Charlotte Mew

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  She went to Dr Horatio Cowan, whose consulting-room was just round the corner in Fitzroy Square, and who had attended Anne. He had the black specks analysed. They were soot.

  Charlotte, in a sense, must have known this perfectly well. In the 1920s London was still a place where everything in the street, and everything indoors that was left undusted for a few hours, left black marks at a touch. ‘Laundry is the curse of civilization’, she had once said. But unluckily the new language of hygiene – contamination, impurity, resistance, fight against germs – recalled the old nursery evangelical language of sin. The room itself was sinful. As best she could, Charlotte wanted to wash her soul white.

  In this compulsive fear of dirt and acute sense of her own unworthiness, Charlotte was in danger of passing from the neurotic to the psychotic. She not only felt a survivor’s guilt, she saw it on her own window-sill. Help was needed, as it had often been before, in ‘getting my nerves under control’. The doctor had nothing more to offer and sent her to a ‘mental specialist’, simply 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 – the house of ‘darkly stained or clouded glass’ – as a voluntary patient. Charlotte refused, but on the 15th of February he got her to go to a nursing-home which he recommended, 37 Beaumont Street, near Baker Street Station.

  In Priory Road Anne had had at least a view over a garden and could see the trees. In Beaumont Street Charlotte had a miserably furnished back room, with windows looking out on a blank wall, and only an occasional glimpse of a sparrow or a pigeon. The matron was called Miss Lutch. There is something inexplicable in the choice of this place.

  Although there is no record of Charlotte receiving any form of treatment, she seems to have made a determined effort to return to normal. On the 20th of February she wrote two letters. One was an acknowledgement to Harold Monro. The other was to Evelyn Millard, who had sent a book of religious poetry, The Power of Silence. ‘I quite understand how it is you value it and that it has helped you,’ Charlotte wrote, ‘… but faith is given us like every other good gift and if we haven’t got it we can but pray for it. One faith I have and that is in the wonderful everlasting kindness of my friends who have borne so much and done so much for me – and where that comes from I cannot doubt.’

  On the 24th Sydney snatched a day in London. He was obliged to catch the 4.30 back to Dorchester, but before that he would have liked to take Charlotte, as so often before, to some kind of entertainment, something that everyone was going to see – not the Matisse exhibition, for he could not believe there was anything to be said for pictures so hideous, but perhaps Queen Mary’s doll’s house, with its library of tiny books specially written by England’s most respected authors. He found Charlotte unwilling to go out. She was ‘in a state of great depression, with nothing and nobody to live for’ and he could not cajole her.

  Kate Cockerell, he had told her, seemed a little better, and Charlotte wrote that night to congratulate her and to hope that she would get out into the fresh air.

  Yes one can bear hard things under the open sky but for weeks now I have seen little of it except through a window. You do not know how much or with what affection I have thought of you. What you gave me at Cambridge that fortnight can’t be told this side of silence – for myself I won’t say much. I just tried my best to keep going and broke down – it was so lonely – I try still but it is lonelier here – You understand – and a little I hope – how I think of you.

  Dear Kate – my love –

  Yours Charlotte.

  This letter makes one wonder what Charlotte, who (as she gratefully acknowledged) always had the homes of her friends open to her, was doing at Miss Lutch’s establishment. The only explanation seems to be that she had set herself to be as independent as possible and to find her own way back to what she had called ‘the great broken world’.

  On March 12th Alida came, and was appalled by the dreariness of the room. There was a visit, too, from Cousin Ethel. For the next ten days no-one seems to have called except the doctor, who thought his patient was progressing favourably. During this time Charlotte apparently lost some battle, or perhaps, as she had suggested at the end of The Quiet House, she had gone to meet herself at last.

  March 22nd was Henry Mew’s birthday, the day on which she and Anne had often gone together to his grave in Nunhead Cemetery. On the 23rd, Alida came to Beaumont Street again. Charlotte went across to a wretched-looking chest of drawers and took out the copy which Hardy had made for himself of Fin de Fête. She gave it to Alida, telling her that she would like her to have it. This sounds unmistakably like a form of farewell, but Alida was too distracted and hard-driven to recognize it.

  Charlotte was not so much obsessed with death as too familiar with it. Of her own death she had written, ‘I mean to go through that gate without fear.’ She had not expected, however, to face it alone.

  One day the friends who stand about my bed

  Will slowly turn from it to speak of me

  Indulgently, as of the newly dead …

  On March 24th, just before one o’clock, she told Miss Lutch that she was going out for fifteen minutes. She did go, but only far enough to buy a bottle of Lysol. Lysol is a solution of creosote which at that time was on sale everywhere as a household disinfectant. It had a violent corrosive action, and was the cheapest poison available. Back in her room, she poured half the bottle into a glass, drank it and lay down on her bed.

  Although it was a Saturday, Dr Cowan seems to have paid a routine visit that afternoon to Beaumont Street. When he arrived, Miss Lutch took him to Charlotte’s room, where they found her in great pain, foaming at the mouth and talking to herself. The doctor administered olive oil, but it was useless. He made (in his own words at the inquest) ‘every endeavour to pull the deceased round, but all efforts were unavailing’. For a short while she recovered consciousness, and said, ‘Don’t keep me, let me go.’ This was her last attempt to speak to anyone, this side of silence.

  Charlotte Mew’s candlesticks.

  SELECTED POEMS OF CHARLOTTE MEW

  The Farmer’s Bride

  Three Summers since I chose a maid –

  Too young, maybe – but more’s to do

  At harvest-time than bide and woo.

  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.

  One night, in the Fall, she runned away.

  ‘Out ’mong the sheep, her be,’ they said,

  ’Should properly have been abed;

  But sure enough she wasn’t there

  Lying awake with her wide brown stare.

  So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down

  We chased her, flying like a hare

  Before our lanterns. To Church-Town

  All in a shiver and a scare

  We caught her, fetched her home at last,

  And turned the key upon her, fast.

  She does the work about the house

  As well as most, but like a mouse:

  Happy enough to chat and play

  With birds and rabbits and such as they,

  So long as men-folk keep away.

  ‘Not near, not near!’ her eyes beseech

  When one of us comes within reach.

  The women say that beasts in stall

  Look round like children at her call.

  I’ve hardly heard her speak at all.

  Shy as a leveret, swift as he,

  Straight and slight as a young larch tree,

  Sweet as the first wild violets, she,

  To her wild self. But what to me?

  The short days shorten and the oaks are brown,

  The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky,

  One leaf in the
still air falls slowly down,

  A magpie’s spotted feathers lie

  On the black earth spread white with rime,

  The berries redden up to Christmas-time.

  What’s Christmas-time without there be

  Some other in the house than we!

  She sleeps up in the attic there

  Alone, poor maid. ’Tis but a stair

  Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down,

  The soft young down of her, the brown,

  The brown of her – her eyes, her hair, her hair!

  In Nunhead Cemetery

  It is the clay that makes the earth stick to his spade;

  He fills in holes like this year after year;

  The others have gone; they were tired, and half afraid,

  But I would rather be standing here;

  There is nowhere else to go. I have seen this place

  From the windows of the train that’s going past

  Against the sky. This is rain on my face –

  It was raining here when I saw it last.

  There is something horrible about a flower;

  This, broken in my hand, is one of those

  He threw 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

  Because I tried to make you understand

  The cheap, stale chap I used to be

  Before I saw the things you made me see.

  This is not a real place; perhaps by-and-by

  I shall wake – I am getting drenched with all this rain:

  To-morrow I will tell you about the eyes of the Crystal Palace train

  Looking down on us, and you will laugh and I shall see what you

  see again.

  Not here, not now. We said, ‘Not yet

  Across our low stone parapet

  Will the quick shadows of the sparrows fall.’

  But still it was a lovely thing

  Through the grey months to wait for Spring

  With the birds that go a-gypsying

  In the parks till the blue seas call.

  And next to these, you used to care

  For the lions in Trafalgar Square,

  Who’ll stand and speak for London when her bell of Judgement

  tolls –

  And the gulls at Westminster that were

  The old sea-captains’ souls.

  To-day again the brown tide splashes, step by step, the river stair,

  And the gulls are there!

  By a month we have missed our Day:

  The children would have hung about

  Round the carriage and over the way

  As you and I came out.

  We should have stood on the gulls’ black cliffs and heard the sea

  And seen the moon’s white track,

  I would have called, you would have come to me

  And kissed me back.

  You have done none of that: I do not know

  Why I stood staring at your bed

  And heard you, though you spoke so low,

  But could not reach your hands, your little head.

  There was nothing we could not do, you said,

  And you went, and I let you go!

  Now 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 –;

  Dear, you will say this is not I –

  It would not be you, it would not be you!

  If for only a little while

  You will think of it you will understand,

  If you will touch my sleeve and smile

  As you did that morning in the Strand

  I can wait quietly with you

  Or go away if you want me to –

  God! What is God? but your face has gone and your hand!

  Let me stay here too.

  When I was quite a little lad

  At Christmas-time we went half mad

  For joy of all the toys we had,

  And then we used to sing about the sheep

  The shepherds watched by night;

  We used to pray to Christ to keep

  Our small souls safe till morning light –

  I am scared, I am staying with you to-night –

  Put me to sleep.

  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.

  The Changeling

  Toll no bell for me, dear Father, dear Mother,

  Waste no sighs;

  There are my sisters, there is my little brother

  Who plays in the place called Paradise,

  Your children all, your children for ever;

  But I, so wild,

  Your disgrace, with the queer brown face, was never,

  Never, I know, but half your child!

  In the garden at play, all day, last summer,

  Far and away I heard

  The sweet ‘tweet-tweet’ of a strange new-comer,

  The dearest, clearest call of a bird.

  It lived down there in the deep green hollow,

  My own old home, and the fairies say

  The word of a bird is a thing to follow,

  So I was away a night and a day.

  One evening, too, by the nursery fire,

  We snuggled close and sat round so still,

  When suddenly as the wind blew higher,

  Something scratched on the window-sill.

  A pinched brown face peered in – I shivered;

  No one listened or seemed to see;

  The arms of it waved and the wings of it quivered,

  Whoo – I knew it had come for me;

  Some are as bad as bad can be!

  All night long They danced in the rain,

  Round and round in a dripping chain,

  Threw Their caps at the window-pane,

  Tried to make me scream and shout

  And fling the bedclothes all about:

  I meant to stay in bed that night,

  And if only you had left a light

  They would never have got me out.

  Sometimes I wouldn’t speak, you see,

  Or answer when you spoke to me,

  Because in the long, still dusks of Spring

  You can hear the whole world whispering;

  The shy green grasses making love,

  The feathers grow on the dear, grey dove,

  The tiny heart of the redstart beat,

  The patter of the squirrel’s feet,

  The pebbles pushing in the silver streams,

  The rushes talking in their dreams,

  The swish-swish of the bat’s black wings,

  The wild-wood bluebell’s sweet ting-tings,

  Humming and hammering at your ear,

  Everything there is to hear

  In the heart of hidden things,

  But not in the midst of the nursery riot,

  That’s why I wanted to be quiet,

  Couldn’t do my sums, or sing,

  Or settle down to anything.

  And when, for that, I was sent upstairs

  I did kneel down and say my prayers;

  But the King who sits on your high church steeple

  Has nothing to do with us fairy people!

  ’Times I pleased you, dear Father, dear Mother,

  Learned all my lessons and liked to pl
ay,

  And dearly I loved the little pale brother

  Whom some other bird must have called away.

  Why did They bring me here to make me

  Not quite bad and not quite good,

  Why, unless They’re wicked, do They want, in spite, to take me

  Back to Their wet, wild wood?

  Now, every night I shall see the windows shining,

  The gold lamp’s glow, and the fire’s red gleam,

  While the best of us are twining twigs and the rest of us are whining

  In the hollow by the stream.

  Black and chill are Their nights on the wold;

  And They live so long and They feel no pain:

  I shall grow up, but never grow old,

  I shall always, always be very cold,

  I shall never come back again!

  Ken

  The town is old and very steep,

  A place of bells and cloisters and grey towers,

  And black clad people walking in their sleep –

  A nun, a priest, a woman taking flowers

  To her new grave; and watched from end to end

  By the great Church above, through the still hours:

  But in the morning and the early dark

  The children wake to dart from doors and call

  Down the wide, crooked street, where, at the bend,

  Before it climbs up to the park,