company accounts 1925-1956 - Watts boxes)

    1957

    1.11.1957 H. Godwin's obituary of Arthur George Tansley. 1871-1955 Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (1955-2000) Issue Volume 3

    The Chick sisters alive at this time are

    Edith Tansley - who lived at Grantchester, Cambridgeshire.

    Harriette Chick - Although Margaret's letter (below) suggests Harriette lived elsewhere, her address in Whose Who in 1958 (according to her University College London index card) was still 30 Park Hill, Ealing, W5. -- 34 Storey's Way, Cambridge is written on later. The telephone book entries suggest that Harriette moved to live with Elsie about 1958

    Margaret Chick - Margaret lived at 30 Park Hill.

    Elsie Blackman, who lived at 34 Storey's Way, Cambridge

    Telephone numbers and address in 1957 - or otherwise if stated

    Samuel Chick Ltd, 50 Great Portland Street, W1. MUSeum 0872
    The Misses Chick, 30 Park Hill, W5. PERivale 4124
    Sir Sydney Cockerell, 21 Kew Gardens Road, RIChmond 5852 (Outer London Directory)
    D.W. Hawksley, 44 Redcliffe Gardens, Earl's Court, SW10 FLAxman 6028

    Captain S. Sassoon, Heytesbury House, Sutton Veny 205

    R P Mew Farmer, New Fairlee, Newport, Isle of Wight. Newport 2310

    The Chick family in Cambridge (Blackman and Tansley) had telephone entries that continued after death:

    F.F. Blackman, The Close, Girton Cambridge 964 in 1922
    F.F. Blackman, Uppercross, Storeys Way. Cambridge 964 in 1924-1927
    F.F. Blackman, Uppercross, Storeys Way. Cambridge 4964 in 1938
    Mrs E. Blackman, Uppercross, Storeys Way. Cambridge 50964 1961-1972 [Although she died in
    1967)

    Dame Harriette Chick, 34 Storey's Way, Cambridge 4964 from 1958 [changing to 50964 by 1971] to 1972 [Harriette Chick died in 1977]

    Peter F. Blackman, 43 Beech Park Way, Hempstead Road, Watford 26630 from 1970 to 1983 (when online directories end)

    A.G. Tansley, Grove Cottage, Grantchester Trumpington 206 in 1938/1939
    Sir Arthur Tansley, Grove Cottage, Grantchester Trumpington 2206 from 1961 to 1972 [Sir Arthur born 1871 died in 1955) - Lady Tansley died in 1970

    1958

    Mary Davidow awarded a Summer Study Grant by Brown University "which enabled her to go to London and Oxford to further her research in connection with the Charlotte Mew thesis" (page iii). "Thus, I had the good fortune of meeting and talking with some of Charlotte Mew's relatives, friends and acquaintances who shared their reminiscences of the poet with me. Little by little the pieces of the biography fell into place... the mists have begun to disappear..." (page vi) [I have added an estimate of age to the following] "I owe a debt of gratitude to Sister Mary Magdalen [82], Miss Florence Ellen Mew [84], and Mr and Mrs Richard Percy Mew [Richard 89]: for their hospitality and their reminiscences of their cousin; to Sir Sydney Cockerell, Captain Siegfried Sassoon, Miss Dorothy Hawksley, Miss Margaret Chick [83], Mrs Amice Macdonell Lee [84], Mrs Margaret Iarman, Mr Jack Pickerin, and Mr Wilfred Corbett for their generous assistance and their patient answers to my inquiries. I owe a special debt of gratitude also to Mrs Alida Monro (66) for putting at my disposal her collection of letters and papers concerning Charlotte Mew, and also to Mr Frederick Adams, Jr., Director of the Pierpoint Morgan Library, for permitting me the use of material from his private collection of Charlotte Mew..." (page ix) (Davidow, M. 1960)

    Sources of letters and other documents Mary Davidow used:

    Berg Collection:
    The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature. New York Public Library. Room 320. Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street New York, NY 10018-2788
    Link to catalogue
    Guide to the Charlotte Mary Mew collection of papers, 1913-1944
    Letters: May Sinclair to Charlotte Mew - Charlotte Mew and Sydney Cockerell - Charlotte New to Kate Cockerell - Florence Hardy to Charlotte Mew - Charlotte Mew to Ethel Inglis -

    The Poetry Collection, University of Buffalo
    Which was The Lockwood Memorial Library when she used it
    Link to modern manuscripts collection (archive) current - Charles David Abbott (1900-1961) was the director of the University Libraries from 1934 to 1960 and it may be during his time that the Charlotte Mew manuscripts were collected. See Abbott Hall

    The Buffalo collection includes Charlotte Mew's letters to Ethel Oliver in 1902 - 1909 - 1911 and 1914 (Library lists "6 items" letters sent between 1902 and 1914) - Her letters to Mrs Hill in 1913 and 1915 - Her letters to Harold Monro (1915-1928 - 16 items) - - Her letters to Alida Klemantaski Monro (1918-1926 - 7 items) - Her letters to Poetry Bookshop (1926 - 3 items) - The Poetry Bookshop to her (24.8.1926 - 1 item) - A letter from Charlotte Mew to Rolfe Arnold Scott-James (10.2.1916) - A letter from G.G. Pertwee sent 24.12.1921 and a letter to G.G. Pertwee from Charlotte Mew sent January 1922 - A letter from Charlotte Mew to Evelyn Millard sent 20.2.1928 - A letter from Elise Blackman to Sydney Cockerell in 1928 - A letter from Mervyn Horder to Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell in 1948, about Farmer's Bride and Rambling Sailor.

    Mentioned by John Newton 2000: A typescript of The Fête - a corrected and signed typescript of The Changeling - a manuscript of Spring 1915 - a manuscript of Saturday Market - two manuscripts of Sea Love - a corrected typescript and a corrected proof for I Have Been Through the Gates - a corrected typescript of Again - The surviving manuscript of Aglaë

    Listed from The Poetry Collection Catalogue by Diane Marie Ward: Manuscripts by Mew: - Manuscript dedication for the Farmer's Bride (1921) 1 leaf - Saturday Market (between 1911 and 1921) 2 leaves - A Quoi Bon Dire (between 1906 and 1916) 1 leaf - The Changeling (1913) 2 leaves - Again (between 1908 and 1928) 1 leaf - From a Window (between 1918 and 1928) 1 leaf - I Have Been Through the Gates (between 1910 and 1920) 1 leaf - A Wedding Day (between 1908 and 1928) 21 leaves - Spring (1915) 1 leaf - Aglae (1926) 61 leaves - Moorland Night (1924) 1 leaf - In the Fields (1923) 1 leaf - The Fete (1914) 6 leaves (On verso of pages 2-5 is an autograph manuscript of The Gipsey's Luck) - ["not exactly a draft. I can nearly always decipher Charlotte's handwriting, but this was oddly and disconcertingly impossible for whole stretches." Betty Falkenberg, email 4.5.2005] Sea Love (between 1911 and 1921) 2 leaves - Here Lies a Prisoner (between 1918 and 1928) 2 leaves - The Cenotaph (1 leaf) - The Three Trees of Rockwinners (19--?) 1 leaf - The China Bowl (19--?) 44 leaves

    Manuscripts in Mew's handwriting: ú A series of quotations copied by Charlotte Mew from the various works of George Eliot.(1 item) ú Manuscript of Richard Jefferies which appears to be transcribed by Charlotte Mew (2 pages)

    Alida Monro collection: May be with the Poetry Bookshop papers now in the British Library: - Some are in in the Berg Collection (So, were sold after Mary Davidow saw them at Alida's)

    Siegfried Sassoon's Collection

    Frederick B. Adams collection:

    1.3.1958 Freda Kendall Mew died, aged 78 at "Whitecroft Hospital, Newport". She was "of no occupation, Spinster, Daughter of Richard [wrong name] Mew an Architect (deceased)". The causes of death: "1a Coronary Thrombosis, b. Myocardial degeneration, c. Senility", Certified by G. Gordon Brown, LRCP, who also notified the death on 4.3.1958. He was resident at the hospital. [Comment: She died of a heart attack, which was not a surprise to anyone as she had chronic heart problems and her body was wearing out with age]

    7.3.1958 Freda Kendall Mew was buried at Mountjoy cemetery This is a Civil Cemetery run by the Isle of Wight Council. Carisbrooke, Mount Joy: Registers from 03.05.1858 - 16.03.2000

    [Wednesday] 3.9.1958: Letter from F.L.W. Eade, Group Secretary "Isle of Wight Group Hospital Management Committee, Claterford House, Carisbrooke, Newport, I.W." to Miss M.C. Davidow in Hampstead:

    "Dear Madam, I am writing to you today in the hope that you will receive my letter before you leave for the States on Friday, I have been to Whitecroft this morning to see what I could find out about Miss Freda Kendall Mew. You are no doubt aware that she died a few months ago, but I am told that she had received no communications for very many years, and there were no papers among her possessions which would be of any interest to her sister's biographer."

    August 1958 "Mary Mew (Sister Mary Magdalen)" "communicated" to Mary Davidow "that there was a romance between Charlotte Mew and Sam Chick" (Davidow, M. 1960 page 41) - See also Florence Elen Mew. Mary Davidow also spoke to Alida Monro in August 1958 and (apparently - see below) Margaret Chick.

    Friday 6.9.1958 Day Mr Eade (above) anticipated Mary Davidow would return to the United States. Margaret Chick (17.9.1958) adds a PS that there was "a week of lovely summer weather after you left!" [The summer of 1958 was hot, dry, and sunny]

    17.9.1958 (Year not given) Letter from Margaret Chick to Mary Davidow. It was sent from the same address Chestergate, 30 Park Hill, Ealing, W5, that the Chicks lived at in 1901. Margaret had collected a few "Charlotte Mew Souvenirs" from "the family" - Including Harriette, who lent embroidery of a Chinese design by Charlotte Mew and a handkerchief that Charlotte had marked up for her, presumably to embroider herself. Harriette has "sent" these - which suggest she is not living at Chestergate. Immediately following, Margaret wrote: "I have copied the poem An Ending as I thought it better not to send my sister's copy". This was a holograph, according to Mary Davidow. The copy Margaret made, was in her handwriting as she had no typewriter.

    In 1958, Peter Blackman, John Westcott and Tom Strand formed a company (Feedback Instruments Ltd, Crowborough, East Sussex) to produce electrical instruments mainly for use in educational laboratories. He remained a director until his death

    2.10.1958 Death of Marie Stopes. She bequeathed a large volume of papers to the British Library. The Add 58447-58770 STOPES PAPERS were "incorporated May 1975". Link to manuscripts catalogue

    1959

    Margaret Chick and Elsie Blackman delivered a paper on Honiton Lace to the Axe Vale Branch of the Devonshire Association. (Margaret Tomlinson p.88)

    1960s

    Mew, Langton and Company Ltd merged with Strongs of Romsey in 1965 - The Chairman of Mews, Lieutenant Colonel Francis T. Mew, MA, TD, LRIBA, became a Director of Strongs.

    Strongs were taken over by the London based Whitbread Brewery in 1968. Whitbread obtained a monopoly of all public houses in Newport. The Bugle Inn was closed a part of the rationalisation that followed. (Kevin Mitchell/Pubs).

    The Summer 2002 issue of Whitewash - Newsletter of the Isle of Wight branch of CAMRA - contains an article by Gay Baldwin, author of Isle of Wight Ghost books, based on the memories of "Licensee John Amies" who ran the inn in the 1960s.

    1960

    Mary Celine Davidow, Charlotte Mew: Biography and Criticism. Dissertation: Brown University 1960. (See above) [This can be bought via Proquest]

    Mary Davidow (14.12.1917 - 1987) received her MA (English) from Brown University in 1954 with a thesis on "Maxwell Anderson and the poetic drama". Her advisor was Benjamin W. Brown. She received her Ph.D from Brown University in 1960 with her thesis on Charlotte Mew. Her advisor was Charles H. Philbrick. The thesis contains the following poems which it seems have not previously been published: Mary Davidow footnotes all of these as being "From Frederick B. Adams' typecript" and adds the further comments shown:
    An Ending "Lady Tansley believes that the poem dates from the early eighteen-nineties. Charlotte Mew gave her a MS copy of the poem".
    A Question
    Left Behind "The sonnet appears to be addressed to the poet's father who died in 1898"
    A Farewell Mary Davidow's footnote "See Hardy's poem Her Reproach".
    There shall be no night there.

    On page 166 Mary Davidow says Alida Monro possessed and unpublished manuscript by Charlotte Mew called Thic Theer Kayser. She describes this as "a humorous war story in the Cornish dialect".

    1961

    Frederick Frost Blackman Memorial Lecture established

    In 1961, Alida Monro sold a collection of Poetry Bookshop papers to the University of California (Finding Aid) Includes two items listed under Charlotte Mew.

    Collected Poems 1908-1956 Siegfried Sassoon Faber and Faber Ltd, London.

    1962

    Keith Briant Marie Stopes. A Biography by Keith Briant. The Hogarth Press, 1962

    1963

    National Manuscripts Collection of Contemporary Poets (NMCCP) established - The Arts Council invited material from poets or their executers. The material was deposited in the British Museum (British Library) or (later) another library, and the money refunded to buy more. Until 1969, only poets' manuscripts were included.

    20.1.1963 Death of Margaret Chick

    1963 was the last year that "Mew, R.P. Farmer, New Fairlee" was in the Isle of Wight telephone directory. The 1964 directory has "Trowbridge, A.E. Farmer, New Fairlee farm" with the same telephone number: Newport 2310. The telephone directory entry for Peter Mew at Regent House first appears in the 1964 directory.

    8.6.1964 Letter from John Barker to "Mrs E. Blackman, Upper Cross, Storey's Way, Cambridge" enclosing a typed copy of the first F.F. Blackman Memorial Lecture, which had been given by George Edward Briggs (25.6.1893-7.2.1985) on "A Half-Century of Plant Physiology". The lecture not being "suitable for ordinary publication", copies had been distributed to the "old Plant Physiology students", to Professors of Botany in all the British Universities and to 30 foreign physiologists "with whom we have a close association" (Watts boxes)

    1965

    Katharine Tansley's Vision in Vertebrates published (Science paperbacks, SP11) by Chapman and Hall, London. 132 pages, illustrated.

    Private Collection by Jean Starr Untermeyer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Although the publishers have listed Charlotte Mew on the cover, Jean Starr Untermeyer recalls very little of her, and does not have access to their correspondence, the content of which she has forgotten. She recommends we read Charlotte's poems, especially those published by her husband, in order to get to know her.

    1966

    Siegfried Sassoon. A critical study by Michael Thorpe. Universitaire pers Leiden. London - Oxford University Press. 1966. Analyses his prose and poetry. The analysis of the poetry focuses on poem re-published in Sassoon's Collected Poems. Reproduces (pages 273-286) The Daffodil Murderer (published February 1913), which was not included in Collected Poems.

    1967

    Exhibition of contemporary poetry manuscripts at the British Museum. Catalogue, by Jenny Stratford, Poetry in the Making - Turret Books. Philip Larkin: "I suggested, or added my voice to the chorus demanding that the export of manuscripts less than one hundred years old without a licence should cease" (Jenny Stratford 1974 p. xi)

    Joy Grant, Harold Monro and the Poetry Bookshop - London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.

    12.4.1967 Death of Elsie Blackman. I think it likely that she was living at 34 Storey's Way, Cambridge and that Harriette Chick also lived there. The address is on her London University Card as if from her marriage - and added for Harriette on her card. Harriette died in 1977.

    1.9.1967 Death of Siegfried Sassoon

    Booklet: Lydia Rous 1819-1896 Superintendent of The Mount School, York 1866-1879 York: William Sessions, [1967] 12 pages. Portrait and pictures of the school. The British Library has the author as "Lydia Rous". My photocopy provided by David Leonard

    1968

    David Taylor The Godless Students of Gower Street University College London Union

    1969

    Death of Alida Monro - The Poetry Bookshop collection in the British Library was put together in 1970. Alida had already sold several groups of manuscripts to American collections.

    "After 1969 the scope of the National Manuscripts Collection was widened. "The two new kinds of papers included were, broadly, the drafts of prose works, and collections like the Poetry Bookshop papers illustrating fragments of literary history". (Jenny Stratford 1974 p. xxvi) The title changed to National Manuscripts Collection of Contemporary Writers (in 1970?)

    1970

    Death of Edith Tansley

    sexual assault? Theophilus E. M. Boll, "The Mystery of Charlotte Mew and May Sinclair: An Inquiry." Bulletin of the New York Public Library 74 (1970) pages 445-453. "while I was putting together an account of Mary Sinclair... I read" [Alida Monro's 1954 statement that something Charlotte Mew heard about Mary Sinclair destroyed their friendship]. "If I should find something awful enough, I might produce a best seller". "One day, after having traced and written to many acquaintances of May Sinclair, I received a letter from" [Rebecca West. The letter was about the help May Sinclair had given her. However, she enclosed a letter to her from G.B. Stern, which contained the following passage:]

    The main object of this letter is to recall to you a little incident about May Sinclair. She was telling us in her neat precise voice how a Lesbian poetess named Charlotte M. had once in a wild fit of passion chased her upstairs into her bedroom - "And I assure you, Peter" [G.B. Stern], I assure you, Rebecca [Rebecca West], I had to leap the bed five times!" - which you and I both realized with a thrill of horror on her behalf would have landed her on the fifth leap not at the door but on the further side of the bed with her back to the wall"

    "The time of this episode of passion I should put in May 1914, when May Sinclair wrote" [her letter of 14.15.1914].

    University of Delware's first purchase of the Louis Untermeyer Papers - See Louis Untermeyer and Charlotte Mew

    1.7.1970 Death of Dorothy Hawksley

    1971

    Mary C. Davidow, "The Charlotte Mew-May Sinclair Relationship: Reply" Bulletin of the New York Public Library 75 (1971) pages 295-300. [Val Warner, 1997, p.44a, says that, in this, "Davidow wrote she was told by Charlotte's favourite cousin (Gertrude Mary Mew) that Sam Chick 'kept company' - confirmed by the Chick sisters"

    War on Disease: A History of the Lister Institute, by Harriette Chick - [Eleanor Muriel] Margaret Hume (27.5.1887-1.4.1968), and Marjorie [Giffen] Macfarlane. London: Deutsch, 1971. 251 pages, 12 plates. ISBN/ISSN: 0233962204


    31.3.1971 Arts Council of Great Britain: Annual Report and Accounts for the year ending 31.3.1971. Poetry Bookshop manuscripts acquired during this period.

    57734-57768 Poetry Bookshop Papers. Papers of Harold Monro (b.1879, d.1932), Alida Monro neé Klementaski (b. 1892, d. 1969), and of The Poetry Bookshop, etc.; 1889-1969 - Collection made 1971. (Now in the British Library)

    Literary manuscripts, etc., of Charlotte Mew (b. 1869, d. 1928) are grouped as Add. 57754 - 57755. Includes short stories, poems, plays and correspondence, etc. 1895-1962. Partly printed, partly typewritten, partly signed. Two volumes..

    Extract: 57754. Poetry Bookshop Papers. Vol. XXI (ff. 311) Short Stories etc, 1895 1905 and no date - Nine typewritten drafts of stories, together with an article about Richard Jefferies;
    Typescript drafts of Miss Bolt - The Bridegroom's Friend - Elinor - A Fatal Fidelity - Mark Stafford's Wife - Spine - A Wedding Day (dated February 1895) - The Wheat - White World - A Country Book, an article about Richard Jefferies, Field and Hedgerow
    Some of the stories are in limp paper covers tied with green tape. There are a few autograph notes.

    Extract 57755. Poetry Bookshop Papers. Vol. XXII (ff. 204). Prose, poems, a play, and miscellaneous correspondence, etc.; 1901-1962. Partly printed, partly typewritten, partly signed.

    (1) Prose: printed extracts of work by Charlotte Mew, 1901- 1914
    From Temple Bar: - Notes in a Brittany Convent [1901] - In the Curé's Garden - An Open Door - A White Night - The Poems of Emily Brontë - The Country Sunday - The London Sunday [catalogued as A London Sunday]
    From The Englishwoman - Men and Trees (1 and 2)
    Fram The Theosophist - The Smile

    (2) Poems: printed extracts of work by Charlotte Mew, 1901- 1915 and no date.
    (i) Drafts of two poems collected in The Farmer's Bride 1916 - The Pedlar (printed extract from The Englishwoman) - The Forest Road
    (ii) Two poems collected in The Farmer's Bride 1921 - The Road to Kérity - The Cenotaph (Printed extract from The Westminster Gazette 27.9.1919)
    A double sheet containing On the Asylum Road and part of Madeleine in Church stamped 27.2.1929. A specimen set from The Farmer's Bride 1921
    (iii) Drafts of ten poems collected in The Rambling Sailor 1929, some with autograph revisions:
    Rooms - Monsieur qui passé - Fin de féte - I so liked Spring - May 1915 - Ne me tangito - My Heart is Lame (printed) - Smile, Death - At the Convent Gate (printed extract from Temple Bar) - Afternoon Tea - A poem on the death of Queen Victoria (unsigned extract from Temple Bar March 1901)

    (3) The China Bowl typscript about 1914, and BBC script of a dramatisation recorded 24.9.1953

    (4) Collected Poems 1953 Two preliminary drafts of Alida Monro's Memoir - miscellaneous correspondence with and about Charlotte Mew; 1914- 1962 - A letter from Frederick Whelen is about staging The China Bowl. Writers about The Farmer's Bride include Gerard Meynell.

    Link to catalogue


    1972

    PN Review started in 1972. It has recently begun to put itself online (subscribers only). I am advised (November 2005) that the full texts of issues 1 to 6 and 117 to 164 are online and the site is growing continually. A dozen articles include references to Charlotte Mew. Val Warner (1981 page xxii) refers to "the forthcoming special supplement on Charlotte Mew in PN Review, edited by me". However, this is not listed in the Further Reading section of her Carcanet Collection (1997/2003). However, her New Light on Charlotte Mew was published in PN Review in 1997. Betty Falkenberg's Charlotte Mew in America is published in PN Review

    1973

    Theophilus E. M. Boll Miss May Sinclair: Novelist. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

    The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, edited by Philip Larkin, included Charlotte Mew

    1974

    Exhibition of items from the Arts Council Collection of Modern Literary Manuscripts collected between 1963 and 1972 - See also March 1971

    The Arts Council Collection of Modern Literary Manuscripts 1963-1972. A Catalogue by Jenny Stratford, etc. London: Turret Books, 1974. - Effectively a catalogue of (among other things) the Poetry Bookshop collection of manuscripts now in the British Library.

    1975

    Val Warner: "Mary Magdalene and the Bride. The Work of Charlotte Mew" Poetry Nation Number 4 (First half of 1975)

    1976

    G. R. Searle, 1976 Eugenics and Politics in Britain 1900-1914 Leyden: Noordhoff International Publishing. A rtf copy can be downloaded from http://www.arno.daastol.com/books/searle.rtf

    1977

    Ruth Hall Marie Stopes, A Biography

    9.7.1977 Death of Harriette Chick. She was the last of the Chick sisters to die. She had helped her niece, Margaret Tomlinson, with the family history. In 1958 she may have been living at 30 Park Hill, Ealing, but her London University Card has 30 Storey's Way, Cambridge as a later, undated, address.

    "When I was a child (until the death of Harriette, first cousin of my great grandfather, William Chick) we spent our summer holidays at Hazelwood Dame Harriette, was generous in offering use of the house at Bransombe to friends and relatives, and it was rarely left empty. "When I met Harriette I was a young child in the 1970s and she, at about 100 years old, was living with Peter Blackman in Cambridge and I remembering hearing that she left Hazelwood jointly to him and the National Trust." (Dorothy Lumb).

    1978

    Mary C. Davidow, "Charlotte Mew and the Shadow of Thomas Hardy." Bulletin of Research in the Humanities 81 (1978): pages 437-447.

    British Journal of Nutrition, Volume 39, Number 1, January 1978, pages 3-4: A. M. Copping's obituary of Dame Harriette Chick includes a picture.

    Rolled Pottery Figures by Audrey Blackman (1907-1990) in Ceramic skillbooks series. London: Pitman, 1978. In Watts boxes. Audrey Blackman was a niece by marriage of Frederick and Elsie.

    Ruth Hall, editor: Dear Dr Stopes, Sex in the 1920s.

    1979

    The Annual Reports of the Syndicate and of the Friends of the Fitzwilliam for year ending 31.12.1979 (Watts boxes) includes, p.14, a gift from Audrey Blackman of her own work and a gift from Dr Peter Blackman of work by Audrey Blackman. See Fitzwilliam catalogue

    Negley Harte: The Admission of Women to University College, London: A Centenary Lecture. University College London, 1979.

    1981

    Val Warner, born 1946, is a dedicated poet. Brand New Writers website includes samples of her poetry. (archive) The Carcanet site provides an overview of her work. Her biographical work focuses on Charlotte Mew. As well as the collected (and selected) works, she has also written Mary Magdalene and the Bride (1975) - New Light on Charlotte Mew (1997) and a new introduction .

    Charlotte Mew: Collected Poems and Prose. Edited with an Introduction by Val Warner. London: Carcanet Press in association with Virago, 1981. [Includes all known Mew poetry, fiction, and non- fiction, published and unpublished.] Includes pages v to xxiv of introductory material consisting of Contents (pages v to viii) which includes some dates and places of publication; Introduction (pages ix to xxii) and Bibliographical Note (pages xxxiii-xxiv).
    Charlotte Mew's stories and essays were collected here for the first time and include some not published before "Typescripts of the apparently unpublished essay A Country Book and the stories A Wedding Day [dated 1895], The Bridegroom's Friend, White World, Elinor and Spine are in the British Library (C.M. Mew Collection BM MS 57754 (provisional collection))... The unfinished Aglaë; is taken from the manuscript in the Poetry Collection, Lockwood Memorial Library, State University of New York at Buffalo"

    1981-1985 Siegfried Sassoon's diaries, edited and introduced by Rupert Hart-Davis, published in three volumes by Faber (London). Diaries for 1920 to 1922 were published in 1981; diaries for 1915 to 1918 in 1983; diaries for 1923 to 1925 in 1985. Sassoon's surviving diaries date from 1905 to 1956. Rupert Hart-Davis began with 1920 to 1922 because Sassoon's own Siegfried's Journey (1945) finished in August 1920.

    1982

    Penelope Fitzgerald, "Lotti's Leap." Review of Collected Poems and Prose in London Review of Books. 1-14 July 1982: 15-16.

    Marjorie Watts "Memories of Charlotte Mew". PEN Broadsheet 13 (Autumn 1982): pages 12-13

    Part quoted by Penelope Fitzgerald 1988, p.138:

    My mother told me the detailed story when I was about 17 and asked why we never saw Charlotte. She also recorded in her journal that when she and the attractive gossip and novelist, Netta Syrett, were discussing Margaret Radclyffe Hall and Una, Lady Troutbridge, with May, the latter said:

    "I don't believe what is said of them is true."

    To which Netta replied

    "I believe it, but I don't mind"

    And May countered this with:

    "You wouldn't like it if it happened to you. It did happen to me, but I said 'My good woman, you are simply wasting your perfectly good passion.'"

    8.12.1982 Letter to Penelope Fitzgerald from Berkhamsted Local History Society, based on a search of local directories: "J.T. Browne lived at a large house called Anglefield from the time of the first World War until the mid 1930s. The house was pulled down some years ago to be replaced by flats"

    1983

    Margaret Tomlinson, Three Generations in the Honiton Lace Trade: A Family History, published by Margaret Tomlinson (Exeter?). 94 pages [12 of plates]. Includes genealogical tables. ISBN/ISSN: 0950857408 (paperback). Indexed,

    1984

    Linda Mizejewski, "Charlotte Mew and the Unrepentant Magdalene: A Myth in Transition." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 26.3 (Fall 1984): pages 282-302.

    1985

    Oxford Book of Short Poems Edited by James Michie and P. J. Kavanagh included Charlotte Mew

    Laughter and the Urn. Life of Rex Whistler by his brother, Laurence Whistler (1912- ) published: London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985. Rex Whistler quoted Charlotte Mew in a letter to Lady Caroline Paget: "My heart is is lame with running after yours so fast Such a long way". His copy of The Rambling Sailor (1929), with his penciled signature, was offered for sale on ebay in January 2007.

    1986

    Dictionary of National Biography article on Harriette Chick by Hugh Macdonald Sinclair (1910-1990) drawing on personal knowledge, information from "her niece Dr Katharine Tansley (Mrs Lythgoe) and her nephew Peter Blackman". Books Margaret Tomlinson 1983 (by another niece) and Chick, Hume and Macfarlane 1971.

    Negley Harte: The University of London, 1836-1986. London: Athlone Press, 1986.

    1987

    Mrs Sappho: the life of C.A. Dawson Scott, Mother of International P.E.N by Marjorie Watts; with a foreword by Francis King. London: Duckworth. 1987

    Robert Ackerman, J.G. Frazer: His Life and Work Cambridge University Press 1987

    Death of Mary Davidow

    1988

    Penelope Fitzgerald, Charlotte Mew and Her Friends. New York: Addison Wesley,

    Penelope Fitzgerald, born Penelope Knox, 17.12.1916. Married Desmond Fitzgerald in 1941. She previously published a life of Edward Burne-Jones in 1975. She published Knox Brothers, a composite study of her father and his brothers, in 1977. Her father, E.V. Knox, wrote a parody of Charlotte Mew in Punch 4.8.1921. Penelope wrote a detective story to divert her husband when he was dying, and this was followed by several novels. Her biography of Charlotte Mew is written like a novel. It is dedicated "In memory of The Poetry Bookshop". She had (1980/1981) planned a series of articles about the writers who were published by the bookshop, but wrote the book length Charlotte Mew and Her Friends instead. She died 28.4.2000, but her research papers had already been sold to a Texas University in 1989. Some of her main sources are Alida Monro 1953, Mary Davidow 1960 and Val Warner 1982, She makes special mention of help from Mrs Marjorie Watts, daughter of Mrs Dawson Scott

    The Poetry Bookshop, 1912- 1935: a bibliography by J. Howard Woolmer; with an introduction by Penelope Fitzgerald. Series: St Paul's bibliographies. Published: Revere, Pa.: Woolmer/Brotherson ; Winchester : St. Paul's Bibliographies, 1988. The papers from formed The Poetry Bookshop Collection at the University of Tulsa.

    1989

    University of Texas (Austin) bought Penelope Fitzgerald's papers:
    Finding Aid - "Includes Delivered, short story by Charlotte Mew"

    1990

    Robert Fraser The Making of the "Golden Bough": The origins and growth of an argument Palgrave Macmillan, 1990

    1991

    150 Years of British Psychiatry 1841-1991 Edited by Hugh Freeman and German Berrios (London: Royal College of Psychiatrists), includes (Chapter 12, pages 197-205) Psychodynamic Psychiatry before World War 1 by R.D. Hinshelwood, which is available online 1991 -

    1992

    J. Rose, Marie Stopes and the Sexual Revolution (1992).

    1993

    Charlotte Mew: Displaced Person. Displacement and division of the ?female self? in the poetry of Charlotte Mew By Joan Bernadette Slattery. Open University Long Dissertation.

    1994

    The (manuscript) Diaries of Sir Sydney Cockerell were "reserved" until 1994. British Library manuscripts 52670-52702 - Eighty volumes.

    A Life in Catalogues, and other essays by George Sims. Published in Philadelphia by Holmes Publishing Co., 1994. 158 pages The final essay (12) is on "Charlotte Mew". I draws on his conversations with Alida Monro, but also (heavily) on Penelope Fitzgerald 1958. The conversations with Alida were in the course of purchasing manuscripts from her. Some of these he sold to Lockwood Memorial Library (Buffalo). I would suggest that Charlotte Mew's letters to Ethel Oliver and Mrs Hill passed through Alida Monro to George Sims.

    "Fallen Women: Charlotte Mew in context" by Suzanne Raitt in Volcanoes and Pearl Divers (pages 52-73?), a collection edited by Suzanne Raitt "about the relationship of politics with pleasure. A feminist anthology that addresses three centuries of English language lesbian culture and literature" Onlywomen Press Ltd, 1994.

    1995

    Millgate, 1995/1996: Letters of Emma and Florence Hardy, edited by Michael Millgate. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996. Originally published: New York : Oxford University Press, 1995.

    R.D. Hinshelwood: Psychoanalysis in Britain: Points of Cultural Access, 1893-1918. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 76:135-151 - In chronological order, Robert Hinshelwood identifies seven "cultural locations" adopting an aspect of Freud's teaching before 1918. (1) From 1893, the Society for Psychical Research - (2) From about 1895, Havelock Ellis - (3) From around 1905, the reaction against the pessimistic attitude to treatment in British psychiatry - (4) Around 1910-1915: W. H. R. Rivers and others endeavouring to create an empirical science of psychology - (5) From around 1913, novelists using Freud's theory of symbols - (6) From 1913, educationalists using Freud's theory of child development - (7) philosophers, including Bertrand Russell, reflecting on the psychoanalytic view of the unconscious.

    1996

    First edition of Joan M. Reitz's Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science (OLDIS). Then called Hypertext Library Lingo: A Glossary of Library Terminology. It had begun as a four page printed handout in 1994. Link to current edition.

    1997

    Peggy Parris's novel about Charlotte Mew His Arms are Full of Broken Things.

    Collected Poems and Selected Prose of Charlotte Mew includes a new introduction by Val Warner (pages ix to xxv) which is the most accurate and up to date summary of our knowledge of Charlotte Mew's life. All the poems are included. The prose selected is Elinor - The Minnow Fishers - The Wheat - An Old Servant - The China Bowl (Play). Volume reissued April 2003

    September/October 1997: Val Warner "New Light on Charlotte Mew" PN Review 117. Volume 24, pages 43-47

    "Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) once refused to supply biographical facts; subsequently, it has been open season on her life. Mary Davidow's unpublished thesis, 1960, contained valuable information from friends and relatives of Mew, but was spoilt by Davidow's belief, without evidence, in a secret affair between Hardy and Mew in the 1890s, and her ignorance of Virginia Moore's 1936 description of Mew as a lesbian. In 1970 May Sinclair's biographer, Theophilus Boll, tenuously confirmed the latter via Rebecca West. I followed Boll in the Introduction to my Collected Poems & Prose (1981), stressing that Mew's work focused romantically on women. Marjorie Watts, daughter of Mew's friend Catharine Dawson Scott, reviewing the Collected decided to publicize her mother's journals' confirmation of Mew's lesbianism. She subsequently gave access to her material to Penelope Fitzgerald, who published Mew's biography in 1984, declaring that Charlotte fell in love with three women - despite a continuing dearth of information. For instance, in the six years before her best-known poem 'The Farmer's Bride', nothing is known of her life except she published one other poem and had holidays in Dieppe and Boulogne, with her friend Elsie O'Keeffe (née Millard) and her sister Anne respectively. (This article does not rely on Fitzgerald's book for biographical information.) Contrary to many reviewers' accounts, P.B. Parris's 'fictional autobiography', His Arms are Full of Broken Things (Viking, 1997), shows Mew as lesbian, in a Victorian and subtler psychological evocation than Fitzgerald's, but falsifies by wholesale ignoring of known facts...."

    9.10.1997 Death of Margaret Tomlinson at Dunmow

    Winter 1997 Theodora Goss's poem "Charlotte Mew" published in The Lyric

    1998

    A White Knight Oxford Book of English Short Stories, edited by Antonia Byatt, includes Charlotte Mew's A White Night

    F. Graeme Chalmers, Women in the nineteenth-century art world : schools of art and design for women in London and Philadelphia Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press. Based on histories of the Royal Female School of Art (London) and Philadelphia School of Design for Women. External link to contents - introduction etc

    1999

    Mark Seinfelt Final drafts : suicides of world-famous authors Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1999. ISBN: 1573927414

    Heather Ingman (editor) Mothers and Daughters in the Twentieth Century Edinburgh University Press is an anthology of women's writing beginning with Charlotte Mew's The Quiet House and continuing with extracts from May Sinclair's Mary Oliver: A Life

    Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness by Carole G. Silver. Oxford University Press. 1999. She discusses Charlotte Mew's "sympathetic" treatment of the The Changeling on pages 80-81.

    7.10.1999 The Oxford Book of English Verse, edited by Christopher Ricks, includes three poems by Charlotte Mew: Sea Love - I so liked Spring - A Quoi Bon Dire (pages 535-536)

    27.10.1999 Charlotte Mew - Selected Poems Bloomsbury Poetry Classics. Selection made by Ian Hamilton (1938-2001)

    2000

    Penelope Fitzgerald died. See London Review

    Suzanne Raitt 2000 May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian Oxford: Clarendon Press. "Suzanne Raitt is an Associate Professor of English and Women's Studies, University of Michigan". See also 2004 - (External link: Suzanne Raitt) - extract on first world war

    Dennis Denisoff: Grave Passions: Enclosure and Exposure in Charlotte Mew's Graveyard Poetry Victorian Poetry 38.1 (2000) pages 125-140

    Women's History Review Volume 9 Number 1 2000: Stephanie Spencer. "Advice and Ambition in a Girls' Public Day School: the case of Sutton High School, 1884-1924"

    Complete Poems - Charlotte Mew, edited with a preface and notes by John Newton. London: Penguin, 2000 [John Newton - Boston University - "scrupulously and persuasively edited" (Bostonia, Summer 2002)] I have made extensive use of John Newton's dates for first publication and notes of and on originals. John Newton does not appear to note the punctuation differences between the 1916 and 1921 editions of The Farmer's Bride. The Cyder Press "facsimile" (below) can be used for the comparison.

    The Farmer's Bride, introduction by Deborah Parsons. Cheltenham: The Cyder Press, 2000. Said to be a facsimile of the 1916 edition - The cover and size are not the same. The publishers are unable to assist me, at present (owing to illness), in describing how the text provided relates to the original. However, by comparison, it appears that the inner pages of the original have been photocopied, or reproduced by some means, and printed without the margins of the original. The type is blacker (heavier) than in my copy of the second 500, but, in other respects, type, punctuation, page numbers and layout correspond.

    2001

    Oxford Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry included five poems by Charlotte Mew: The Farmer's Bride - Fame - Arracombe Wood - On the Road to the Sea - Monsieur Qui Passe. See publisher's website - (Wikipedia lists the poets it includes, with links)

    2001 Translation of some of Charlotte Mew's shorter poems into German by Johannes Beilharz

    4.2.2001 Death of Peter F. Blackman. He left £51,075 to The National Trust. The Year on Record (National Trust, 2002-2003) lists under "Properties and Covenants Acquired" "Devon. LAND AT HAZELWOOD/HILLEND, BRANSCOMBE, SEATON (192:SY205891) 2.56 hectares (6.32 acres). Bequest under the will of Mr P. Blackman." The boxes of Chick papers sold in 2006 may have belonged to him. Tribute

    17.7.2001: Leigh Wilson, University of Westminster: "Sinclair, May (1863-1946)" article in The Literary Encyclopedia

    21.4.2001 Harold Monro: Poet of the New Age by Dominic Hibberd - Amazon Link

    6.11.2001 and 7.11.2001 Sale at Sotherbys of the private collection of Frederick B. Adams, who died in February 2001. (BBC Link). The Charlotte Mew Collection went to Yale University - But not everything. Hardy library reconstruction has "Collection of Frederick Baldwin Adams, Jr., dispersed at Sotheby's (London), 6-7 November 2001 ('Adams sale')".

    Imperial Ecology. Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895- 1945 by Peder Anker. (pdf excerpt)

    2002

    23.5.2002 Penelope Fitzgerald "The Death of a Poet" (written 1980 or 1981) published in London Review of Books.

    August 2002 She loves me, she loves me not: The voice of unfulfilled love in Charlotte Mew's poetry MA Thesis by Susan Ann Santovasi, Southern Connecticut State University. [This can be bought via Proquest (pdf $35). There is a 24 page free preview] "... close readings of selected poems that speak of Mew's love experiences in sensual and remorseful tones, striving to attach the theme of unfulfilled romantic love to Mew's poems and demonstrate the connection between Mew's personal experiences with love and the poetry that she left behind." The personal experiences of love are taken from Penelope Fitzgerald's story.

    Jessica Walsh, ""The strangest pain to bear": Corporeality and Fear of Insanity in Charlotte Mew's Poetry" Victorian Poetry - Volume 40, Number 3, Fall 2002, pp. 217-240 West Virginia University Press - (a web copy)

    October 2002 Charlotte Mew Manuscripts collected by Frederick B. Adams junior (1910-2001), Yale 1920 listed as a recent acquisition of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.

    "The collection acquired by the Beinecke was formed by Frederick B. Adams, Yale 1920 and former director of the Pierpont Morgan Library. It contains various poetic drafts, in manuscript and typescript, and letters from Mew to Elkin Matthews and Kate and Sydney Cockerell, among others."

    The also has material relating to "C. A. Dawson Scott, founder of the British P.E.N., who published under the pseudonym Sappho" "C. A. Dawson Scott - Marjorie Watts papers, 1913-1980" Purchased from Bertram Rota on the Edwin J. Beinecke Book Fund, 1994 Link to catalogue

    1.12.2002 A New Matrix for Modernism: A Study of the Lives and Poetry of Charlotte Mew and Anna Wickham by Nelljean McConeghey Rice. Routledge

    About 2003 Charlotte Mew on the Spondee Poetry website includes " An Extensive Mew Bibliography Prepared by Peggy Parris, Associate Professor of Literature at the University of North Carolina at Ashville"

    March 2003 Diva Magazine "Articles on older women. Great piece on Charlotte Mew from Victorian times (a successful poet but a thoroughly unsuccessful lesbian!)". Offered on ebay November 2007

    22.8.2003 (A latest update date) Thomas Hardy's Library at Max Gate: Catalogue of an Attempted Reconstruction by Michael Millgate

    Negley Harte and John North. The World of University College, 1828- 2004. 3rd edition. London: University College, 2004.

    Spring 2004 Poetry Review Volume 94 No 1 Michael Newton "I See Myself Among the Crowd: The Poetry of Charlotte Mew" available at http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=13580

    Spring 2004 Natalie Kressen "Otherness in Charlotte Mew's Poetry" Deluge, the undergraduate research journal of Penn State University's Department of English. Volume 2, No. 1 - Spring 2004. This analyses three poems, The Changeling - Ken and On the Asylum Road, in terms of otherness, normality, queerness and the interpenetration of people's worlds. It comments on Jessica Walsh 2002

    Autumn 2004 History Workshop Journal, Volume 58, Number 1, 2004 Suzanne Raitt Early British Psychoanalysis and the Medico-Psychological Clinic

    September 2004 Betty Falkenberk had collected materials from The Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, The Beinecke at Yale, and the Harry Ransome Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin (and other places in the USA)

    Charlotte Mew in Russia (a collection of links that was started November 2004 - though not necessarily including Charlotte then)

    2005

    Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (History of Science) Conference: "A Cultural History of Heredity III: 19th and Early 20th Centuries:" Preprint 294 available as pdf. This includes "A Changing Landscape in the Medical Geography of 'Hereditary' Disease: Syphilis, Leprosy, and Tuberculosis in Hawai'i (1863-1903)" by Philip K. Wilson

    Dynamic Psychology in Modernist British Fiction by George M. Johnson, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. The influence of psychologies developed by William James, William McDougall, Henri Bergson, Pierre Janet, and Frederic Myers on novelists such as Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, May Sinclair, and J. D. Beresford. Chapters: Philosophy and psychology - Medicine, mental science, and psychical research - "A piece of psycho- analysis" : the British response to later dynamic psychology - May Sinclair : the evolution of a psychological novelist - From Edwardian to Georgian psychical realism : Bennett, Lawrence, and Beresford - "The spirit of the age" : Virginia Woolf's response to dynamic psychology - Diving deeper : dynamic psychology and British literature. (external review)

    "Sadly my Grandfather, Commander William Elijah Chick, who remembered all these people died 18 months ago, aged 93." (Dorothy Lumb - September 2006).

    18.1.2005 Letter to Betty Falkenberg from Richard Smout, County Archivist, Isle of Wight.

    Saturday 2.7.2005: Guingamp: Pardon Notre-Dame de Bon Secours - Messe célébrée à la Basilique suivie d'une procession aux flambeaux dans les rues de la ville qui se termine Place du Centre où trois feux de joie sont allumés - See 2007 version

    7.9.2005 to 11.9.2005 Planned visit of Betty Falkenberg to London that never took place.

    30.9.2005 Email from Betty Falkenberg:

    "The embroidery has arrived. I wish you could have unwrapped it with me. It is a small -- maybe 9" by 4 1/2" -- linen runner decorated with the most exquisite tiny, brilliantly coloured flowers and sprays, graceful, sparse, and painfully neat. One speaks of the distillation of a passionate intensity in the poems. I would say this is the same kind of compression in a more conventional medium. It has been tastefully framed in an antique gold frame, and I consider it a real treasure."

    If I understand the history correctly: This embroidery of Charlotte Mew's was given to one of the Chick family, possibly in the 1890s. Margaret Chick gave it to Mary Davidow, probably in 1958. Mary Davidow gave it to her student, Ruthe Spinninger and Elizabeth DeGroot wrote to Ruthe about it. See Some helpful people

    needle index: Charlotte could turn out exquisite pieces of embroidery executed to her own designs - Mary Davidow says... - letter from Margaret Chick to Mary Davidow - dear little cloth with... birds and beasts and fishes -

    3.10.2005 Photocopies from University College London Records Office of some previous work on the what the University records show of Harriette Chick and her sisters and Student Index Cards for Harriette Chick, Mrs Edith Tansley, Elsie Chick, Margaret Robinson, Margaret Chick, Mrs S.H. Wood, The student index cards have been kept up to date by successive people adding changes of address, notes name change (marriage), obituary notice dates etc. ( See some helpful people)

    12.10.2005 to 18.10.2005: Exhibition of the work of Dorothy Hawksley at The Maas Gallery, 15a Clifford Street, London, WIS 4JZ. The Catalogue includes "An Introductory Essay" by John Christian (pages 2-12)

    21.10.2005 Siegfried Sassoon: a biography, by Max Egremont (Independent review)

    November 2005 Betty Falkenberg "Charlotte Mew in America" PN Review 166: November - December 2005 pages 36-39.

    [You can buy PN Review from the Carcanet website]

    I have also used a manuscript, provided by Betty, which includes references.

    Autumn 2005
    Kevin McNeilly's course (University of British Columbia) links Charlotte Mew's work to a "Culture of Listening" related to the development of new technologies at the end of the nineteenth century: "Stylistic innovations, remarkable for example in the publication of Charlotte Mew's work (intersecting with the New Woman movement) or in Robert Bridges' edition of Gerard Manley Hopkins, only heighten tensions over gender, nation and the reading public - tensions that inform Walter Benjamin's recently translated Arcades Project, which we will use as a guide to the problematics of consumption and reading that inform a new cultural poetics".

    February 2006 Two boxes of Chick family papers bought at an auction sale in Rugby by Suzanne Watts. They are believed to be part of a house clearance sale. Suzanne and her daughter Katy Smart have prepared a catalogue of the contents of the boxes which I am using with Margaret Tomlinson's book to fill the history of the Chick family. We would like to know where the boxes came from. At the moment, our best guess is that they may have belonged to Peter F. Blackman. The contents of the boxes included the diary that has been identified as belonging to Harriette Chick.

    Saturday 12.8.2006 S Holliday, New Fairlee Farm, Mews Lane, Staplers Road, Newport, Isle of Wight won prizes for beef cattle at the Isle of Wight County Show

    13.9.2006 Email from Dorothy Lumb, daughter of Gillian Lumb nee Chick. "I am a descendent of Samuel Chick and have a family tree going back to 1725 as researched by my mother's "cousin", Margaret Tomlinson (author of the history of the family lace business).

    Richard Ford (Bookseller) Harriette Chick's library of pamphlets. His homepage. Richard supplied me with a list of the ones by Harriette Chick.

    January 2007: Harriette Chick Diary 28.4.1901 - 13.8.1903 Bought from Suzanne Watts by Corinne Lee. It has been identified as the diary of Harriette Chick by comparison with the diaries in The Wellcome Library and by its content. Corinne supplied me with copies of sheets relating to an experiment in Vienna in June 1901 - Photography and the New Phytologist in July 1902 - Edith Chick's wedding in July 1903 - and has since sent me the book. The diary is small black notebook. Entries were not (always) made on the day and, in one case [Edith Chick's wedding in July 1903], a loose sheet from which entries were later made is slipped into the notebook. There are blank pages that appear to have been left for material to be entered later. The first and earliest date is "April 28th" (Vienna?) [Not 27.3.1901] followed by "Monday April 29" "Written in June" [1901]. There are then six blank pages followed by "Wednesday July 1st 1903" (Munich). This continues from Munich to Branscombe [Edith Chick's wedding in July 1903] and London (13.8.1903), which is the latest date in the book. There are then eighteen blank pages to (about) page 35 for "Vienna May 21 1901". The account continues in Vienna until Friday 5.7.1901 when they are in Dresden on their way to London, via Leipzig and Hanover. Then, on 11.7.1901 she goes to Liverpool. This section ends Monday 15.7.1901 with discussions with Liverpool academics about Austrian academics they all know. Two blank pages are followed by an entry "Friday Nov. 8th 1901" about an At Home where she was ignored and, after a blank page "Marche [?] 1st [1902?], about a party she enjoyed. Both appear to be Liverpool. Four blank pages are followed by "July 4th 1902", when she travels to Branscombe. She went to London on July 8th and the last entry of this section is opera on Tuesday July 15th 1902. One blank page and the final part begins "Thursday April 9th 1903". It covers a journey from London (April 1st) to Paris and on to Austria. She moves to Munich on 23.4.1903. The last entry is Tuesday 20.6.1903

    30.4.2007 Digital collection from Betty Falkenberg
    There are .cwk and .doc files

    BF = Digital collection of Betty Falkenberg

    BF CM-CADS 1913 and BF CADS 1914
    BF CMM-Sapho appears the same as BF CADS 1914
    Letters almost certainly in the
    C. A. Dawson Scott - Marjorie Watts Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.


    BF CMM-SCC 1918 3.7.1918- BF CMM-SCC 1918 (later) edited (additional notes)
    BF CMM-SCC 1919 corrupted file - BF CMM-SCC 1919 (later) OK
    BF CMM-SCC 1920 .cwk file has a note that the .doc file is more up to date.
    [No 1921?]
    BF CMM-SCC 1922
    BF CMM-SCC 1923
    BF CMM-SCC 1924
    BF CMM-SCC 1926

    7.6.2007 Photocopy of Freda Mew's case notes 1899-1909 received by Andrew Roberts from Tony Martin. The catalogue entry for the book from which these are copied is:
    " Reference: HO4/E2
    Case book (female - indexed) of admissions between 1898 - 1902 (NB. some case notes cover the period 1898-1909)
    Creation dates: 1898-1902; (1909)
    Extent and Form: 1 volume"

    Richard Smout, County Archivist, adds that

    The registers have no title, but merely have the words Isle of Wight County Asylum on the front of the volume. There is a loose sheet inside this volume which may be contemporary. It is headed

    Case Book
    (By order of the Commissioners in Lunacy)

    This body clearly inspects the books annually as dated signatures of two members of the Commission appear on the first blank page in the book.

    The sheet states that the initial details, which are specified, must be entered in the case book within seven days of the admission of the patient. It then goes on to say that

    "Subsequent entries describing the course and progress of the case, and recording the medical and other treatment, with the results, shall be made in the case book for patients at the times herein-after mentioned, that is to say: once at least in every week during the first month after reception, and oftener when necessary; afterwards, in recent or curable cases, once at least in every month, and in chronic cases, subject to little variation, once in every three months. But all special circumstances affecting the patient, including seclusion and medical restraint, and all accidents and injuries, must be at once recorded."

    19.10.2007 Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man by Claire Tomalin published by Viking

    February 2008 Poems selected by Eavan Boland

    2009

    2010

    11.7.2010 Death of Betty Falkenberg

    2011

    2012

    23.2.2012 c:\work\mew

    2013

    Sunday 11.8.2013 Re-appearance of Charlotte Mew (in the body of Kate O'Connor) at the Shuffle Festival on the old St Clement's Hospital site.

    2014

    2015

    2016

    Saturday 22.10.2016 A Marchmont Association blue plaque commemorating Charlotte Mew unveiled at 30 Doughty Street, WC1, where she was born and lived from 1865 to 1890. There are brief reports of the unveiling on the Marchmont Association website and in the Camden New Journal.

    Those present at the unveiling included Julia Copus, who is writing a biograhy of Charlotte, Heather Greetham, whose great-grandmother was Fanny Mew, Charlotte's aunt on her father's side and Michele Roberts. Julia and Michele read poems. Juia read The Sunlit House and Michele read Le Sacre Coeur.

    A copy of Julia's introduction to the unveiling has been published on the Faber website. Photographs by Nathalie Fonnesu have been published on the F.E.E.L. (Friends of East End Lunatics) website and official Marchmont Association photographs on flickr

    2017

    24.4.2017 from 7pm at Temple Church: Kate Whitley's settings to music of Charlotte Mew's poems, The Farmer's Bride, Sea Love and Rooms, will be played by the Albion Quartet and sung by Matthew Rose.

    See preview by Andrew Roberts

    Freda and Charlotte

    outside links:
    brief biography at Carcanet - Wikipedia article



    date index:
    1731 - 1764 - 1775 - 1776 - 1786 - 1790 - 1805 - 1811 - 1814 - 1816 - 1822 - 1823 - 1824 - 1825 - 1826 - 1828 - 1829 - 1830 - 1832 - 1834 - 1838 - 1837 - 1841 - 1842 - 1843 - 1844 - 1845 - 1846 - 1847 - 1848 - 1849 - 1850 - 1851 - 1852 - 1853 - 1856 - 1857 - 1859 - 1860 - 1861 - 1862 - 1863 - 1864 - 1865 - 1866 - 1867 - 1868 - 1869 - 1870 - 1871 - 1872 - 1873 - 1874 - 1875 - 1876 - 1877 - 1878 - 1879 - 1880 - 1881 - 1882 - 1883 - 1884 - 1885 - 1886 - 1887 - 1888 - 1889 - 1890 - 1891 - 1892 - 1893 - 1894 - 1895 - 1896 - 1897 - 1898 - 1899 - 1900 - 1901 - 1902 - 1903 - 1904 - 1905 - 1906 - 1907 - 1908 - 1909 - 1910 - 1911 - 1912 - 1913 - 1914 - 1915 - 1916 - 1917 - 1918 - 1919 - 1920 - 1921 - 1922 - 1923 - 1924 - 1925 - 1926 - 1927 - 1928 - 1929 - 1930 - 1931 - 1932 - 1933 - 1934 - 1935 - 1936 - 1937 - 1938 - 1939 - 1940 - 1941 - 1942 - 1943 - 1944 - 1945 - 1946 - 1947 - 1948 - 1949 - 1950 - 1951 - 1952 - 1953 - 1954 - 1955 - 1956 - 1957 - 1958 - 1959 - 1960 - 1971 - 1975 - 1978 - 1981 - 1988 - 1993 - 1997 - 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 -


    pictures index:

    1880 Henry Herne Mew aged 15

    1884 Charlotte (15), Anne (11) and Freda (5)

    1890s Charlotte's embroidery

    1880s Charlotte and Elizabeth Goodman

    1896 Charlotte aged 26

    1902 Chick sisters

    1909 Dawson Scotts

    1915 Fanny Mew memorial

    1916 The Farmers Bride

    1917 Letter from Charlotte to Mrs Scott

    1919 Sea Love

    1922 Old Shepherds Prayer

    1923? Charlotte aged about 55

    1926 Charlotte by Dorothy Hawksley


    writing index:
    collections:
    1916 - 1917? - 1921 - 1929 - 1953 - 1960 - 1981 - 1997 - 1999 - 2000 - 2003 - 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013 - 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 -
    individual items:
    A Country Book
    A Farewell
    A Fatal Fidelity
    A Question
    A quoi bon dire
    Absence
    Afternoon Tea
    Again
    Aglaë
    An Ending
    An Old Servant
    An Open Door
    Arracombe Wood
    At the Convent Gate
    A Wedding Day
    A White Night
    Beside the Bed
    Delivered
    Do Dreams Lie Deeper?
    Domus Caedet Arborem
    Elinor
    Epitaph
    Exspecto Resurrectionem
    Fame
    Fin de féte
    Friend, Wherefore?
    From a Window
    Here lies a Prisoner
    I so liked Spring
    I Have Been Through the Gates
    In Nunhead Cemetery
    In the Curé's Garden
    In the Fields
    Jour des Morts
    June, 1915
    Ken
    Le sacré-Coeur
    Left Behind
    Madeleine in Church
    Mademoiselle
    Mark Stafford's Wife
    Mary Stuart in Fiction
    May, 1915
    Men and Trees
    Miss Bolt
    Monsieur qui passé
    Moorland Night
    My Heart is Lame
    Ne me tangito
    Notes in a Brittany Convent
    Not for that City
    Old Shepherd's Prayer
    On the Asylum Road
    On the Road to the Sea
    On Youth Struck Down
    Passed
    Pécheresse
    Péri en mer
    Requiescat
    Rooms
    Saturday Market
    Sea Love
    She was a Sinner
    Smile, Death
    Some Ways of Love
    Song 1902
    Song 1919
    Spine
    The Bridegroom's Friend
    The Call
    The Cenotaph
    The Changeling
    The China Bowl
    The China Bowl play
    The Country Sunday
    The Farmer's Bride
    The Fête
    The Forest Road
    The Governess in Fiction
    The Hay Market
    The Little Portress
    The London Sunday
    The Minnow Fishers
    The Narrow Door
    The Pedlar
    The Poems of Emily Brontë
    The Quiet House
    The Rambling Sailor
    The Road to Kérity
    The Shade-Catchers
    The Smile
    The Sunlit House
    The Trees are Down
    The Wheat
    The Voice
    There shall be no night..
    To a Little Child in Death
    To a Child in Death
    V.R.I.
    White World


    name index
    Abigail (Tutcher) Chick
    absence
    Ada Cubitt
    Adams collection
    Algernon Swinburne
    Alida Monro
    Alida Monro Collection
    America
    Amice Macdonell (Lee)
    Amy Greener
    Ann/e (Lyon) Kendall
    Ann (Norris) Mew
    Anna Maria (Kendall) Mew
    Anne Brontë
    Anne Mew
    Anne Macdonell
    Ann Perkin
    architecture
    Arthur Kendall
    Arthur Rackham
    Audierne
    Arthur Tansley
    Atalanta's Garland
    Audrey Blackman
    Barnes
    Bedford College
    Benjamin Jowett
    Berg Collection
    Berkhamsted
    Betty Falkenberg digital collection
    Bloch
    Bootham School
    Branscombe
    brewery
    British Library collection
    British Museum Library
    Brittany
    Brunswick Square
    Burlington Road
    Bugle Inn
    Buffalo collection
    Camaret sur Mer
    Caroline F. Herne
    Catherine Amy Dawson Scott
    Celia Hill
    Charles Darwin.
    Charles Kendall
    Charles Scott Sherrington
    Charlotte Brontë
    Charlotte Mew
    Charlotte Mew photograph: 1884 - 1890s? - 1920s?
    Charlotte Street
    Chesterfield
    Chestergate
    Chick boxes
    Chick diary
    Chick family
    Chick lace
    children
    Christopher Barnes Mew
    Christopher Scott
    Clement Parsons
    Cobham
    Conrad
    Cornwall
    Crackanthorpe family
    Daily Herald
    Daniel Kendall Mew
    Daniel Oliver
    Darwin.
    Dean Street
    degeneration
    dialect
    Dieppe
    Dorothy Chick
    Dorothy Hawksley
    Dorothy Lumb
    Doughty Street
    Ecology
    Edith Chick
    Edith Gray Hill
    Edith Scull
    Edith Tansley
    Edmund Gosse
    Edward Chick
    Edward Herne Kendall
    Edward Thomas Browne
    Edward V. Knox
    Elkin Mathews
    Elijah Chick
    Elizabeth Goodman
    Elizabeth Read
    Ella D'Arcy
    Elsie Blackman
    Elsie Chick
    Elsie (Millard) O'Keefe
    embroidery
    Emily Brontë
    Emily Davies
    Emma Chick
    Ethel Louisa Mew
    Ethel Robinson Inglis
    Ethel Oliver
    Evelyn Underhill
    Fanny Mew
    Fanny (Frances) Mew/Barnes
    Fanny (Read) Mew
    Female School of Art
    Fitzroy Square
    Fitzwilliam Museum.
    Florence Ellen Mew
    Florence Emily Hardy
    Florence Kate Kingsford
    Florence Mary (Poole) Parsons
    France
    Frances Chick
    Frances (Fanny) Mew/Barnes
    Francis Wall Oliver
    Frazer
    Freda Mew
    Frederick Frost Blackman
    Frederick Mew
    Frederick Mew baby
    Frederic Myers
    Freud
    Friends school Croydon
    Friends schools York
    Friends school Wigton
    G.B. Stern
    George Sims 1847-
    George Sims 1923-
    Gertrude Mary Mew
    Gertrude Mayer
    Gideon Scull
    Gilbert Mew
    Gillian Lumb
    Gordon Street
    Gower Street
    Guingamp
    Hannah Oliver
    Harold Monro
    Harriette Chick
    Hazelwood
    Henry Dawson Lowry
    Henry E. Kendall senior
    Henry E. Kendall junior
    Henry Gillman Webb
    Henry Harland
    Henry Herne Mew
    Henry Noel Brailsford
    Henry Mew (1790)
    Henry Mew (1824)
    Henry Robert Kendall
    Herne
    Henry Thomas Jarman
    Herbert Edward Durham
    Hill family
    Hogarth Studios
    Holy Redeemer
    Horatio Cowan
    Iwan Bloch
    James Bull
    James George O'Keefe
    Jessie Murray
    James Chick
    John Read
    Joseph Conrad
    Julia Turner
    Kate Cockerell
    Katharine Cockerell
    Katherine Righton
    Labour Party
    lace
    Le Conquet
    London Plane
    London Association of Schoolmistresses
    London University
    London University women
    Louisa Read
    Louis Untermeyer
    Lucy Harrison
    Lydia Rous
    Lymington
    Maggie Browne
    Manning and Mew
    Margaret Browne
    Margaret Robinson
    Margaret Chick
    Margaret Jarman
    Margaret Sackville
    Margaret Tansley
    Margaret Tomlinson
    Marjorie Watts
    Marjorie Scott
    Marie Stopes
    Mary Davidow
    Mary Anna Read
    Mary Chick
    Mary (Herne) Cobham
    Mary Leonora Kendall
    Mary (Cobham) Kendall
    Max von Gruber
    May Sinclair
    Medico-Psychological Clinic
    Methodists
    Mew family 1731
    Mew family 1881
    Michael Tippett
    Mount School
    Mrs Hill
    Mrs Mayer
    Mrs Moore
    Mrs Sappho
    Mrs Scott
    needlework
    New Fairlee Farm
    Newman Street
    New Phytologist
    Norris family
    Notting Hill High School
    Octavia Hill
    Old Kent Road school
    Oliver family
    Paddington
    Pagets Girls Club
    Pall Mall Magazine
    Paris
    Penelope Fitzgerald
    Peter Mew
    Plane trees
    PN Review
    Poetry (magazine)
    psychical research
    Punch parody
    Queens College
    Quimper
    Quain
    Richard Cobham Mew
    Richard Percy Mew
    Richard Mew
    Richard Mew (1764)
    Robert Koch
    Robertson Smith
    Royal Pier Hotel
    Rubert Boyce
    Ryde
    sacrifice
    Samuel Chick senior
    Samuel Chick junior
    Sidmouth
    Siegfried Sassoon
    Sophia (Kendall) Cubitt
    Sophia Webb
    Sophia Ellen Webb
    South Fairlee Farm
    St Gildas de Rhuys
    Storey's Way
    Sylvia Parsons
    Spring Gardens
    Suffolk Street
    Suzanne Raitt
    Sydney Cockerell
    Temple Bar
    The Academy
    The Bookman
    The Chapbook
    The English Review
    The Englishwoman
    The Graphic
    The Grove, Isleworth
    The Monthly Chapbook
    The Nation
    The New Statesman
    The New Weekly
    The Outlook
    The Poetry Bookshop
    The Theosophist
    The Yellow Book
    T.A. Cobham
    Thomas Cobham Kendall
    Thomas Hill Green
    Thomas Hardy
    Toby Scott
    Val Warner
    Vienna
    Violet Vanbrugh
    Walter Mew
    Walter Mew Barnes
    Walter Scott
    Wek (parrot)
    Wigton Quaker School
    William Wordsworth
    William Elijah Chick
    William McDougall
    Winfred Oliver
    York Quaker Schools









































































































































    embroidery by Charlotte Mew









































































































































    embroidery by Charlotte Mew









































































































































    embroidery by Charlotte Mew









































































































































    embroidery by Charlotte Mew

    Charlotte's web is a story spun by Andrew Roberts with much inspiration, information and advice from the late Betty Falkenberg, of Massachusetts and Seattle, who was writing a biography of Charlotte Mew and editing selected letters. The website draws on Betty Falkenberg's research, over several years, collecting and annotating the letters of Charlotte Mew.

    The inspiration is Betty's - the errors are Andrew's - the essence is Charlotte's. We welcome inspiration, information and advice from all sources. We would like to hear from you

    To reference, use this bibliography entry:
    Roberts, Andrew and Falkenberg, Betty, 2005 - Charlotte Mew Chronology with mental, historical and geographical connections linking with her own words. Middlesex University resource available at http://studymore.org.uk/ymew.htm

    Betty Falkenberg and
grandson Naphtali Betty Falkenberg and grandson Naphtali

    Betty Falkenberg Viereck memorial page

    Help with this page has been given by Sister Gwenyth of the Sisters of Bethany - Sister Helen Loder of St Saviours Priory - Sister Mary Catherine of St Mary at the Cross: Edgware Abbey - David Leonard, honorary archivist, and Sandra Parker at The Mount School, York, Donna Parry at William Paterson University, who put us in touch with Elizabeth DeGroot. Ruthe Spinninger who preserved some of Charlotte Mew's embroidery. David Kessel (medical comments), Emma Woodason at the National Marine Biological Library, Lisa Nichols, Wendy Butler in the Records Office of University College, London who provided photocopies of research on the Chick family and of some student index cards, and inspected their records - Richard Temple, Archivist, Senate House Library, who inspected their records - Helen Wigginton, Archives Assistant, Royal Holloway - Julia Abel Smith and Sally at the Royal Society of Literature - Suzanne Watts and Katy Smart - Dorothy Lumb - Corrine Lee - Andrea Nagy - Lesley Hall, archivist at the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine - Richard Smout, County Archivist, Isle of Wight, and Sue Oatley, Assistant Archivist - Tony Martin, Information Governance Manager, Isle of Wight NHS - Kevin McCoy, the St Paul's Barton webmaster, provided transcripts of memorials inside the church - The itinerant librarian gave permission for me to use her photographs of The Rambling Sailor - John Eggeling of Todmorden Books - Christopher Vincenzi for advice on legal language - the Digital Library at Edinburgh University identified the poem published in Atalanta's Garland - Robert Russell for French translation, and Chris Russell for putting me in touch - Michael Basinski, curator of The Poetry Collection at the State University of New York at Buffalo - Diane Marie Ward, Principal Poetry Cataloguer of The Poetry Collection Special Collections, who provide a catalogue of their holdings respecting Charlotte Mew - Elizabeth Valentine, for information on Jessie Murray - Julia Turner and Marie Stopes - Joe Maldonado, MSS Enquiries at The British Library, and others


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