Tumult and Tears

by Vivien Newman

  OLIVE PRIMROSE DOWNES (1886-1927)

  Born in Walthamstow, Olive was a solicitor’s daughter and, although she had had a children’s story published in 1909, the 1911 census gives her occupation as ‘Nil’. Like many unmarried women of her age, Olive continued to reside with her parents during her adult life. She worked as a VAD during the First World War and in 1916 was at the well-equipped 85-bed Southall Auxiliary (Military Convalescent) Hospital. Some of her poems were published in Herald of the Star, the leading magazine of the organization The Order of the Star in the East to which a number of high profile individuals contributed.

  The Order was an international theosophical organization founded to prepare the world for a new messianic [non-Christian] coming or World Teacher. Lady Emily Lutyens was closely involved with it. Her husband, Edwin Lutyens was one of the principal architects involved with the creation of the Imperial War Graves (now Commonwealth) cemeteries, including the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, as well as the architect of Viceroy House and many other key buildings in New Delhi and London.

  HELEN PARRY EDEN (1885-1960)

  Daughter of a judge, Helen was born in London and educated at Roedean School, Manchester University, and King’s College Art School. She married painter William Denis Eden in 1907. Their daughter Betsey Anne features in several of her poems. Her poetry appeared in Punch, Pall Mall Magazine, Catholic Messenger and several wartime anthologies. Post-war, she continued to write religious texts and also published poetry in World War Two.

  AMY EGGLESTON (1874-1929)

  A frequent winner of The New York Sun’s knitting poems competition, Amy continued to write prize-winning poems which were published in newspapers until her death. Though childless herself, she was a prolific knitter and writer of knitting poems, empathizing with women whose heart missed a beat with every unexpected knock on the door.

  GABRIELLE ELLIOT (1890-1988)

  Born in New York, Gabrielle was educated at New York’s prestigious women-only college, Vassar, founded in 1865 to provide an academically challenging education to women. Entrants had to know Latin, speak at least one foreign language and be well versed in both the Arts and the Sciences. On one occasion Gabrielle translated a play by seventeenth century French dramatist Molière, which was performed by the theatrical association.

  Vassar had a reputation for producing strong, independently-minded graduates who set themselves and achieved high goals. Elliott’s family had connections with France; her uncle, an expert pianist and organist played for the American Church in Paris. In August 1913, she and her mother visited Paris and she was later involved with two American charities supporting French soldiers and refugees.

  Partly in acknowledgement of France’s support of the USA’s War of Independence, many Americans felt a debt of gratitude towards the country. In 1914, American women living abroad founded the American Fund for French Wounded (AFFW), which aimed to provide much needed relief to small hospitals in France and medical assistance for wounded French soldiers and civilians. The charity also offered various forms of support for refugees, including those evacuated either by the Germans from their homes in Occupied France or by the French authorities in militarised zones.

  The AFFW worked closely with the American Committee for Devastated France and the American Red Cross. Poems and indeed whole collections written by men and women from across the combatant nations were often sold to raise funds for local, national and international charities. It is likely that there was a fund-raising element to Elliot’s poetry due to the extent of her charitable involvement.

  Elliot was also involved with the Council of National Defense, which on April 21, 1917 (fifteen days after the USA’s entry into the War), put out a statement targeting ‘the women of America [who] may be made available in the prosecution of the war.’ Perhaps learning from the experience of now war-hardened nations, the US Government immediately recognized the value of women’s war work – although uncertainty surrounded what that should be.

  AGNES S FALCONER (1869-1951)

  Born in Scotland, Agnes’s father was an ironmonger. Like a number of poets, she responded poetically to the September 1914 German burning of the Belgian town of Louvain and its cultural treasures. One unusual poem extols the benefits of ‘Sphagnum Moss’, which was widely used in the treatment of wounds; Scotland supplied many kilos of it. An active member of the Scottish Women’s Rural Institute, Agnes’ interests and sympathies lay with Scotland’s rural communities. Despite damning her with relatively faint praise as a ‘competent versifier’, Scottish poet Hugh McDiarmid considered her a contributor to the Scottish Renaissance in poetry

  The ‘Sisters’ she commemorates in the poem are Augusta Minshull, Madge Fraser and Louisa Jordan, who all died of typhus in Serbia within weeks of each other in March and April 1915, and Bessie Sutherland in September 1915. The atrocious conditions in Serbia were an ideal breeding-ground for the body lice that spread this highly contagious cold-weather disease. Dr Elizabeth Ross was the first of the British to succumb in February 1915, followed shortly by the nurses.

  Serbia still honours the memories of the British women who gave their lives to their cause. Despite the best efforts of many hundreds of British doctors and nurses, they and the Serbian medical services fought a losing battle against horrific wounds, disease and vermin.

  ELEANOR FARJEON (1881-1965) [Poem ‘The Outlet’ not quoted here, due to copyright issues]

  Eleanor’s novelist father encouraged his shy, bookish daughter to write from an early age. Awkward as a young woman, she met poet Edward Thomas in 1913 and formed a close friendship with him and his family. On learning of Thomas’s death, his wife Helen immediately telegrammed Eleanor who rushed to the family’s Epping Forest home to share their grief. She put her own mourning aside whilst she sought to comfort Helen, only returning to her own home several weeks after Edward’s death. She recounts this in her poem ‘The Outlet’.

  In her deeply moving elegiac sonnets to Edward Thomas, Eleanor acknowledges her love for him and accepts that to Edward she was most probably little more than a dear, reliable friend with whom he had a close meeting of minds. However, one sonnet published long after the War hints that perhaps his feelings went deeper than friendship. Her Edward Thomas The Last Four Years reveals as much about her as about Thomas. In this, she demonstrates that she believed (as generations of scholars and Thomas aficionados have since) that, in Helen’s words, ‘his beloved body was not injured’.

  Thomas’ biographer Jean Moorcroft Wilson, has recently found evidence that he was ‘shot clean through the chest’ and this, rather than a shell blast causing his heart to stop, killed him. There is nothing unusual about Helen and Eleanor’s need to believe that Edward’s body was not mutilated – those who cannot see the body of their loved one often need to cling to the idea that it was perfect in death.

  Eleanor’s hymn ‘Morning Has Broken’ is still widely sung; it was recorded by the singer Cat Stevens. She never married, but in 1919 formed a thirty-year friendship with English teacher George Earle and, following his death, with the actor Denys Blakelock.

  A prolific author of works for both adults and children, she is recognised as pivotal in the development of children’s literature. The Children’s Book Circle established the Eleanor Farjeon Award in her honour. She declined to become a Dame of the British Empire, not wishing ‘to become different from the milkman.’

  MAGUERITE FEW

  No information has been uncovered about this poet. Her patriotic poetry appeared in local newspapers as well as the Westminster Gazette. She also had a collection, Laughing Gas, published in 1921.

  MARGARET HELEN FLORINE (1880-1949)

  Like so many women, professional nurse Margaret Florine has escaped critical notice. A brief review of her Songs of a Nurse appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle (7 October 1917) and the second edition was well reviewed in American Journal of Nursing (5 February 1920). The reviewer felt that the poems ‘showed a rare sympat
hy and deep understanding of the thoughts and feelings of the many and varied broken beings brought to the hospital for repair.’ Intriguingly, in the 1920 American census, she gives her father’s place of birth as Germany but in the 1900 census it appears as France.

  SOPHIA GERTRUDE FORD (1877-1947)

  The daughter of a ‘Church Chapel Keeper’, Lancashire-born telephone operator and subsequently journalist Ford was a pacifist and feminist as well as a prolific poet. Several of her poems explore the irony of Christians fighting each other in this ghastly war, both sides convinced that right was on their side. Individual poems by Ford were widely published in pacifist-leaning papers. Profits from the sale of at least some of her work were donated to the British Red Cross Society.

  VIVIEN FORD (1890-?)

  Bristol-born Vivien Ford’s father was a sufficiently prosperous corn merchant for his daughter not to need to work; she gives ‘No Occupation’ in the 1911 census. She had attended Clifton High School for Girls and seems to have retained links with the school, writing plays for post-war charitable productions put on by the ‘Old Girls’. In 1916, one of Vivien’s brothers was conscripted into the Army Pay Corps.

  She won several of the many poetry competitions proposed in The Bookman from the War’s earliest days. Her first success came in October 1914 with the award of one guinea (worth approximately £100 in 2016) for the ‘the best original lyric’. She apparently had artistic as well as musical talent, as frequent mention is made of her musical contribution to Bristol cultural events in local papers.

  MARGARET CELIA FURSE (1890-1975)

  Daughter of Sir Henry Newbolt, the composer of the famous 1897 poem ‘Vitai Lampada’, throughout her childhood, Margaret was surrounded by the literati of the era. Sir Henry Newbolt was a member of the government initiated War Propaganda Bureau, formed in September 1914 to guide public opinion in supporting the War. He did not approve of education for women, considering the home schoolroom and governesses ample for a woman’s intellectual needs. His private life was more colourful than his public one, however, and his marriage consisted of a ménage à trois with his wife and her lesbian lover, who also became Newbolt’s mistress. Though aware of these unusual domestic arrangements, Celia’s affection for her father was undimmed.

  In June 1914, she married Ralph Furse whose aunt, Katherine Furse, became Commandant of the VADs overseas and subsequently of the WRNS. According to an August 1910 letter, Ralph was ‘a lively youth of remarkable looks who, when in a festive mood, liked to swish the heads off poppies with his sword’. Celia announced her first pregnancy on the day Germany invaded Belgium. Despite this, Ralph and Celia’s brother Francis (who subsequently suffered acute shell-shock) rushed to enlist, with Ralph being sent to France around the same time as their daughter’s birth in April 1915. Ralph was wounded in 1917 and awarded the DSO and bar in 1918. Both of Celia’s daughters married the engraver Laurence Whistler.

  MARY K GIBBONS

  No information has been found.

  SOPHIE PRESELY GLEMBY (1908-?)

  No information has been uncovered, other than the fact that she was born in New York.

  K M E GOTELEE (1891-1959)

  Born in Islington, the second of three sisters; her father was a ‘shop-walker’ and draper’s clerk. In the 1911 census she is listed as a ‘student’. Like so many of her generation, she did not marry.

  MURIEL ELSIE GRAHAM (1868-1928)

  Born in Calcutta. Her justice of the peace father was an East India Company employee and her mother a vicar’s daughter. By 1871 the family were living in Stirling, Scotland, where she appears to have remained throughout her life.

  ALEXANDRA GRANTHAM (1868-1945)

  By birth a German citizen, Alexandra almost certainly met her husband Frederick whilst they were both studying at Cambridge, she at Girton, where she achieved First Class Honours. A highly cultured woman, her pre-war writings reveal an early feminist/supporter of women’s rights.

  Frederick served in the Boer War and her writings of this period show a deep awareness of the emotional cost to women of having their husbands serving overseas. Subsequently a Reservist with the Royal Munster Fusiliers, Frederick served in France from September 1914. He was reported ‘Missing’ in May 1915 and only his dog-tag was found. Their son, Hugo, was a Regular Army officer in the Essex Regiment. In spring 1915 he embarked for Gallipoli.

  Alexandra’s lengthy elegy to Hugo, Mater Dolorsa, charts her grief work and internal conflict between wishing to accept that Hugo died an heroic death, yet realising she may be deluding herself. She also expresses anger with Frederick for having died when she needed him most. Her later war works reveal cleverly concealed anti-war sentiments, including the duping of the young by warmongers.

  Hugo is buried at Twelve Tree Copse Cemetery, Gallipoli and Frederick is remembered on the walls at Le Touret. Alexandra’s second son, Alexander, survived the War and became Governor of Hong Kong in the 1950s. Her much loved youngest son, Godfrey, was killed in June 1942; she also elegised him in verse.

  JOAN GRIGSBY (née RUNDALL) (1892-1937)

  Born in Dumfriesshire, her headmaster father was also a ‘Clerk in Holy Orders’. In 1911 she was living with an aunt and uncle in Finchley, while working as a shorthand typist. She retained close ties with her beloved native Scotland, where she spent holidays. Her 1919 poetry collection Peatsmoke and other verses is dedicated to ‘A. G.’ – undoubtedly her husband Arthur Grigsby, a railway clerk with Great Eastern Railways, whom she married in 1912. They and their child emigrated to Canada in 1921.

  ‘I. GRINDLAY’, MARJORIE GRINDLEY (1899-1984)

  Born in Cheshire, her father was founder of the W H Grindley Potteries company, which survived in various guises until 1991. She attended Moira House School in Eastbourne, and was undoubtedly better educated than many of her fellow WAACS. She served in the Edinburgh QMAAC. Her 1918 poetry collection Ripples from the Ranks was favourably reviewed in the Aberdeen Journal, 13 November 1918.

  Her older brother Herbert was killed at Ypres in October 1915. Marjorie does not appear to have married and in 1923 gives her profession as ‘None’. Sadly, according to the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, she was involved in a motor accident in Bath in early October 1927, when she killed a cyclist in heavy rain and gales. The coroner exonerated her from all blame and extended his sympathy to her, as well as to the family of the deceased young woman. Apart from her having crossed the Atlantic with her brother in 1922, no other information has been found about her life.

  HELEN HAMILTON

  Although relatively little is known about Schoolmistress Helen Hamilton, it is very probable that teaching was her work whilst mountaineering became her love. She climbed Mont Blanc in the early 1920s, having first travelled to the Alps for her health. The ironic style she employed in her war poetry is apparent across both her poetry and prose and either mountaineering or teaching informs all her writing. It appears as though she was a person who aroused strong emotions in those who knew her – not always positive ones.

  MRS HAMILTON-FELLOWES

  It is tempting to surmise from the 1911 census that she was the wife of a Church of England clergyman – her (written no later than 1915) ‘Evening Hymn in Time of War’ was subsequently published as a hymn. According to one contemporary critic, she ‘is under no sentimental illusion as to the blessedness of war’. She also had a number of songs published during the War.

  ADA LEONORA HARRIS (1860-1943)

  Born in Surrey, Ada was the daughter of a broker’s clerk. By 1911 she was living with her brother in Kingston-upon-Thames, giving her occupation as ‘literary’. She wrote lyrics for several popular composers: ‘In an Old-fashioned Town’ (1914) was a significant ‘hit’ during the War. It is possible that seeing convoys of ambulances arriving at one of the two military and auxiliary hospitals in Kingston-upon-Thames prompted the poem. The most severely injured were often brought in under cover of darkness to avoid lowering civilian morale.

  MARY HENDE
RSON (1875-1938)

  Daughter of a Scottish architect living near Balmoral, the young Mary and her twin brother were invited to play with Queen Victoria’s grandchildren. Unlike the monarch, she was a firm believer in women’s suffrage and before the war was involved with many civic causes. When war broke out she became Honorary Secretary of the Dundee Women’s War Relief Fund – a role she fulfilled admirably and she was associated with almost all of Dundee’s war relief organisations. A request by her friend Dr Elsie Inglis to serve as Administrator of the Scottish Women’s Hospital Units, transformed her life. Although at least one member considered her ill-suited to the role, a ‘fat good natured Scot with no business capacity of any kind’, this appears unfair. She remained in post, frequently crossing between Britain and Russia accompanying stores and supplies – her admiration for the nurses and doctors knew no bounds and was translated into her poetry. Like many SWH staff, she would undertake some nursing duties on the numerous occasions when the hospitals were inundated with casualties. She reached Petrograd from London on the day news of the Tsar’s March 1917 abdication broke. By early summer 1917, she believed conditions in Russia were so hazardous that she advised the Foreign Office against any more women drivers being sent out to join the Unit. Some members, including SWH founder Dr Inglis, considered this close to treachery. However, this does not appear to have significantly damaged Inglis and Henderson’s friendship. She died in November 1938 following what the Aberdeen Journal termed a ‘mystery car crash’ near Ballater. She fractured her skull, dying in the hospital on whose management committee she served. She was deeply mourned by the local community.

  PAMELA HINKSON (1900-1982)

  Daughter of Irish writer Katharine Tynan (q.v.). Her father became Resident Magistrate of County Mayo, Ireland, where the family lived from 1911. Pamela’s adolescence was, like that of the majority of her generation, scarred by the War and she never married. She became a novelist and acted as secretary to her mother, whose extensive correspondence with the leading figures of Irish letters including W B Yeats, she also preserved. Whilst generally publishing under her own name, she took the pseudonym ‘Peter Deane’ for her Great War fiction.