Charlotte Mew

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  Looking at it through tears, through tears.

  Then straight from these there broke the kiss,

  I think You must have known by this

  The thing for what it was, that had come to You:

  She did not love You like the rest,

  It was in her own way, but at the worst, the best,

  She gave You something altogether new.

  And through it all, from her, no word.

  She scarcely saw You, scarcely heard:

  Surely You knew when she so touched You with her hair,

  Or by the wet cheek lying there,

  And while her perfume clung to You from head to feet all through

  the day

  That You can change the things for which we care,

  But even You, unless You kill us, not the way.

  This, then was peace for her, but passion too.

  I wonder was it like a kiss that once I knew,

  The only one that I would care to take

  Into the grave with me, to which, if there afterwards, to wake.

  Almost as happy as the carven Dead

  In some dim chancel lying head by head

  We slept with it, but face to face, the whole night through –

  One breath, one throbbing quietness, as if the thing behind our lips

  was endless life,

  Lost, as I woke, to hear in the strange earthly dawn, his ‘Are you

  there?’

  And lie still, listening to the wind outside, among the

  firs.

  So Mary chose the dream of Him for what was left to her of night

  and day,

  It is the only truth: it is the dream in us that neither life nor death nor

  any other thing can take away:

  But if she had not touched Him in the doorway of the dream could

  she have cared so much?

  She was a sinner, we are what we are: the spirit afterwards,

  but first, the touch.

  And He has never shared with me my haunted house beneath the

  trees.

  Of Eden and Calvary, with its ghosts that have not any eyes for tears,

  And the happier guests who would not see, or if they did, remember

  these,

  Though they lived there a thousand years.

  Outside, too gravely looking at me, He seems to stand,

  And looking at Him, if my forgotten spirit came

  Unwillingly back, what could it claim

  Of those calm eyes, that quiet speech,

  Breaking like a slow tide upon the beach,

  The scarred, not quite human hand?

  Unwillingly back to the burden of old imaginings

  When it has learned so long not to think, not to be;

  Again, again it would speak as it has been spoken to me of things

  That I shall not see!

  I cannot bear to look at this divinely bent and gracious head:

  When I was small I never quite believed that He was dead:

  And at the Convent School I used to lie awake in bed

  Thinking about His hands. It did not matter what they said,

  He was alive to me, so hurt, so hurt! And most of all in Holy Week

  When there was no one else to see

  I used to think it would not hurt me too, so terribly,

  If He had ever seemed to notice me

  Or if, for once, He would only speak.

  The Shade-Catchers

  I think they were about as high

  As haycocks are. They went running by

  Catching bits of shade in the sunny street:

  ‘I’ve got one,’ cried sister to brother,

  ‘I’ve got two.’ ‘Now I’ve got another.’

  But scudding away on their little bare feet,

  They left the shade in the sunny street.

  Saturday Market

  Bury your heart in some deep green hollow

  Or hide it up in a kind old tree

  Better still, give it the swallow

  When she goes over the sea.

  In Saturday Market there’s eggs a ’plenty

  And dead-alive ducks with their legs tied down,

  Grey old gaffers and boys of twenty –

  Girls and the women of the town –

  Pitchers and sugar-sticks, ribbons and laces,

  Posies and whips and dicky-birds’ seed,

  Silver pieces and smiling faces,

  In Saturday Market they’ve all they need.

  What were you showing in Saturday Market

  That set it grinning from end to end

  Girls and gaffers and boys of twenty –?

  Cover it close with your shawl, my friend –

  Hasten you home with the laugh behind you,

  Over the down –, out of sight,

  Fasten your door, though no one will find you

  No one will look on a Market night.

  See, you, the shawl is wet, take out from under

  The red dead thing –. In the white of the moon

  On the flags does it stir again? Well, and no wonder –

  Best make an end of it; bury it soon.

  If there is blood on the hearth who’ll know it?

  Or blood on the stairs,

  When a murder is over and done, why show it?

  In Saturday Market nobody cares.

  Then lie you straight on your bed for a short short weeping

  And still for a long, long rest,

  There’s never a one in the town so sure of sleeping

  As you, in the house on the down with a hole in your breast.

  Think no more of the swallow,

  Forget, you, the sea,

  Never again remember the deep green hollow

  Or the top of the kind old tree!

  Sea Love

  Tide be runnin’ the great world over:

  ’Twas only last June month, I mind, that we

  Was thinkin’ the toss and the call in the breast of the lover

  So everlastin’ as the sea.

  Heer’s the same little fishes that splutter and swim,

  Wi’ the moon’s old glim on the grey, wet sand;

  An’ him no more to me nor me to him

  Than the wind goin’ over my hand.

  From a Window

  Up here, with June, the sycamore throws

  Across the window a whispering screen;

  I shall miss the sycamore more, I suppose,

  Than anything else on this earth that is out in green.

  But I mean to go through the door without fear,

  Not caring much what happens here

  When I’m away: –

  How green the screen is across the panes

  Or who goes laughing along the lanes

  With my old lover all the summer day.

  Not for that City

  Not for that city of the level sun,

  Its golden streets and glittering gates ablaze –

  The shadeless, sleepless city of white days,

  White nights, or nights and days that are as one –

  We weary, when all is said, all thought, all done.

  We strain our eyes beyond this dusk to see

  What, from the threshold of eternity,

  We shall step into. No, I think we shun

  The splendour of that everlasting glare,

  The clamour of that never-ending song.

  And if for anything we greatly long,

  It is for some remote and quiet stair

  Which winds to silence and a space of sleep

  Too sound for waking and for dreams too deep.

  Fin de Fête

  Sweetheart, for such a day

  One mustn’t grudge the score;

  Here, then, it’s all to pay,

  It’s Good-night at the door.

  Good-night and good dreams to you, –

  Do you remember the picture-book thieves

  Who left two children sleepi
ng in a wood the long night through,

  And how the birds came down and covered them with leaves?

  So you and I should have slept, – But now,

  Oh, what a lonely head!

  With just the shadow of a waving bough

  In the moonlight over your bed.

  I so liked Spring

  I so liked Spring last year

  Because you were here; –

  The thrushes too –

  Because it was these you so liked to hear –

  I so liked you –

  This year’s a different thing, –

  I’ll not think of you –

  But I’ll like Spring because it is simply Spring

  As the thrushes do.

  The Trees Are Down

  – and he cried with a loud voice:

  Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees –

  – Revelation

  They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens.

  For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of the branches as they fall,

  The crash of the trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves,

  With the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas’, the loud common talk, the loud common laughs of the men, above it all.

  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 week’s work here is as good as done. There is just one bough

  On the roped bole, in the fine grey rain,

  Green and high

  And lonely against the sky.

  (Down now! –)

  And but for that,

  If an old dead rat

  Did once, for a moment, unmake the Spring, I might never have thought of him again.

  It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day;

  These were great trees, it was in them from root to stem:

  When the men with the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas’ have carted the whole of the whispering loveliness away

  Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them.

  It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the hearts of the planes;

  Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains,

  In the March wind, the May breeze,

  In the great gales that came over to them across the roofs from the great seas.

  There was only a quiet rain when they were dying;

  They must have heard the sparrows flying,

  And the small creeping creatures in the earth where they were lying –

  But I, all day, I heard an angel crying:

  Hurt not the trees.’

  Appendix

  A Note on the Poetry Bookshop Rhyme Sheets

  SERIES 1. 23 × 8ins. Nos. 2, 4, and presumably 1 (I have not seen an example) are headed THE RHYME SHEET from free lettering by Charles Winzer. Only Nos. 1 to 7 are hand-coloured by Alida Monro (then Klementaski) and Charlotte Mew.

  1. Oh, What Shall the Man? decorated by Charles Winzer. (Out of print by 1916 and not replaced). 1d plain 2d coloured.

  2. The Cow by Roden Noel, A Widow’s Weeds by Walter de la Mare, The Shepherd by William Blake, decorated by Charles Winzer. Listed as For Children. 1d plain 2d coloured.

  3. Poems by William Blake, decorated with head and tail pieces from Blake’s illustrations to Virgil. 1d plain. Replaced by Poems by Wordsworth decorated by Albert Rutherston. 1d plain 2d coloured.

  4. Overheard on a Saltmarsh and Wind in the Dusk by Harold Monro, decorated by Charles Winzer. 2d coloured.

  5. Arabia by Walter de la Mare, decorated by Charles Winzer. 2d coloured.

  6. Beautiful Meals by T. Sturge Moore, who also did the decorations. 1d plain 2d coloured.

  7. A Christmas Legend by Frank Sidgwick, decorated by Ethel Pye. 1d plain 2d coloured.

  Select Bibliography

  Conrad Aiken: Ushant: An Essay (New York 1952.)

  Wilfrid Blunt: Cockerell (London 1964.)

  Boll, Theophilus E. M.: Miss May Sinclair, Novelist (New Jersey 1973.)

  ——The Mystery of Charlotte Mew and May Sinclair: An Inquiry (NYPLB LXXLV Sept 1970, pp. 445–53.)

  D’Arcy, Ella. Interview in The Bookman (American Bookman) December 1895, p. 260.

  Davidow, Mary C.: Charlotte Mew: Biography and Criticism. (Brown University Ph.D. thesis, 1960.)

  ——The Charlotte Mew-May Sinclair Relationship: a Reply (NYPLB LXXV March 1971, pp. 295–300.)

  Del Re, Arundel: Georgian Reminiscences (Studies in English Literature, University of Tokyo, 1932 and 1934.)

  Eliot, T. S.: Critical Note to Collected Poems of H. M. Monro (London 1933.)

  Flint, F.S.: Biographical Sketch in Collected Poems of H. M. Monro (London 1933.)

  Freeman, John: Charlotte Mew (The Bookman, vol. LXXVI, June 1929, pp. 145–6.)

  Gittings, Robert, and Manton, Jo: The Second Mrs Hardy (Oxford 1979.)

  Holroyd, Michael: ‘Said to be a Writer’, in Unreceived Opinions (New York 1974) pp. 153–60.

  Jepson, Edgar: Memoirs of an Edwardian and Neo-Georgian (London 1938.)

  Kendall, Henry: Modern Architecture (London 1846.)

  ——Designs for Schools and Schoolhouses (London 1847.)

  Long, W. H.: A Dictionary of Isle of Wight Dialect (Newport 1886.)

  Meynell, Viola, ed.: Friends of a Lifetime: Letters to S. C. Cockerell (London 1940.)

  ——The Best of Friends: Further Letters to S. C. Cockerell (London 1956.)

  Millard, Evelyn: Shakespeare for Recitation (London 1894.)

  Mix, Katherine Lyon: A Study in Yellow (Kansas and London 1960.)

  Monro, Alida: Charlotte Mew – A Memoir (preface to Collected Poems of Charlotte Mew, London 1953.)

  ——Charlotte Mew. (A critical note on her poetry in The Chapbook, June 1920.)

  ——The Poetry Bookshop (a BBC Third Programme talk, 21 February 1955. The script of this talk seems unfortunately to have been lost.)

  Monro, Harold: Collected Poems (London 1933.)

  Moore, Virginia: Charlotte Mew (in Letters and Comment, Yale Review Dec. 1932, pp. 429–30.)

  ——The Life and Eager Death of Emily Brontë (London 1936.)

  Nelson, James Gordon: The Early Nineties: a View from the Bodley Head (Harvard 1971.)

  Nelson, T. ed.: The Isle of Wight: its Towns, Antiquities and Places of Interest (Newport 1884.)

  Ould, Hermann: Shuttle (London 1947.)

  Rogers, Timothy: Georgian Poetry 1911–22: The Critical Heritage (London 1977.)

  Rolfe, Frederick: Nicholas Crabbe: or the One and the Many (London 1958.)

  Ross, Robert H.: The Georgian Revolt (London 1967.)

  Sharp, Evelyn: Unfinished Adventure: Selected Reminiscences from an Englishwoman’s Life (London 1933.)

  ——‘Nineties Evenings’. (Manchester Guardian, 19 Jan 1924, p. 7.)

  Sinclair, May: The Combined Maze (London 1913.)

  ——A Journal of Impressions of Belgium (London 1915.)

  ——The Pinprick (Harper’s Magazine Feb 1915, p. 392.)

  Swinnerton, Frank: Charlotte Mew (The Georgian Literary Scene 1910–1935 (London 1935) p. 251.)

  Syrett, Netta: The Sheltering Tree (London 1939.)

  Watts, Marjorie: Memories of Charlotte Mew (PEN Broadsheet no. 13 Autumn 1982, pp. 12–13.)

  ——P.E.N. The Early Years 1921–26 (London 1971.)

  Wylie, I.A.R.: My Life With George (New York 1940.)

  Index

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

  Numbers in italics refer to illustrations

  Abercrombie, Lascelles 202

  Academy, The 46, 71

 
; Aiken, Conrad, Ushant 221

  Alden, Mr 190

  Aldington, Richard 130, 134, 144, 161

  Images 161, 168

  Allen, Elisaveta (Mrs Grant Allen) 116

  Allen, Grant 47, 59, 116

  Ally Sloper’s Weekly 11

  Andersen, Hans 138

  Answers 46

  Architectural Association, The 43

  Athenaeum, The 46

  Audierne, Brittany 98

  Baldwin, Stanley (as Prime Minister) 202, 203

  Barnes, Christopher 9

  Barton, Isle of Wight 2, 15, 77

  Bates, H.E. 200

  Baudelaire, Charles 18

  BBC Savoy Hill studio 207

  Beale, Miss Dorothea 119, 120

  Beardsley, Aubrey 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 59, 66, 78

  Night Piece 54

  Garçons de Café 58

  Beardsley, Mabel 57

  Bedford Estate 36, 69, 191–2

  Belboeuf, Marquise de (‘Missy’) 83

  Beresford, J.D. 119–20

  Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire 95, 101

  Binyon, Laurence 153

  Blackgang Chine, Isle of Wight 15

  Blackwood’s Magazine 46, 61

  Blake, William 24

  Blunt, Wilfred Scawen 176

  Boll, Dr Theophilus 137–8, 141

  ‘Miss Bolt’ (the Mews’ sewing-woman) 12–14, 57, 78, 91

  Boulogne 100–1, 114

  Bourget, Paul 78

  Bramley, Frank, Hopeless Dawn 64, 65

  Branscombe, Devonshire 95

  Bridges, Robert 206

  Brighton, Sussex 3, 14, 35, 200

  British Museum 26–7, 92, 201

  Brittany 74–7, 97–9, 215

  Brontë, Charlotte 42, 56, 121, 131, 193

  Villette 56

  Brontë, Emily 24, 92–4, 96, 121–2, 210

  Wuthering Heights 93, 94, 177