Some children were highly skilled knitters; others simply accepted the necessity of ‘Doing Their Bit’ however their parents saw fit. Others were eventually allowed to abandon their task, as a mother’s enthusiasm sometimes surpassed her child’s skill. Young Betsey Jane eventually turns to painting, although her mother, artist and poet Helen Parry Eden, is not convinced that her daughter has inherited her parents’ artistic talents – her father was also an artist.
ARS IMMORTALIS
Betsey, when all the stalwarts left
Us women to our tasks befitting,
Your little fingers, far from deft,
Coped for an arduous week with knitting;
And, though the meekness of your hair
Drooped o’er the task, disarmed my strictures,
The Army gained when in despair
You dropped its socks to paint it pictures.
I, knowing well your guileless brush,
Urged that there wanted something subtler
To put Meissonier* to the blush
And snatch the bays from Lady Butler.*
Helen Parry Eden
[Editor: *Meissonier and Lady Elizabeth Butler were both renowned war artists who famously depicted the Napoleonic Wars. One of Lady Butler’s most famous paintings was The Roll Call; she portrayed the pain rather than the glory of war. Poetry by her famous poet sister, Alice Meynell, was widely published throughout the First World War.]
Some children who were both knitters and amateur poets, like Sophie Presley Glemby, were keen to record their patriotic endeavours.
MY SOCKS
I am only a little girl
But I am doing my bit
By helping the grown-ups knit socks,
And God grant my prayer
To watch our boys Over There
And bring them home safe
To all longing mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers,
That is a child’s prayer.
Sophie Presley Glemby
Irrespective of the poem’s theme – or indeed the poet’s age – parodies were a popular verse form during the War. These supplied the aspiring poet with a ready-made structure and rhyme pattern. There is no shortage of parodies relating to almost every aspect of women’s work and knitting is no exception; unsurprisingly, Mary and her lamb were a popular starting point.
MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB
Mary had a little lamb
Its fleece was quite expensive,
It followed her to school one day,
And came home feeling pensive.
The little maids at school that day
Forgot their sums and letters.
They pulled the wool all off its back
And knit it into sweaters.
Anonymous
The fate of Mary’s lamb would have struck a chord with Australian sheep. When knitters in New South Wales found themselves unable to source sufficient wool, they turned to New South Wales’s own immediately available resource: sheep. According to the handbook of the Australia Comforts Fund, ‘knitting direct from the fleece’ contributed materially to the ever-growing pile of socks.
Although mufflers, sweaters and other comforts were greatly appreciated by the soldiers, socks were needed above all. Not only did Kitchener call for them, nurses at the various fronts pleaded for them, as woollen socks could quite literally save a soldier’s feet and ultimately his life. The most skilled knitters were encouraged to knit two socks at once and in Australia patterns were available for those who wished to double their output.
TIME WILL WIN – KNIT A TWIN
In days of the not so long ago
Twin boys played round the bungalow.
For us it was mend and darn and sew;
Little toes soon wear through, you know.
There are no boys in the cottage now.
One in France, one at the chaser’s bow,
Beg for socks, so our needles obey,
Twin socks are knit, the Anzac way.
Mrs Mary K Gibbons
[Editor: A very talented modern day Swiss knitter undertook this task using an original World War One pattern and confirmed its complexity.]
Not all knitting poems were light-hearted. Jessie Pope is aware of the therapeutic benefits of knitting.
SOCKS
Shining pins that dart and click
In the fireside’s sheltered peace
Check the thoughts the cluster thick -
20 plain and then decrease.
He was brave – well, so was I –
Keen and merry, but his lip
Quivered when he said good-bye –
Purl the seam-stitch, purl and slip.
Never used to living rough,
Lots of things he’d got to learn;
Wonder if he’s warm enough –
Knit 2, catch 2, knit, turn.
Hark! The paper-boys again!
Wish that shout could be suppressed;
Keeps one always on the strain –
Knit off 9, and slip the rest.
Wonder if he’s fighting now,
What he’s done an’ where he’s been;
He’ll come out on top somehow –
Slip 1, knit 2, purl 14.
Jessie Pope
If for some knitters their handwork helped keep thoughts at bay, for others it was a way of connecting with those at the Front. There is something deeply personal about making a garment that a loved one is going to wear next to their skin.
TO MY MOTHER
On flash her fingers busily, and swift the pattern grows,
And fall the stitches evenly in neatly rounded rows.
And softer eyes are smiling, but they never see at all
The clumsy thread unwinding from the dull, grey worsted ball.
Her shining needles glitter with a thousand mystic gleams –
It isn’t wool she’s weaving there, it’s a gossamer of dreams.
A rosy dream of fights forgot and clouded skies serene,
A white, white dream of honour and a spirit brave and clean.
A thrill of pride, half-fearful, for the strength to do and dare,
A tender little blessing and a quiet little prayer.
And in and out she weaves them from a heart with hope a brim –
It’s not a sock she’s making, it’s a web of love for him.
Anne Page
Women from across the combatant nations all knitted. Initially, American women had sent socks to Allied soldiers, but when their own nation entered the War in 1917, American knitters and knitting poems proliferated. Eager to encourage both a supply of socks for the boys at the Front (a US Red Cross poster urged citizens to ‘Knit Their Bit’ as ‘Our Boys Need Sox’) and contributions to its popular poetry column, The New York Sun offered prizes of balls of wool for the three winning poems published every week and also printed the next ten a gaining an ‘honourable mention’.
The winning poems were collected by the paper’s Arts Editor Harry Dounce and published as Sock Songs (1919). The foreword informed readers that Dounce ‘was a tireless platform missionary of the patriotic knitter propaganda’. The London Daily Graphic also offered prizes for the best knitting poems but these were never collected post-war.
Like their European sisters, American women gained comfort from knitting together. For those without sons, knitting and poeticizing knitting gave them a vicarious entry into the War, as several poems by the childless Mrs Amy W Eggleston demonstrate.
UNTITLED
I must accept my woman’s fate
To stay at home – and wait
Wait – though keen anguish clutches at my heart,
Wait – while busily I do my part.
When messenger or post stops at the gate
I see but a dread harbinger of fate.
Still must I knit my socks –
And wait.
Amy Eggleston
Just as women’s wartime knitting has, for the better part of a century, received unjustifie
d derision, so the plethora of knitting poems have generally been overlooked. Yet they provide insights into women’s coping strategies, into the webs of love they were seeking to weave with their own or another woman’s beloved and they suggest a fellowship between women who knit.
Contemporary poems and accounts show that knitting was ageless and classless. According to social commentator and co-director of women’s services at the Ministry of Food, Mrs Peel, ‘We knitted in trains and trams, in parks and parlours.’ It is unlikely that Kitchener had foreseen quite such enthusiasm when he issued his rallying call to needles. By November 1914, in Great Britain alone a total of 970,000 pairs of socks had been produced for the nation’s serving men and equally staggering numbers were produced by Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand women and also Americans.
It is therefore hardly surprising that while, as in the words of a contemporary song, the women of England and the Empire ‘got on with their knitting’, this frenzy was recorded in poetry.
‘My Hymn of Hate’: Hoarders, food controllers and shopkeepers
Even before war was declared, some members of parliament had expressed anxiety that an outbreak of hostilities would lead to inflated food prices, hoarding and shortages. On 11 August 1914, the government moved to control food prices – although many honourable gentlemen were not convinced that the nation’s food supplies would ever be seriously threatened. Such optimism was misplaced. Great Britain was overly-dependent upon imported food and, as German submarine warfare began to bite, thousands of tons of foodstuffs were sent to the bottom of the ocean along with merchant ships and their crews.
As shortages became increasingly visible, Mrs Pember-Reeves, the Ministry of Food’s Director of Women’s Services, announced, in 1917, that food was ‘largely a woman’s question’, claiming that ‘it was for the women to do the trick’ of resolving the situation. However, long before she appeared on the scene the majority of women had become only too aware of the food crisis afflicting the nation. Hours spent queuing to purchase basic provisions had, from very early on, become part of their wartime lives.
Poems abound featuring food shortages, some of the unappetising recipes concocted by wartime cooks, and ‘the hoarder’, amongst the most hated figures of the British Home Front.
THE HOARDER
Every day she haunts the grocer
Buying sugar pound by pound;
One day this shop – then another –
Just where’er it may be found.
To herself she fondly murmurs,
As her store she eyes with pride,
“When my neighbours have no sugar,
I’ll have plenty put aside.”
“I and mine can eat in safety,
With my daily growing store;
While my neighbours not so careful
Will their empty tins deplore.”
Does she think for just one instant,
Of our sailors on the foam –
Think for just one fleeting second
What they bear – for us at home?
No one who is truly British, –
British both in name and heart –
Would of self think, at this crisis,
For ‘tis but a coward’s part.
M Stone
If hoarders were seen as unpatriotic, shopkeepers who favoured some customers over others also met with opprobrium. Black markets inevitably thrived and rumours as to where certain foods might be available also flourished – leading to anger when they proved false or the shopkeeper uncooperative.
THE RETALIATORS
“It’s no good telling me,
I don’t believe you!
I know you’ve got some.
Yes, in stock.
Sold out?
Oh, you unblushing liar!
My cook’s neighbour’s aunt
Bought some this very day
And in this very shop.
I know it for a fact.
The milkman’s second cousin
Saw her do it,
And less than half an hour ago.
You’ve hidden it away!
I know your tricks,
Reserving it for customers
You want to favour.
But I won’t be done,
I’ll go at once and fetch a policeman,
He’ll soon show you up,
Hunt out the secret store,
He’ll get you fined,
And put in prison too, I hope,
You holder up of stocks,
You shameless liar!”
Helen Hamilton
Citizens were urged to cut thinner slices of bread, use leftovers in imaginative ways and weigh every morsel of food. One nine-year-old who just gave her name as Phyllis, found the latter, at least, a blessing:
SCALES AND EXERCISE
In the days of peace the Mater seemed to have a heart of stone
Every morning for an hour she made us play
The five-finger exercises till the tears would dim your eyes.
But now that all our food we have to weigh,
That disgusting old piano is severely left alone;
After breakfast mother very seldom fails
To say ‘Now then dears, you know
I should like to see you go
To the kitchen for your practice with the scales.’
As the situation deteriorated, ‘meatless days’ (Wednesdays) and sugar cards were introduced, while consumers were constantly urged to ‘Eat Less Food’. In 1917, the bread allowance was cut to 4lbs (1.8kg) per person per week and rationing was mooted. Food Control Committees were set up in the summer of 1917 to try to ensure ever-decreasing supplies were more equitably distributed. Inspectors were appointed; Food Controllers, whose directives were supposedly sacrosanct, had the power to prosecute offenders. They also found their way into unflattering poetry:
MY HYMN OF HATE
I hate Food Controllers;
They play cards - sugar cards -
Which give me a head-ache but no sugar.
They command me not to eat bacon,
Then raise the price to make sure I don’t.
Even in their sleep they murmur “Eat less bread,”
And every time I taste it I wish I could.
I hate Food Controllers:
They make long speeches about butter;
And it worries me trying to remember where I saw it last.
They tell me that the eggs I buy ought to go to the wounded.
But I don’t send them
Because
I cannot afford the gas masks that should accompany them.
I hate Food Controllers:
They are too wise;
They say tea-drinking is a habit which must be broken,
And when I have stood in a queue from Monday morning –
And someone has stood on me –
Until Saturday night,
When I get two ounces that the grocer has found when he swept the shop,
I know they are right.
I hate Food Controllers:
They are too gallant,
They are always saying “Ladies First,”
And then they smile when they are being photographed.
Beryl Swift
Garden associations also entered the fray. They, like the press, were eager to convince gardeners that they too could do their bit for the nation’s tables. Landowners from the King and Queen to suburban residents were urged to plough up their flower gardens in favour of food production. Prime Minister Lloyd George patriotically surrendered the tennis courts attached to the grounds of Brynawdon Criccieth, his North Wales residence, and according to Graphic of 16 June 1917, brides sacrificed floral bouquets in favour of vegetables!
Sybil Bristowe was amongst the countless who heeded the gardening advice. She accepts that to many with more luxurious spaces, in peacetime her Maida Vale ‘London Garden 1914’ would seem merely a ‘tiny square/Of bordered green/And gravel brown’, to her it was ‘an
oasis of hope’. Its 1918 appearance, however, provides a different type of hope.
MY GARDEN 1918
Such was my garden once, a Springtide hope of flowers,
All rosy pink or violet or blue
Or yellow gold with sunflakes on the dew.
Now in their place a Summer garden tower
Of green-leaved artichokes and turnip tops,
Of peas and parsnips, sundry useful crops.
– But even vegetables must have little flowers.
Public spaces as well as private gardens were used for food production and many different uniformed services, from Girl Guides to the khaki-clad members of the Women’s Volunteer Reserve, tried to comply with government advice to ‘Grow More Food’.
KENT ‘A’ GARDEN
In Warwick Park at Tunbridge Wells
There was a field o’ergrown
With grass and thistles, weeds and stones;
And rubbish there was thrown.
We got permission for our Corps
To dig this up and sow it
With vegetables, fruits and herbs
To give help where we owe it.
The ground was hard, so very hard,
And Oh our backs were aching!
But with a will we set to work
At digging, hoeing, raking.
And when the rain poured down we thought
Of those who fought the Boches,
In muddy trench, on tossing sea –
We worked in mackintoshes.
And some there were who looked with dread
On slugs and worms so squirmy
One said “oh put me on a job
That isn’t quite so wormy!”
And then one day we looked with pride
Upon the green tops showing.
Our seed potatoes had come up,
And healthy shoots were growing.
God bless our Navy on the sea,
And give us power to aid them.
Our wounded too, in hospitals
We long with gifts to lade them.
And if our garden prospers well,
And we grow things to eat,
We’ll send them to the hospitals
And to our gallant Fleet.
M Stone, Orderly Sergeant, Kent ‘A’ Company
Despite the best efforts of gardeners and the Women’s Volunteer Reserve, such measures proved insufficient to keep starvation at bay and in 1917 a uniformed female army appeared on the land (poetry produced by its members is considered in Chapter Four).
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