Occasionally through dissenting voices, sometimes triumphalist and frequently despairing, women poets write of their gender’s quiet heroism and steadfastness. They bring to agonising life the heart-stopping moment of bidding loved ones farewell and they tell of mundane tasks, such as knitting socks and queuing for food, as well as the dangers of making munitions. They transport us into the hospital wards and show the desolation of nursing the wounded. In a more religious age than our own, these Christian poets help us to understand their need to seek solace in religion. Uniformed poets speak of the camaraderie of women’s service, allow us to empathise with the loneliness of tilling the land and to enter into the hard road back to ‘Civvy Street’. Bereaved poets give us a glimpse into the heartbreak of war deaths and the lives of those who faced lonely, barren years ahead.
These poems speak to us across the century and enable us to listen to an alternative story of those fateful years. This is a story told through the quiet voices of those who, in S Gertrude Ford’s words, were forced to learn the bitter lesson that whilst ‘Men made the war; mere women’ had to live through its terrible consequences.
Perhaps after reading this anthology you will find yourself, as I do, unable to answer the question Jessie Wakefield posed in the Westminster Gazette on 27 January 1915:
WHOSE?
The moment came. We said good-bye with smiles,
Sad smiles; each for the other’s sake was brave.
Before you lay the perilous ocean miles,
The trenches and perhaps - who knows? - a grave.
I mourned my loneliness to come. “Dear heart”
You said, “Whose is the lonelier part?”
And now for me remains the shell of life;
A round of days that pass without a goal;
Dark, wakeful endless night with anguish rife,
When Fear long-chained, stalks forth and rules my soul.
Lover of mine afar or near, dear heart,
Say now; Whose is the harder part?
Jessie Wakefield
Whose, indeed?
Acknowledgements
Permission to reprint copyright poems in this book is gratefully acknowledged. Many holders have kindly waived a fee and a donation in recognition of their generosity has been made to the veterans’ mental health charity Combat Stress (www.combatstress.org.uk) and Never Such Innocence (www.neversuchinnocence.com): Never Such Innocence is dedicated to educating young people about the First World War, its impact and legacy, through poetry, art and theatre. Apologies are offered to those copyright holders whom, despite every effort having been made, it has proved impossible to locate.
Poet, collection, title and publisher
Aldington, May, ‘After’, Roll of Honour, and Other Poems, Adams, 1917.
Allen, Marian, ‘Charing Cross’, The Wind On The Downs, and Other Poems, Humphreys, 1918.
Bagnold, Enid, ‘The Guns of Kent’, The Sailing Ships, Heinemann, 1918 (reprinted with permission of Dominick Jones).
Baker, Madeleine, Stuart, ‘Autumn in England 1919’, from Collected Poems, Mitre Press, 1961.
Bartlett, Brenda, ‘Too Well’, from Songs of the Younger Born, Erskine Macdonald, 1919.
Beatty, Mabel, ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’, found in the papers of Violet Waldy in the Peter Liddle Archive, University of Leeds Brotherton Library (LIDDLE/WW1/WO/128).
Bedford, Madeleine, ‘Munition Wages’ from The Young Captain, (and Other Poems): Fragments of War and Love, Erskine Macdonald, 1917.
Betts Margery, ‘Dead Men’s Dreams’ from Remembering and other Verses, Melbourne, 1917.
Bignold, Esther, Private poem.
Borden, Mary, ‘Unidentified’, ‘At the Somme: The Song of the Mud’, ‘The Virgin of Albert’ from The Forbidden Zone, Heinemann, 1929; ‘No, no! There is some sinister mistake’, reprinted with permission of Patrick Aylmer (Accessed 30 May 2015, via: www.allaboutheaven.org/observations/11148/221/borden-mary-no-no-there-is-some-sinister-mistake-013106.
Boyle, Mary E, ‘Sonnet V’, Aftermath, Heffer, Cambridge 1916.
Braimbridge, Kathleen, ‘Khaki Magic’, Dream-Songs (Poems), Elkin Matthews, 1916.
Bristowe, Sybil, ‘My Garden’, ‘To His Dear Memory’, Provocations (Poems), Erskine Macdonald, 1918.
Bristles, ‘Shanghai in June’, Old Comrades Association Gazette, June 1923.
Brittain Vera, ‘The German Ward’, ‘The Sisters Buried at Lemnos’, Verses of a VAD, Erskine McDonald, 1918 (reprinted with permission of Mark Bostridge).
Burr, Amelia, ‘The Woman at Home’, A Collection of Poems Relating To The European War 1914-1918 From Newspapers Magazines etc.
Cannan, May Wedderburn, ‘The Armistice. In an Office in Paris’, The Splendid Days, Blackwell, 1919 (reprinted with permission of Mrs Clara Abrahams).
Charton, Miss, My Lady’s Garden, Watts and Co., 1921.
Collins, Mary G, ‘Women at Munition Making’ from Branches Unto The Sea (Poems), Erskine Macdonald, 1916.
Congreve, Celia, ‘Lay Your head On The Earth’s Breast’ from The Castle and Other Verses, Humphreys, 1920.
Corrin, Theodora, ‘Munitions Work: An Uncensored Letter’ in Lawrence Levy Donation Scrapbook II, (Birmingham War Poetry Collection).
Coxford, Mrs., ‘In Memoriam’, A Collection of Poems Relating To The European War 1914-1918 From Newspapers Magazines etc.
Cranmer, Elsie P., ‘Premonition’, ‘Maid Virtue’, ‘Remembrance’, To The Living Dead and Other Poems, Daniel, 1920.
Cruttwell, Mary, ‘Sunday Evening in a Public Park, ‘Two Scarecrows in the Snow’ New Poems, Morland, 1920.
Dircks, Helen, ‘Munitions’, Finding and Other Poems, Chatto&Windus, 1918.
Dobell, Eva, ‘Pluck’, ‘Night Duty’, A Bunch of Cotswold Grasses (Poems), Stockwell, 1919.
Downes, Olive P, ‘Friends Only’ from The Bridge of Memory (Poems), Stockwell, 1921.
Eden, Helen, Parry, ‘Ars Immortalis’ Coal & Candlelight, Bodley Head, 1918.
Eggleston Amy Untitled poem in ed. Harry Dounce Sock Songs, Cornhill, New York, 1919.
Elliot, Gabrielle, ‘Pierrot Goes to War’, G H Clarke ed. A Treasury of War Poetry, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, 1919.
Falconer, Agnes, ‘Scottish Nurses in Serbia’, Graham, Peter A ed., The Country Life Anthology, Newnes, 1915.
Few, Marguerite, ‘The Débutante 1917’, Laughing Gas and other poems, Perkin Warbeck, Cambridge, 1921.
Florine, Margaret, ‘To a Red Cross Nurse’, Songs of a Nurse, Philopolis Press, California, 1918.
Ford, S Gertrude, ‘War between Christians’, Poems of War and Peace, Erskine Macdonald, 1915.
Ford, Vivien, ‘The World’s Chalice’, The Bookman, October 1914.
Fuller-Maitland, Ella, ‘Lines Written in Devon January 1915’, A Vision and Others 1915-1916, Chiswick, 1916.
Furse, Margaret C, ‘Captivity’, The Gift, Constable, 1919.
Gibbons, Mary K, ‘Time Will Win – Knit a Twin’ in ed. Harry Dounce, Sock Songs.
Gillespie, Violet, ‘Remembering’ Poems of 1915 and other Verse, Erskine Macdonald 1915.
Glemby, Sophie, ‘My Socks’, Dounce ed. Sock Songs, Cornhill, New York, 1919.
Gotelee, K M E, ‘To the Tune of Keep the Home Fires Burning’, The Landswoman, April 1918.
Graham, Muriel, E, ‘The Nameless Dead’, Vibrations and Others, Erskine Macdonald, 1918.
Grantham, Alexandra, Sonnets XIX and XXI, Mater Dolorosa, Heinemann, 1915.
Grindlay, I, ‘My Army Hat’, ‘To I. Cruden’, ‘Small Mercies’, Ripples from the Ranks of the QMAAC (Poems), Erskine Macdonald, 1918.
Grigsby, Joan, (See Rundall Joan).
Hamilton, Helen, ‘The Retaliators’, ‘Prudes in a Fight’, Napoo! A Book of War Bêtes-Noires, Blackwell, 1918.
Hamilton-Fellowes, Margery, ‘An Evening Hymn in Time of War’, A Collection of Poems Relating To The European War 1914-1918 From Newspapers Magazines etc.
Harris, Ada, ‘Red Cros
s Car’ in A Collection of Poems Relating To The European War 1914-1918 From Newspapers Magazines etc.
Henderson, Mary, ‘An Incident’, ‘In Memoriam Elsie Maud Inglis’, ‘Like That’, In War and Peace: Songs of A Scotswoman, Erskine Macdonald, 1918.
Hinkson, Pamela, ‘A Song of Autumn’, A Collection of Poems Relating To The European War 1914-1918 From Newspapers Magazines etc.
Jenkins, Elinor, ‘The Last Evening’, ‘Ecce Homo’, Poems; Last Poems, Sidgwick, 1921.
Jeffrey, Mabel, ‘In Memoriam’, Auntie Mabel’s War: An Account of Her Part in the Hostilities of 1914-18, compiled by Marian Wenzel and John Cornish, Allen Lane, 1980.
Key, Helen, ‘Edith Cavell’, Broken Music (Poems), Elkin Matthew, 1916.
Letts, Winifred, M, ‘The Call to Arms in Our Street’, ‘A Sister in a Military Hospital’, ‘Heart’s Desire’, ‘July 1916’, The Spires of Oxford, Dutton, New York, 1917.
Lindsay, Lady Kathleen, ‘Munitions Alphabet’ found in the papers of Lady Kathleen Lindsay in the Peter Liddle Archive, University of Leeds Brotherton Library, (LIDDLE/WW1/DF/076).
Mackay, Helen, ‘Train’, ‘Park’, ‘The Courtesan’, London One November, Andrew Melrose, 1915.
Maitland, Ella Fuller (See Fuller-Maitland).
Mansfield, Katherine, ‘To L.H.B. 1894-1915’, Poems, Constable, 1923. Mardel, Nina, ‘I Shall Never Feel’ from Plain Song (Poems), Erskine Macdonald, 1917.
Maynard, Constance, ‘Watching the War’ and ‘Mourning in Berlin’, Watching The War, Allenson, 1914.
Mayor, Beatrice, ‘Spring 1917’, Poems, Allen & Unwin, 1919 (reprinted with permission of David Mayor and Victoria Gray).
Meynell, Alice, ‘Summer in England 1914’ from A Father of Women and other poems, Burns & Oates, 1917.
Murray, E M, Old Comrades Association Newsletter No. 3. 1937.
Oman, Carola, ‘The Menin Road March 1919’, The Menin Road, Hodder &Stoughton, 1919. (reprinted with permission of Sir Roy Strong).
Orr, Emily, ‘A Recruit from the Slums’, A Harvester of Dreams, Burnes, Oates & Washbourne, 1922.
Parker, Mrs, ‘The Convert’ in The Bookman, October 1915.
Pope, Jessie, ‘Socks’ from War Poems, Grant Richards, 1915.
Ratcliffe, Dorothy, Una, ‘Remembrance Day in the Dales’ Singing Rivers (Poems), Bodley Head, 1922.
Renshaw, Constance, ‘The Lure of England’, England’s Boys, Erskine Macdonald, 1916.
Rundall, Joan, ‘The Farm of the Apple Tree’, Peatsmoke and Other Verses, H F W Deane, 1919.
Sackville, Margaret, ‘Sacrament’, ‘Victory’, ‘The Dead’, Collected Poems, Martin Secker, 1939.
Scheffauer, Ethel Talbot, ‘Spiders’, ‘Easter 1918’, New Altars, William Kupe, Berlin, 1921.
Scott, Aimée Byng, ‘The Farewell’, The Road to Calais and other poems, Thacker, 1919.
Sinclair, May, ‘To A Field Ambulance in Flanders’, Journal of Impressions in Belgium, Hutchinson, 1915; ‘After The Retreat’, The Egoist 1 May 1915.
Smyth, Marjorie Kane ‘Armistice Day’ Poems, Morland Foyle, Amersham, 1919.
Spender, Violet, ‘In Memoriam A.F.S.’, The Path to Spender and other poems, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1922.
Stone, M, ‘The Hoarder’; ‘Kent ‘A’ Garden’, Women’s Volunteer Reserve, Magazine 1916-1919.
Stuart, Muriel, ‘Forgotten Dead, I Salute You’, Poems, Heinemann, 1922, (reprinted with permission of John Stapleforth).
Teasdale, Sara, ‘Spring in War-Time’, J W Cunliffe ed., Poems of the Great War, Macmillan Company, New York, 1916.
Tollemache, Evelyn, ‘The Leave Train Victoria Station’, The New Crucifixion and Other Poems, Stockwell, 1918.
Toye, Sarah, ‘In Memory of Private John Vincent’, Private poem, (reprinted with permission of Roz Luftus).
Caroline A L Travers, ‘May 1915’, A Pocketful of Rye, privately printed Martin and Sturt, Farnham c.1916.
Trotter, Alys, F, ‘Picardie’, (Accessed August 2014 ua: www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2012/11/502521.htm); ‘Summer 1917’, Nigel & Other Verses, Burns & Oates, 1918.
Tynan, Katharine, ‘Joining the Colours’, Flower of Youth, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1915.
Tyrrell-Green, Margaret, ‘I Will a Tomb Upraise’, More Poems, Arrowsmith, Bristol, 1918.
Verne, Viviane, ‘Kensington Gardens’, A Casket of Thoughts (Poems), Simkin Marshall Hamilton, 1916.
Vickridge, Alberta, ‘The Red Cross Sister’, The Sea Gazer and Other Poems, Erskine Macdonald, 1919.
Wallace, Kathleen M, ‘Because You Are Dead’, Lost City: Verses, Heffer, Cambridge, 1918.
Wedgwood, Winifred, M, ‘Our VAD Scullions’, Verses of A VAD Kitchen-Maid, Gregory & Scott, Torquay, 1917.
Whitmell, Lucy, ‘Christ in Flanders’, Frederick Brereton ed., An Anthology of War Poems, William Collins and Co., 1930.
Appendix 1
Biographies of the Poets
JESSIE MAY ALDINGTON (1873-1954)
A somewhat sensational novelist, Jessie May Aldington came from a less socially privileged background than her solicitor husband. The family fell on hard financial times, leading their son Edward (who later changed his name to Richard) to cease his studies at the University of London. He enlisted in 1916; in addition to being severely gassed on the Western Front, Richard almost certainly suffered from shell-shock. His 1929 novel, Death of a Hero, is considered at least partly autobiographical, although whether the description of the narrator’s mother having a number of lovers is based on May is hard to ascertain.
MARIAN ALLEN (1892-1953)
Australian-born Marian Allen lived in Oxford for several years before the War. In 1913, her brother had introduced her to his friend and fellow Law student, Arthur Tylston Greg. The two young men joined up in the 1914 wave of enthusiasm. In his letters home throughout 1915, Arthur mentioned the sister of a university friend, who ‘writes me such interesting letters’ and who ‘sent me the Easter eggs’.
Wounded initially in December 1914, part of Arthur’s jaw was then shot away at Ypres in May 1915. After a lengthy recovery, he followed Marian’s brother into the Royal Flying Corps in September 1916. By December 1916, he had completed a training course with the Royal Naval Air Service. When he achieved his aviator’s certificate in January 1917, he had clocked up twenty-seven hours’ practice. On 4 April 1917, he and Marian said what would be their final farewell at London’s Charing Cross Station.
Posted to 55 Squadron, where the life expectancy of newly arrived pilots was under a fortnight, Arthur took part in a St George’s Day bombing raid; he and his observer were shot down and killed. Marian received news of Arthur’s death the following week, no doubt via either his parents or her brother. As a fiancée she would have had no official status in his life and news of his welfare had to filter through via the next-of-kin. This situation left many young women wondering, sometimes for significant lengths of time, what had happened to their beloved. More than one woman admits in poetry, diaries or memoirs that she had been desperate to marry ‘her’ serviceman in order to be sure that she would be the first to know if the worst happened.
Marian’s autobiographical series of sonnets, The Wind on the Downs, is dedicated to ‘A.T.G.’ His train ticket, number 7935, remained one of her most treasured possessions until she died, unmarried, in September 1953.
ENID BAGNOLD (1890-1981)
Born in Rochester, Kent, the daughter of a colonel in the Royal Engineers, Enid spent part of her childhood in Jamaica but was educated in Surrey. She was eager to break away from the stultifying chaperoned atmosphere of pre-1914 England and, rather shockingly for the time, took a flat in Chelsea, studied Art, and in 1913 became a staff writer on a new magazine, Modern Society.
Enid enrolled as a VAD and in 1917 she achieved brief wartime notoriety with her controversial account of hospital life, Diary without Dates. This led to her instant dismissal. She subsequently went to France as an ambulance driver with the FANY and based her semi-autobiographical novel The Happ
y Foreigner (1920) on her experiences. Less controversial was her 1918 poetry collection The Sailing Ships. ‘The Guns of Kent’, which first appeared in The Nation on 20 July 1918, was addressed to Siegfried Sassoon, whom Bagnold rightly felt was unjustified in his scathing condemnation of women.
Bagnold later achieved considerable fame as an author, her most famous novel being National Velvet.
MADELEINE STUART BAKER (1882-1962)
Madeleine and her sister Lily were amongst the earliest Irish female doctors, achieving MB (Bachelor of Medicine) degrees from Trinity College Dublin in 1907. In 1910, Baker became the first woman to be awarded an MD (Doctor of Medicine) by Trinity College Dublin. She later worked near Somerset as a medical practitioner and tuberculosis physician. During the First World War, Madeleine became an Honorary Major in the RAF medical service, whilst her sister followed a distinguished career as an obstetrician in Bath – the first female doctor to be appointed as a full member of staff in a British hospital outside London.
MABEL BEATTY (1880-1932)
Born in Sussex, Mabel married a Civil Service solicitor. Between 1916 and 1918, she sought to organize all women’s voluntary work under a general ‘Green Cross Society’ or Women’s Ambulance Reserve. These uniformed women filled multiple roles, ranging from driving ambulances (they were the first on the scene following the first major Zeppelin raid on London in September 1915), serving as housemaids and orderlies in hospitals and military clubs, working in hospital supply depots, to running night-time canteens for munitions workers.
Mabel may have feared that the creation of a Woman’s Royal Naval Service would suck volunteers away from her own endeavours. A forceful advocate of women’s uniformed service, she was empathetic towards working-class women who were seizing the more highly paid job opportunities that the War offered, but she was scathing towards the affluent ‘idle woman’ who did not volunteer her services.
On 7 June 1918, Mabel Beatty was gazetted CBE for her work as Commandant of the Green Cross Society.
MADELINE BEDFORD (1884-1956)
Tumult and Tears Page 17