Charlotte Mew

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  ‘She is tiny …’ Mrs Dawson Scott’s diaries, early 1913. (MW.)

  ‘May Sinclair …’ (1863–1946). The only complete account of her life is Miss May Sinclair: Novelist. A Biographical and Critical Introduction by Theophilus E. M. Boll (Farleigh Dickinson University 1973).

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘She came to dinner sometimes …’ I. A. R. Wylie, My Life With George (New York 1940) p. 178. I. A. R. Wylie also mentions that there was an escape route for suffragettes across May’s back garden and out through her front door.

  ‘her Defence of Idealism …’ published in August 1917.

  ‘and as the radiant and vehement life …’ The Combined Maze (London 1913) pp. 23–5.

  ‘My dear Miss Mew …’ 4 July 1913. (Berg.)

  ‘Pound suggested …’ The English Review, under the editorship of Ford Madox Ford, was the first magazine to publish Pound in England (June 1909). In 1912 he began to collect contributors for Harriet Monroe’s Poetry, warning them that his standards were ‘the stiffest in Europe’.

  ‘All verse gains by being spoken …’ CM/CADS 26 June 1913. (MW.)

  ‘in this form I am only a beginner …’ CM/Mrs Hill 24 July 1914. (Buffalo.)

  ‘Madeleine in Church …’ (CMCP p.22)

  ‘a favourite part of Evelyn Millard …’ She first appeared in it at the Adelphi in 1894, with George Alexander.

  ‘Charlotte acknowledged this …’ CM/CADS 26 Dec 1913. (MW.)

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘Privately May told Sappho …’ MS/CADS 18 Feb 1914. (MW.)

  ‘Only, May warned …’ MS/CM 8 May 1914. (Berg.)

  ‘I simply hate telling …’ CM/CADS 12 March 1914. (MW.)

  ‘And all my days …’ MS/CM 8 May 1914. (Berg.)

  ‘It makes all the difference to me to be in the right place …’ CM/Edith Oliver 8 April 1914. (Berg.)

  ‘Not by way of an answer …’ MS/CM 14 May 1914. (Berg.)

  ‘finish, finish your courtisan …’ MS/CM 13 June 1914. (Berg.)

  ‘if Christ had seemed to notice her …’ This was an idea which haunted Charlotte. She refers more than once to ‘an old Spanish priest’ who had told her: ‘You are always thinking of the Saviour’ – ‘If He was only here – if we could only see Him’. ‘– Oh, ye of little faith!’ CM/ Evelyn Millard 20 Feb 1928. (Buffalo.)

  ‘in Russia they are producing …’ CM/CADS 26 June 1914. (MW.) Chekhov’s Russian Stories, translated by Marian Fell, were published by Duckworth in 1914.

  ‘Chance …’ from the first (1914) edition.

  ‘Qu’avez-vous fait? …’ this poem is undated. The MS is on paper headed 9 Gordon Street. (Davidow.)

  ‘Rebecca West sent …’ Dr Boll published this letter in NYPLB Vol 74 Sept 1970 pp. 445–53 (The Mystery of Charlotte Mew and May Sinclair: An Inquiry). In NYPLB vol 75 March 1971 pp. 295–300 Mary Davidow replied to Dr Boll, pointing out that Margaret Chick had told her personally that Charlotte Mew was ‘the soul of probity’, and that her brother, Sam Chick, had once wanted to ‘keep company’ with Charlotte. She also felt that the time and place (soon after May’s move to 1 Blenheim Road) was improbable. ‘Here were two women of fifty and forty-four. Suddenly the younger one, seized by a wild fit of passion, gives chase to the older woman, who makes a dash for the bedroom, of all places and amid moving-crates and cartons and displaced furnishings, leaps the bed five times.’

  ‘My mother told me …’ Marjorie Watts: Memories of Charlotte Mew, PEN Broadsheet no 13, Autumn 1982 p. 13.

  ‘Margaret Radclyffe Hall …’ Her The Well of Loneliness (1928) defended the natural and social rights of lesbians, and, at the same time, her own relationship with Una Troubridge.

  ‘Blindest of all things …’ Ne Me Tangito (CMCP p. 43)

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything quite so deadly …’ CM/CADS 12 March 1914. (MW.)

  ‘people are only disappointing …’ CM/CADS 24 June 1917. (MW.)

  ‘A Journal of Impressions of Belgium’ was published by Hutchinson in 1915. ‘I began to feel …’ p. 324.

  ‘The Pinprick’. This story appeared in Harpers Feb. 1915. Cf. also May Sinclair’s The Divine Fire (1904) p. 217: ‘People in trouble don’t change to other people – they change to themselves.’

  ‘Ne Me Tangito’ (CMCP p. 43)

  ‘Saturday Market’ (CMCP p. 33)

  ‘in Saturday Market nobody cares …’ Cf. Men and Trees 11 (CMCP p. 399). ‘We must not speak in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest,’ says Hawthorne – I think it was in The Scarlet Letter. Who was Hawthorne? There are no scarlet letters. Everything happens in the market-place. Where else? But the market-place is not real: the real things are happening in the forest still.’

  ‘Poets shouldn’t be ridiculed …’ MS/CM 9 June 1915. (Berg.)

  ‘In her book …’ The Life and Eager Death of Emily Brontë (London 1936)

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘The Poetry Bookshop …’ For a detailed history of the Bookshop, see Joy Grant: Harold Monro and the Poetry Bookshop (London 1967).

  ‘They have underneath the house …’ quoted in H. S. Ede: A Life of Gaudier-Brzěska (London 1930) p. 131.

  ‘I can’t learn to know men …’ Harold Monro: Strange Meetings (1917).

  ‘a source of free drinks …’ according to F. S. Flint’s Biographical Sketch in Monro’s Collected Poems (London 1933).

  ‘The grand old man, to whom all looked up …’ For instance, An Anthology of Modern Verse, chosen by A. Methuen, which went through 25 editions between 1921 and 1929, is dedicated to Thomas Hardy, ‘Greatest of the Moderns’. This anthology includes T. S. Eliot’s La Figlia che Piange and T. E. Brown’s My Garden (‘A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot.’)

  ‘Georgian Poetry 1911–12 …’ Half the profits went to the Bookshop, and half were divided between the contributors.

  ‘a Hampstead-Polish refugee family …’ The Klementaski grandfather came from Poland in the 1860s. He was a Catholic, but married a Jewish wife in Holland en route.

  ‘She and Harold Monro …’ The following account is mainly from the correspondence between Alida and Harold Monro in the British Library (BL Add MSS 57748–52).

  ‘Are you Charlotte Mew? …’ Memoir p. vii.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘comparing it later to the wind …’ CM/SCC 6 July 1918. (Berg.)

  ‘two cousins …’ Ethel Louisa and Florence Ellen were sisters, the daughters of Richard Mew of Newfairlee Farm.

  ‘She was shown Henry Kendall’s picture …’ F. W. Leakey: Baudelaire et Kendall (see note on p. 25) p. 62. Alida said that she could remember ‘an airy lightness in the picture, but couldn’t put more to it’.

  ‘one young girl cared for her …’ Sylvia, the daughter of Mrs Clement Parsons.

  ‘a South African girl …’ AM/HM 9 Dec 1916. (BL Add MSS 57748).

  Pamela Travers told me this story, but added that Alida only saw what she wanted to see.

  ‘this year …’ CM/HM 14 Dec 1915. (Buffalo.)

  ‘(1) because it’s a chance …’ MS/CM Berg 27 Dec 1915. (Berg.)

  ‘his best-known artist …’ Claud Lovat Fraser (1890–1921) a self-taught artist, was already famous for his book designs and decorations when he joined up in 1914. In 1916 he was invalided home, and The Farmer’s Bride was one of his first commissions when he started work again.

  ‘James Guthrie …’ the genial printer, painter and designer, who illustrated a most successful edition of Monro’s Trees (1916).

  ‘friends who not long ago …’ CM/HM 12 March 1916. (Buffalo.)

  ‘enough paper for 1000 …’ 1000 is the correct number, although Alida gives 500 in her Memoir.

  ‘the book was dedicated …’ Possibly, however, this dedication was to Lucy Harrison, who died 13 April 1915.

  ‘it is very difficult to get poetry reviewed …’ MS/CM 10 Feb 1916. (Berg.)

  ‘because I am simply not the person …’ CM/HM 29 July 1916. (F. B. Adams C
oll., quoted by Davidow.)

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘The first series of rhyme sheets …’ see Appendix p. 234.

  ‘Pinknose, Harold’s cat …’ Alida’s dog was also shell-shocked in a Zeppelin raid, and when Alida took up professional breeding she chose the kennel-name Firebrave.

  ‘J’ai passé par là …’ CM/Mrs Hill 4 Jan 1917. (Buffalo.)

  ‘an American edition …’ It eventually appeared under the title Saturday Market. This was the 1921 edition of The Farmer’s Bride, which contained eleven additional poems.

  ‘During the past three months …’ HM/Macmillan New York. (BL Add MSS 57755.)

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘Sydney Cockerell …’ later Sir Sydney (1867–1962). For the details of his life I have depended on Cockerell (London 1964), the biography by his literary executor, Wilfrid Blunt.

  ‘a stiff little note …’ CM/SCC 3 July 1918. (Berg.)

  ‘an alteration from Harold Monro …’ At Monro’s suggestion Charlotte changed ‘lush grasses’ in verse 4 of The Changeling to ‘shy grasses’.

  ‘a charming artist, Dorothy Hawksley …’ Dorothy Webster Hawksley (1884–1971) exhibited at the Royal Academy and the St John’s Wood School of Art between 1909 and 1940.

  ‘in Cambridge or any other strange house …’ CM/SCC 1 Sept 1919, printed in Friends of a Lifetime: Letters to Sydney Cockerell, edited by Viola Meynell (London 1940), p. 317.

  ‘Hardy was too old …’ SCC/CM 18 Sept 1918 describes Cockerell’s delicate negotiations for the visit to Max Gate. (Texas.)

  ‘Florence’s sympathetic biographers …’ Robert Gittings and Jo Manton, The Second Mrs Hardy (London 1979).

  ‘a pathetic little creature …’ FH/SCC 6 Dec 1916. Friends of a Lifetime, p. 300.

  ‘decide to plant some herself …’ FH/CM 2 Oct 1921. (Berg.)

  ‘in a state of suppressed rage …’ CM/FH 23 Jan 1921. (Berg.)

  ‘Why so touchy? …’ SCC/CM 2 Feb 1920. (Berg.)

  ‘for the next two years, Mr Cockerell …’ On 5 April 1923 he wrote to her: ‘My dear Charlotte – Yes, of course, if I may be Sydney. I have long since ceased to think of you as Miss Mew.’ (Berg.)

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘a little bronze …’ CM/AM 24 Feb 1924. (Buffalo.)

  ‘the blameless Pepys …’ CM/FH 5 Oct 1921. (Berg.)

  ‘And what of Alida the charming? …’ SCC/CM 8 May 1919. (Berg.)

  ‘He evidently sees you as much painted …’ CM/AM 24 Feb 1921. (Buffalo.)

  ‘one of the few people I have ever known …’ Cockerell, p. 168.

  ‘My own father …’ E. V. Knox (‘Evoe’). His parody of Charlotte Mew appeared in Punch 4 Aug 1921.

  ‘I think her very good …’ V. Woolf/R. C. Trevelyan, 25 Jan 1920. Letters of Virginia Woolf ed. Nigel Nicholson, vol. 2, (London 1976), p. 419.

  The Shade-Catchers (CMCP p. 31). This poem bears out John Freeman’s critical article in The Bookman, June 1929 p. 145–6. ‘She could put a constraint upon her deepest feeling, but none upon her form … the nearer her verse keeps to the normal stanza, the more delicate its movement.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘The Estate, on the contrary …’ The letters between Layton and the Bedford Estate are quoted in Davidow from the F. B. Adams Coll.

  ‘and don’t mean to untie the hens …’ CM/SCC 18 Dec 1921. (Berg.)

  ‘But so long as you can come …’ CM/SCC 9 May 1922. (Berg.)

  ‘The Trees Are Down …’ This poem (CMCP p.48) appeared in The Chapbook for January 1923.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ‘Fin de Fête …’ (CMCP p. 40).

  ‘Sympathy is not …’ CM/SCC 26 April 1923. (Berg.)

  ‘treated very much as if she were a naughty child …’ Memoir p. ix.

  ‘The difficulty in these cases …’ W. B. Yeats/Percy Withers, 7 Jan 1912. Withers Coll., Somerville College, Oxford.

  ‘a sort of suicide …’ CM/SCC 29 July 1923, Friends of a Lifetime.

  ‘De la Mare, as he explained …’ His letter is in The Best of Friends: Further Letters to Sydney Cockerell, ed. Viola Meynell, (London 1956), p. 33.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘the sales of poetry had dropped …’ see Harold Monro: The Publisher Speaks, in The Chapbook March 1923. Sales of Rupert Brooke had gone down by 70%, Walter de la Mare by 20%, only D. H. Lawrence remained steady.

  ‘a photograph of Charlotte Mew with Robert Bridges …’ This is in the F. B. Adams Coll.

  ‘sent her a quotation …’ CM/Ottoline Morrell 8 Sept 1925. (Texas.)

  ‘As to Conrad himself …’ SCC/CM 25 Dec 1923. (Berg.)

  ‘when Alida broadcast Sea Love …’ The programme eventually went out on 24 Aug 1926, and Charlotte received half a guinea.

  ‘she had broken into an old people’s home …’ CM/CADS 28 March 1913. (MW.) The home was called The Hawthornes.

  ‘Dear Charlotte – Do come and stay with us …’ Kate Cockerell/CM 28 May 1924. (Berg.)

  ‘remedies for “nerves” …’ CM/FM 31 Dec 1924. (Berg.)

  ‘On one occasion …’ 17 Oct 1924. ‘I ought to dash in [i.e. into the diary] Mrs Hardy in a nursing home, having had her tumour cut out; with Miss Charlotte Mew.’ The Diaries of Virginia Woolf ed. Anne Oliver Bell, vol. 2, p. 319.

  ‘I think it is a pity …’ FH/CM 2 Oct 1921. Quoted in Davidow.

  ‘in one of his satiric dream poems …’ Dream Exhibition of a Final World in The Earth for Sale (London 1928).

  ‘he “prized” and “hugged” it …’ SCC/CM 12 March 1925. (Berg.)

  ‘It can be felt in a letter …’ CM/Dorothy Hawksley 28 April 1926. Quoted in Davidow.

  ‘painters and photographers …’ Charlotte had refused to be photographed by Hoppé in 1923 because her mother was ill, and because she said she had already been photographed three times that year. (Information from Mrs Marjorie Watts.)

  ‘Polygamy, she had told Charlotte …’ CM/AM 7 March 1921. (Buffalo.)

  ‘In alarm Sydney replied …’ SCC/AM 27 Oct 1926. BL Add MSS 57756.

  ‘The brutal finality …’ CM/SCC 5 Jan 1927. (Berg.)

  ‘She had made a will …’ at 86 Delancey Street on 14 Dec 1922, that is, shortly after Mrs Mew’s fall. It was witnessed by the ever-helpful Professor Browne.

  ‘Aglaë …’ This unfinished short story was first printed from the MS in the Poetry Collection, Lockwood Library, University of Buffalo, in CMCP (p. 307).

  ‘as my sister is dangerously ill …’ CM/Ottoline Morrell 12 June 1927. (Texas.)

  ‘Sydney’s postcard …’ SCC/CM 27 April 1927. (Berg.)

  ‘it was over at midnight on Saturday …’ SCC/CM 27 April 1927. (Berg.)

  ‘but as it hasn’t been answered …’ CM/Ottoline Morrell 4 Aug 1927. (Texas.)

  ‘a little head of a baby in plaster …’ After Charlotte’s death this went to Dorothy Hawksley, who had specially asked Sydney Cockerell if she might have it as a souvenir.

  ‘mais il faut écouter le coeur …’ CM/Kate Cockerell 27 Oct 1927. (Berg.)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ‘Hardy had copied out Fin de Fête …’ according to Alida, on the back of a British Museum Reading Room slip.

  ‘the period of horror …’ It should be said that Harold Monro’s diaries from 1923–6 show that he continued gallantly with his lecturing and reading engagements up and down the country.

  ‘Conrad Aiken, in Ushant …’ Ushant, Aiken’s memoirs of his first visit to England (New York 1952), p. 258–9.

  ‘Her wind-blown grey hair …’ See the entry on Charlotte Mew in S. Kunitz & H. Haycraft: Twentieth Century Authors (New York 1942).

  ‘Edward Herne Kendall …’ He died at 285 Harrow Road, and was registered as ‘formerly an Architect’s assistant.’

  ‘she made her will …’ Charlotte left personal estate valued at £8,608.

  ‘small legacies …’ Edith Oliver, Elsie O’Keefe and Katherine Righton were all mentioned, but not Maggie B
rowne.

  ‘Cast down the seed of weeping …’ Purgatorio xxxi v. 45 ‘pon giù il seme del piangere, ed ascolta.’

  ‘Laundry is the curse of civilization …’ CM/AM 7 March 1921. (Buffalo.)

  ‘I quite understand how it is …’ CM/Evelyn Millard 20 Feb 1928. (Buffalo.)

  ‘Yes, one can bear hard things …’ CM/Kate Cockerell 24 Feb 1928. (Berg.)

  ‘this side of silence …’ On 24 March 1928 Cockerell wrote in his diary: ‘A tragic end to the tragic life of a very rare being. After dinner wrote a little memoir of her for The Times.’ (His tribute was printed in The Times on Thursday, 29 March.) Alida told him that she intended to write something herself, but kept thinking of Charlotte tossing her head at the very idea, and ‘smiling that wicked little smile’. Meanwhile, Alida was distressed by reports of the inquest in the local press, which referred to ‘Charlotte Mew, said to be a writer’ and ‘Charlotte Mew, a writer of verse’. Florence Hardy wrote to Siegfried Sassoon (28 March 1928): ‘To-day I hear that poor, tragic little Charlotte Mew is dead … Had I been in London I would have gone to see her – but I do not expect that would have made any difference. I believe she had several friends looking after her, but this was the only escape from her misery.* She added that Walter de la Mare also wished that he had called on Charlotte. Humbert Wolfe wrote to de la Mare: ‘How I wish I’d taken a little pains to see her.’ (30 April 1929 BL Add MSS 57756).

  The grave of Anne and Charlotte Mew is in Fortune Green Cemetery, London N.W.6, Section M11, No. 28829. In her will Charlotte asked for an almond tree, or some other small tree, to be planted, but, if this was ever done, the tree has not survived. There are some daffodils, however, which flower every spring on the grave, planted by well-wishers.

  * A copy of this letter was kindly sent me by Dr Robert Gittings.