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Tag: Thomas Hardy

Jessie Pope

It is, perhaps, ironic that Jessie Pope should share her date of birth (although not the year) with Wilfred Owen, who vilified her and her type in his poem Dulce et Decorum Est. Her reputation today mainly persists due to Wilfred Owen’s original dedication of that poem to her, and his criticism therein of her type of poet, who glorified war, regardless of the consequences.

Prior to the war, Pope had been a published poet and author and, in common with many others in that profession, turned her hand to writing propaganda poetry. Such verse was widely read at the time, in newspapers and magazines, becoming enormously popular with the general public in the early stages of the conflict. Once the realities of the war began to hit home, however, Pope (unlike many others) ceased writing jingoistic poetry and returned to penning childrens’ stories.

Today, Jessie Pope’s poetry is often studied in schools alongside the work of Wilfred Owen, simply because of that original dedication. She was not a particularly fine poet: indeed her own self-effacing sense of humour left her in no doubt as to her poetic talents. However, she remains one of the most studied female war poets of that generation, thanks almost entirely to Wilfred Owen.

It must be said that when Pope was writing her war poetry, many male war poets were almost as jingoistic and fervent as she was in their messages and content. John McCrae, Rupert Brooke and Julian Grenfell, for example, were among the soldier-poets who wrote of the glories of war during its early stages. It seems, therefore, unfair to criticise Jessie Pope for repeating similar sentiments to these great names: a more justified commentary would be that their poetry is, quite simply better than hers.

Another censure which could be aimed at Pope, as opposed to the soldier-poets of the time, is that she was asking others to fight on her behalf, or as Helen Hamilton put it in The Jingo Woman:

“Can’t you see it isn’t decent,
To flout and goad men into doing,
What is not asked of you.”

However in this aspect, Jessie Pope was not alone. Many non-combatants of both sexes, wrote in the same tone throughout the war, including such literary giants as Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy and Henry Newbolt.

It is really quite unreasonable to judge Pope’s poetry against that of Wilfred Owen: they are poets of different times. Pope wrote no war poetry after 1916; Owen only really began writing in this genre in 1917. Indeed, when we examine how Owen himself was writing at the beginning of the conflict, we discover that in The Ballad of Purchase Money, written in the autumn of 1914, he had written:

“O meet it is and passing sweet
To live in peace with others,
But sweeter still and far more meet
To die in war for brothers.”

Not only does this poem resonate with some of his later Latin tags which he used in Dulce et Decorum Est, it also reflects Owen’s feelings at the time, which would naturally change with his experiences. It must also be said that, in common with some of Pope’s verses, this particular poem simply isn’t very good.

By 1917, Owen was perfectly entitled to feel angry towards those at home who continued to perpetuate “The Old Lie”. However it is just as well that he decided, or was persuaded, to amend and then delete his personal dedication to Jessie Pope, since he would have been criticising her for the content of poems written two years prior to him writing Dulce et Decorum Est and indeed these were views which he can be shown to have shared.

Pope’s poetry is certainly not the greatest of her genre, but she did not claim to be great, or particularly talented. Nonetheless, within the context of that brief period of time at the beginning of the war, her poetry was popular and does provide us with a window into a world which, from a 21st century perspective, seems difficult to understand and appreciate. We should not criticise her for her opinions when they were, quite obviously, shared by many of her contemporaries and we certainly should not judge her just because Wilfred Owen chose to vilify her, despite his own previously held, but all-too-easily forgotten opinions.

Charlotte Mew

Charlotte Mary Mew was born on London on 15th November 1869, the third child of architect Frederick Mew and his wife Anna Maria Marden (née Kendall). Charlotte’s mother firmly believed that she had married beneath her and throughout her marriage, despite having seven children, she did very little around the home. The children, Henry, Frederick, Charlotte, Richard, Caroline (known as Anne), Daniel (known as Christopher) and Freda, were cared for by their nurse, Elizabeth Goodman.

Charlotte’s childhood and young adult years were ones of great tragedy and upheaval. In 1876, Christopher, then only four months old, died from “convulsions” and later the same year, Richard, aged five, succumbed to scarlet fever. Henry, the oldest of the children, was committed to a lunatic asylum in 1888, followed by the youngest child, Freda in 1897.

Throughout these unhappy times, Charlotte was educated at The Gower Street School, which was run by Lucy Harrison and in 1894, published her first story, named Passed in The Yellow Book – An Illustrated Quarterly.

In 1898, Charlotte’s father died from stomach cancer and, having always been an extravagant man, he left no capital to the surviving members of his family. Anne had become an artist, so she turned her hand to restoring paintings and antique furniture, while Charlotte continued to write: her stories and poems being published in various magazines and periodicals.

Charlotte’s oldest brother, Henry, died in the Peckham House Lunatic Asylum in 1901 and, unsurprisingly, this series of unhappy events began to take their toll. Charlotte experienced deep feelings of sorrow, helped only by Anne – always the more optimistic of the two sisters – who was her constant companion. Charlotte occasionally travelled alone, leaving Anne to care for their domineering and demanding mother. In 1902, she went to Paris to visit fellow writer, Ella D’Arcy, with whom Charlotte was in love. Ella, however, did not reciprocate these feelings and Charlotte returned to London disappointed and dejected.

Few of Charlotte and Anne’s 20th century friends knew of their earlier tragedies and by 1909, Charlotte’s work was becoming more well known. She gave poetry readings and was more widely published, gaining critical acclaim for her work. However, in 1913, Charlotte suffered a further personal unhappiness when she met fellow writer May Sinclair. The two became close friends, but when Charlotte made romantic advances, May rejected her and, to make matters worse, it is alleged that May publicly humiliated Charlotte over her actions.

Luckily, many of Charlotte’s true friends ignored the potential scandal and embarrassment caused by this episode and continued to support her work. Harold Monro of the Poetry Bookshop was one such champion and through him, Charlotte was introduced to Sydney Cockrell, Thomas Hardy and Siegfried Sassoon, who often cited Charlotte as his favourite female poet. When Sassoon first met Charlotte in June 1919, he realised that the two sisters had little money and an elderly mother to support, so he offered Charlotte paid work, writing reviews for the Daily Herald, of which he was the Literary Editor.

In December 1922, Charlotte’s mother died, leaving the two sisters, now in their 50s, to themselves. They lived quietly, their financial hardship eased by the award of a Civil List Pension to Charlotte. This award was achieved after Thomas Hardy, John Masefield and Walter de la Mare had lobbied the relevant authorities to recognise the quality of Charlotte’s work.

Finally, in June 1927, there came a tragedy from which Charlotte could not recover: Anne died from cancer. Grief overwhelmed Charlotte: she rarely slept and she became convinced that Anne had been buried alive. Seven difficult months later, she was admitted to a nursing home where it was hoped that her nervous disorder could be treated. On 24th March 1928, Charlotte took her own life by drinking half a bottle of disinfectant. At the inquest into her death, the doctor said that, following Anne’s death, Charlotte had become convinced that she was surrounded by germs and she believed that these had killed her sister.

Described in one obituary as a “poet of rare quality”, Charlotte Mew never really appreciated her talents, having a low opinion of her own abilities. The literary world, however, mourned her loss, hoping that, perhaps in death she had found peace and had escaped from her disillusionment and loneliness.