Charlotte Mew: and Her Friends

by Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald’s fascinating portrait of the tragic poet and her life at the heart of the Bloomsbury set.

Thomas Hardy hailed her as ‘far and away the best living woman poet’; the formidable Charlotte Mew (1869–1928) was the writer of some of the best English poems of the twentieth century.

In her private life, to all appearances, Mew was a dutiful daughter living at home with her elderly mother. But this respectable façade hid painful truths – the Mews were penniless, two siblings had been declared insane and Charlotte was secretly lesbian, living a life of self-inflicted frustration. Despite literary success and a passionate, enchanting personality, eventually the conflicts within her drove her to despair, and she killed herself by swallowing household disinfectant.

In this gripping portrait, Penelope Fitzgerald brings all her novelist’s skills into play, giving us touching story, and an entire life’s emotional history.

Genres: Biography, Poetry, Nonfiction, LGBT, History, Biography Memoir, Classics

309 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Penelope Mary Fitzgerald was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. In 2008 The Times listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". The Observer in 2012 placed her final novel, The Blue Flower, among "the ten best historical novels". A.S. Byatt called her, "Jane Austen’s nearest heir for precision and invention."

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
Having read and reviewed Mew’s poetry recently I felt I had to read this biography by Penelope Fitzgerald whilst her poetry was still fresh in my mind. Fitzgerald is a good, if idiosyncratic, biographer and because she wrote this in the early 1980s she was able to speak to a few people who knew Charlotte Mew. She is not as well-known as a poet as she should be but is gradually being read more as a result of works like this and a recent edition of her poems. Thomas Hardy was an admirer and she visited him a number of times towards the end of his life. He felt that she was a poet “who will be read when others are forgotten”. Woolf called her “the greatest living poetess” and Sassoon thought she was the equal of Emily Bronte.
Mew’s life was tragic in many ways, there was a history of mental illness and that was one of the reasons she and her sister Anne decided not to marry. She took her own life a few months after the death of Anne by drinking Lysol (a form of bleach). Mew was almost certainly a lesbian and she fell in love with three women, she was rejected by all three. Her poetry is informed by the fear of mental illness and a sense of rejection and isolation; “the poignancy of thwarted self-fulfilment” as one critic says. Mew’s poetry is deceptively fragile; as Louis Untermeyer puts it, “a cameo cut in steel”.
Mew’s poetry is not traditionally structured and was often a publisher’s nightmare because of the way her poems had to be set. In the original chapbook “The Farmers Bride” was set lengthwise (you had to turn the page sideways to read it). Mew felt it read better that way.
Fitzgerald’s biography is not an academic tone and it has the touch of a novelist; it reads easily and is fairly concise and understated. She is a sympathetic biographer who looks at human frailty with an amused benevolence. The introduction to the book sums up Mew’s legacy;
“To have written, as Charlotte Mew did, a handful of poems of unique beauty and finish represents an inspiring beating of the odds. They ought to entitle her to a small share of enduring renown. The longings in her poems remain passionately undiminished by time, as do her cries for a world more just and forthcoming. And yet sixty years after her death, as her miseries recede into the gentling past, increasingly her poems themselves become the other world, that 'over there' where longings and love together lie beneath a reconciling sun. Bitter loss becomes lovely loss - bitter yearnings, sweet yearnings”.
It is now almost a ninety years since her death and hopefully readers will continue to discover Mew and to read and appreciate her.

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some may dismiss Charlotte Mew as an eccentric minor poet. She was certainly eccentric in appearance. Four-foot-six, a female dandy habitually dressed in a man’s black suit (with Regency cravat) and little black boots, she always carried—for defense and display—a large black umbrella. Her eyebrows appeared raised at all times above her large melancholy eyes, as if she were continually surprised by sadness. She was susceptible to passionate romantic attachments to women, none of whom returned her affections. She ate little, appearing to subsist largely on tea and cigarettes. When asked if she were indeed the poet Charlotte Mew, she would reply “I am afraid that I am.”

Her eccentricity, however, was a mask for sorrow. She was haunted by fears of hereditary madness, continually hampered by genteel poverty, and burdened—along with Anne, her sister and companion—with the care of her narcissistic mother. Charlotte’s poetry, though esteem by the few, was never widely acclaimed, and she left this world—after the death of her mother and sister—melancholy and alone.

But there is more to Charlotte than that. If she be a minor poet, it is only because her oevre is small; a dozen of her pieces are superb, and at least one (“The Farmer’s Bride”) is a masterpiece. She also counted among her friends and advocates more than a few prominent literary personalities of the age: Henry Harland and Ella D’Arcy of The Yellow Book, Harold and Alida Monro of The Poetry Bookshop, novelist and short story author May Sinclair, and Florence Hardy, together with her husband Thomas the great novelist too, who considered her “far and away the best living woman poet.” Biographer Penelope Fitzgerald brings these major figures in Mew’s world to life, as well as making clear her connections with others with whom she crossed paths (Aubrey Beardsley, Frederick Rolfe, Siegfried Sassoon, Lady Ottoline Morell, and Virginia Woolf, to name just a few).

Penelope Fitzgerald is a scrupulously accurate biographer, but—as she is also an accomplished novelist (The Bookshop, Offshore, The Blue Flower), she illuminates Charlotte Mew and Her Friends) with a fiction writer’s eye for detail and a subtly elegant style. Consider this description of Charlotte’s mother, on the occasion of her accepting the proposal of marriage from her architect father’s assistant, Fred Mew:

Anna Maria Marden Kendall may perhaps have been in love with her father’s tall, countrified assistant, or she may have felt that, at twenty-six, she oughtn’t to let this chance slip. What is certain is that she was a tiny, pretty, silly young woman who grew, in time, to be a very silly old one. But she had the great strength of silliness, smallness, and prettyiness in combination, in that it never occurred to her that she would not be protected and looked after, and she always was.

The biography concludes with a well-chosen selection of fifteen of Charlotte Mew’s best poems. They should convince any reader of taste and discernment that she deserves to be better remembered than by the dismissive label “minor poet.”

[M. D. Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charlotte Mew was an English poet born in 1869, died a (gruesome) suicide in 1928. She was a deeply divided (socially, economically and sexually), troubled woman of immense talent, mostly thwarted but not quite genius. Fitzgerald’s handling of the subject is masterful if quirky in the usual Fitgeraldian ways – the somewhat disjointed presentation of facts and events punctuated by observations and summings-up of astonishing penetration and sympathy. I first read this book eight years ago or so and enjoyed it a lot, although I was not that impressed by Mew’s poetry, it reading to me like a kind of quasi-Georgian sort of verse. Now, however, I see that I was wrong – despite an appearance of Georgian creakiness, Mew was a remarkable poet, exploring the desolation that comes with an overall lack of faith better than about anyone I can think of offhand this side of late John Berryman. There is an ample selection of Mew’s poetry at the end of the book. Mew’s life could easily be characterized as sheer tragedy, but Fitzgerald is far to subtle to go for such an easy take.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Penelope Fitzgerald is one of my favourite writers, and I am sadly reaching the end of her oeuvre. However, there are a couple of titles which have proven themselves rare enough that I haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy in the past. Thank goodness that my library’s county store had a copy of the biographical Charlotte Mew and Her Friends!

I have not read a great deal of poet Charlotte Mew’s work – again, it has been rather difficult to find – but I have very much enjoyed what I have been able to find. Virginia Woolf called Mew ‘the greatest living poetess’, and she has been admired by writers as diverse as Thomas Hardy, Ezra Pound, Edith Sitwell, and Siegfried Sassoon.

Mew was born in 1869, and grew up in ‘genteel poverty’ in Bloomsbury, London. Fitzgerald focuses, in the opening chapter, on her father, Fred, who worked as an architect. As a child, Mew is described as ‘the tiny Lotti, curly, brilliant, irresistible and defiant’. Her life was quite difficult, in some respects; two of her siblings, Henry and Freda, were tormented by mental health struggles, and spent much of their lives in institutions.

Carefully selected quotes and stanzas of Mew’s have been placed throughout. Fitzgerald offers measured observations and clear-eyed assertions about particular poems, setting these against events which Mew experienced. She also masterfully uses wider social context to explore Mew’s choices and lifestyle, writing: ‘She never left home for long, never became – for example – a suffragette or even a suffragist, never made any attempt to claim political or sexual freedom or defend herself either against society or her own nature. On the contrary, with fierce self-suppression she inherited the fate of the world’s minorities and suffered as an outsider, an outsider, that is, even to herself.’ Fitzgerald goes on: ‘Though Charlotte never wanted to get rid of her responsibilities, she preferred not to be answerable to anyone. She needed, in fact, not independence but freedom.’

Charlotte Mew and Her Friends is filled with a wealth of such charming details: ‘Certain colours, particularly white and red, always obsessed Charlotte Mew. She was more sensitive to colour than she wanted to be. She “knew how jewels tasted”.’

On reading Charlotte Mew and Her Friends, I am completely certain that Fitzgerald could have turned her hand to any subject and made it incredibly compelling; she handles, marvellously, every character and genre she explored. It perhaps goes without saying for anyone at all familiar with Fitzgerald’s work that her research is thorough, and she weaves everything together so deftly. Fitzgerald was the perfect author to handle this biography, with her clever turns of phrase, and the power of her prose. It feels as though she has such an understanding of her subject throughout.

I read the entirety of this book with such interest. Mew is a fascinating subject for such a character study, struggling with her lesbianism, and turned down twice by women she was infatuated with. Fitzgerald explores these relationships, and others – her tumultuous friendship with author May Sinclair, and gaining an ‘elderly admirer’ from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, for example – with empathy and understanding.

[J.S.A. Lowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love it. I want one. So painful. So good.

[NB that I have no memory of having read this 16 years ago nor do I know what "I want one" means. A Charlotte? A biographer? A copy of the book? In any case no one should ever write biographies but Penelope Fitzgerald from now on I don't make the rules.]

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

fitzgerald’s skill in writing a ‘tragifarce’ goes hand in hand with the beauty and melancholy of charlotte mew’s life. charlotte poses a very compelling and relatable figure, one who i will never forget now thanks to fitzgerald. long live lesbians

[Zen Cho · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is so much my kind of thing I am kind of wishing I hadn't gobbled it up in one weekend, and had instead saved it for my summer holiday next week. Lesbian poet with issues and an invalid ma hangs out with Bloomsbury types and is biographied (there must be a better word than this, but it escapes me ...) by Penelope Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is a little weird on the subj. of Mew's sexuality (do we really say people are or aren't "homoerotic"?) but otherwise a pleasure to read, as always. I even liked Mew's poetry.

[Christina Dongowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without Penelope Fitzgerald I’ve would have probably never known Charlotte Mew. And I’m not the only one. This biography has played an essential role in bringing back Mew and her work into literary memory - it even contains a selection of Mews poetry (which is great, because it’s still not easily available). Fitzgerald seems to be the ideal biographer for a person as reticent & shy as Mew. She gives the reader a vivid sense of the late Victorian atmosphere that formed Mew, without being judgemental or making Mew into a feminist heroine or a passive victim of heteronormative patriarchal society. Fitzgerald proposes some ideas about the psychology behind Mew’s strange & contradictory behaviour, but she never tries to psychoanalyse her. She carefully retraces the boundaries and limits Mew set herself or felt obliged to respect & places her work in this highly personal context. The book does a great job in showing how very different from late 20th century sensibilities that of Mew & even her feminist or Avantgarde friends were, without denouncing or ridiculing them (or us). Fitzgerald’s style is lucid and lively, unencumbered by any literary jargon. Even if you’re not especially interested in Georgian poetry, this book about a woman who saw herself as a sort of natural outsider, is a joy to read.

[Banbury · Rating 2 out of 5]

This biography is well researched. Charlotte Mew was an eccentric woman with a difficult life. However, without denigrating anyone's life story, there is only so much time anyone has to read, and the little details in this life just do not add up to a compelling story. I am not saying Ms. Mew's life was not interesting, but that it does not seem to have been a good frame for biography. It is somewhat interesting to get a glimpse of some of the other British literary figures of the early 20th Century, but the other individuals whose lives are intertwined with Ms. Mew's are not well delineated. Often in this book, even the second, third, or fourth time a name is mentioned, the reader needs to refer back to earlier pages to find out just who the individual is, or just muddle through confounding one character with another. Tellingly, and not in a good way, not knowing with particularity who are the other people in Ms. Mew's life does not seem to matter to the narrative.

[Neeraja Sankaran · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned about both Penelope Fitzgerald (the author) and Charlotte Mew, the subject of this biography, from Susan Hill's book, and my curiosity about both was sufficiently aroused to buy this book. I will admit that the latter drew me more because of the fact of her being part of the Bloomsbury Circle. The book is very well-researched and Mew's life interesting enough its way and liked it, but I didn't find it enough to love it--in fact, had it been within the window of opportunity, I'd have exchanged it for a different book by this author, about whom I remain curious. Having hung out in the area because of the Wellcome Library, I can actually picture the area where Mew lived; the next time I'm able to go there, I'll look for a blue plaque in Gordon Square.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am enthralled by how Penelope Fitzgerald ( a great author of grand novellas ) wrote a biography of a magnificent poet. I have loved Charlotte since picking up her collected works a few years ago in a thrift store. I got wrapped up in her wisdom and her pain. But I never knew the great author Penelope Fitzgerald had written a wonderful account of the young poet growing into the genius she was and about the horrifying torment that comes with such a great mind and the utter angst of society putting a block upon ones own truth. "Penelope Fitzgerald, thank you so much for capturing this poet through and through. Beautiful job."

[Linda Maxie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good, thought-provoking, and well-written book about the early twentieth-century British poet Charlotte Mew. The author, Penelope Fitzgerald, was a renowned British writer of the mid- to late-twentieth century who, as a child, had admired Mew's work.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in poetry and LGBTQIA+ people.

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have found a new love with Mew

[M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read her. You wont regret it.

[Nadi Palshikar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comprehensive biography written by a great novelist

[Nick Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to read about such a tragic figure, but also interesting from an early 20th Century feminist lit perspective, for a start.

[Mills College Library]

Biog M6111f 1988