Alice Meynell

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47 Palace Court

Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell (/ˈmɛnəl/ MEN-uhl;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> née Thompson; 11 October 1847Template:SfnTemplate:Snd27 November 1922Template:Sfn) was a British writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet. She was considered for the position of Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom twice, first in 1892 on the death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and later in 1913 on the death of Alfred Austin, but was never appointed to the position.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":1">Template:Cite web</ref>

Meynell and her husband, Wilfrid Meynell, were the owners and editors of several Catholic publications and patrons of the poet Francis Thompson.

Early life and family

Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson was born in Barnes, London on 11 October 1847 to Thomas James and Christiana (née Weller) Thompson, a painter and concert pianist.<ref name=":1" /> The family moved around England, Switzerland, and France, but she was brought up mostly in Italy, where a daughter of her father's from his first marriage had settled. Her father was a friend of Charles Dickens,Template:Sfn and Meynell suggests in her memoir that Dickens was also romantically interested in her mother, noting that he had said to Thomas Thompson, "Good God, what a madman I should seem if the incredible feeling I have conceived for that girl could be made plain to anyone!"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

On her father's side, Meynell had Jamaican Creole ancestry and was a third cousin of Elizabeth Barret Browning.<ref name=":2" />

Meynell suffered from ill health during her early life, and in 1868, during a bout of illness, converted to Roman Catholicism. During this time, she reportedly fell in love with the Jesuit Priest, Father Augustus Dignam, who had helped her in her conversion. Dignam is believed to have inspired Meynell's love poems "After Parting" and "Renouncement."<ref name=":1" /> By 1880, her entire family had also converted to Catholicism.<ref name=":3">Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1876, Meynell met newspaper editor and fellow Catholic convert Wilfrid Meynell (1852-1948), who was five years her junior, and they married in 1877.<ref name=":3" /> The couple had eight children: Sebastian, Monica, Everard (1882–1926), Madeleine, Viola, Vivian (who died at three months), Olivia, and Francis. Viola Meynell (1885–1956) became a writer, known mainly for fiction, who later wrote a biography of her mother titled The Life of Alice Meynell (1932).<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Her youngest child Francis Meynell (1891–1975) became a poet and a printer who co-founded The Nonesuch Press.Template:Sfn

Career

Writing and publishing

In 1875, Meynell published Preludes, her first poetry collection, illustrated by her elder sister Lady Elizabeth Butler (1846–1933). The work was warmly praised by John Ruskin, who especially praised the sonnet "Renouncement" for its beauty and delicacy, though although it received little public notice otherwise.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

After their marriage in 1877, Meynell and her husband became a proprietors and editors of various magazines, including The Pen, the Weekly Register, and Merry England, among others. Meynell was highly involved in the editorial work of these publications.Template:Sfn

Meynell also continued to publish her own writing, including literary and art criticism, and wrote regularly for The World, The Spectator, The Magazine of Art, the Scots Observer (which became the National Observer, both edited by W. E. Henley), The Tablet, The Art Journal, the Pall Mall Gazette, and The Saturday Review.Template:Sfn Her poems show her feminist concerns as well as her reactions to the events of World War I.<ref>"Alice Meynell", Poetry Foundation</ref>

Patronage of Francis Thompson

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Meynell by John Singer Sargent, pencil, 1894<ref name="NPG">Template:Cite web</ref>

The poet Francis Thompson, who was homeless and suffering from an opium addiction, sent the couple a manuscript. His poems were first published in the Meynell's paper Merry England, and the couple became supporters of Thompson.<ref name=":4">Template:Cite journal</ref> His 1893 book Poems was published by the Meynells.

Relationships with other writers

Meynell and her husband had a wide social circle that included many notable writers of their time, including Jeannette Augustus Marks, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Frieda and D.H. Lawrence,<ref name=":2" /> Harriet Monroe, and Aubrey de Vere.<ref name=":4" />

Meynell also had a deep friendship with Coventry Patmore, whose poetry she supported,<ref name=":3" /> that lasted several years. In 1893, Coventry gave Meynell the manuscript for The Angel in the House, his best-known work, as a token of their friendship.<ref name=":2" /> Eventually, Patmore became obsessively in love with Meynell, leading her to end their friendship.Template:Sfn She wrote the article on Patmore for the Catholic Encyclopedia.<ref name="ce">Template:Cite bookTemplate:PD-notice</ref>

Artist's model

Meynell was also involved in the world of art. In 1894, she was drawn by John Singer Sargent,<ref name="NPG" /> and in 1897 by William Rothenstein.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She was also photographed by Sherril Schell in approximately 1911-1913,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> by E. O. Hoppé in 1914,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and by Walter Stoneman in approximately 1916.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Sargent requested Meynell to write the introduction for a collection of his works, titled The Works of John S. Sargent, R.A., in 1903.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Critical reception

In March 1923, a few months after Meynell's death, Jeanette Marks published a retrospective of Meynell's works in the North American Review. She criticized Meynell's "religiosity" and "deliberate and labored moral judgments," but praised Meynell's embrace of "the multitude,"<ref name=":5">Template:Cite journal</ref> writing that:

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To Alice Meynell the last curiosity was not of art but of life itself; it is the disparity between destiny and nature; the trivial transmission of a life that is nevertheless great, the vulgar experience of love that is none the less real, the "heroic virtue" of death committed to the keeping of us all; the gravity of mortality greater than that of immortality.{{#if:|

|}}{{#if:Jeannette MarksThe North American Review, Vol. 217, No. 808.The Multitude: An Appreciation of Alice Meynell|

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Also in 1923, Harriet Monroe wrote of Meynell's writing, "There is a crying need for a complete edition of Alice Meynell's verse and prose...Sometimes her quest of an austere beaty is carried too far toward preciosity, but often she attains without effort a severe clarity and precision which the rising generation will do well to study."<ref name=":4" />

Meynell's work has continued to be praised and studied in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with contemporary scholars including Angela Leighton<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and Linda Austin<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> having published articles on Meynell and her work.

Activism

At the end of the 19th century, in conjunction with uprisings against the British (among them the Indians', the Zulus', the Boxer Rebellion, and the Muslim revolt led by Muhammad Ahmed in the Sudan), many European scholars, writers, and artists, began to question Europe's colonial imperialism. This led the Meynells and others in their circle to speak out for the oppressed. Alice Meynell was a vice-president of the Women Writers' Suffrage League, founded by Cicely Hamilton and active 1908–19.<ref>Crawford, Elizabeth (2000). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866–1929. London: Routledge, p. 712. Template:ISBN</ref>

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Meynell, unknown date

Meynell was one of the founders of the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society, which sought by peaceful means to achieve votes for women.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Meynell established and wrote in the first edition of its newspaper The Catholic Suffragist, in 1915, "A Catholic suffragist woman is a graver suffragist on graver grounds and with weightier reasons than any other suffragist in England."<ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref> Reports were shared from eleven branches (including a national congress in Wales and two societies in Scotland) and the editorial said "We dare to say that if the balance of power between men and women had been more equal the world over, we should not still be settling international disputes by swamping a continent in blood and turning Europe into a shambles."<ref name=":0" />

Meynell wrote in The Tablet against Father Henry Day who preached against votes for women risking "bringing a revolution of the first magnitude". Meynell retorted "I say, most gravely, the vaster the magnitude of the revolution, the better." Where Day saw "danger" Meynell saw a "fortress of safety" for Catholic women, and she saw anti-suffrage rhetoric as "insolence".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Death and legacy

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Alice Meynell blue plaque

Meynell was twice considered for the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, on the 1892 death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson and in 1913 to replace Alfred Austin. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, her third cousin,<ref name=":2">Template:Cite journal</ref> was the only other female potential laureate up to that time. Neither of these women were given the recognition of this status<ref name=":1" /> with the first and only female to hold the post, appointed by the monarch, being Carol Ann Duffy in 2009 -19.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

After a series of illnesses, including migraine and depression, Meynell died on 27 November 1922 aged 75. A posthumous collection of her Last Poems was published by Burns and Oates, a year later. Meynell is buried at Kensal Green Catholic Cemetery in London. There is a London County Council commemorative blue plaque on the front wall of the property at 47 Palace Court, Bayswater, London, W2, where she and her husband once lived, whilst the 2023 play Modest covered Alice and her sister Elizabeth's life from 1874 to 1879.

Upon Meynell's death, Jeannette Marks wrote, "Like a child my mind has kept step with hers for many years, and like a child it still runs beside her, looking up, using her living words, following her thought. In the 'running' I have lost account of time; and now, they say, she is dead...Tribulation, Immortality, the Multitude!"<ref name=":5" />

Selected works

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The latter publication is catalogued by one WorldCat library as Prose and Poetry of A. Meynell, 1847–1922 (OCLC 219753450) and by one as Alice Meynell: Prose and Poetry. Centenary Volume (OCLC 57050918), while another reports a 2007 facsimile edition Prose and Poetry, 1847–1922. There may be the title of a 1970 issue as Prose and Poetry, Template:OCLC. Template:Div col end

See also

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References

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Citations:

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