[Nigel Holt]

The reason I found the Housman 'parody' page was becuase I was looking for Frances Cornford's poems online (to save my typing) She was seemingly very well-thought of and well-known in her time.

Here are a few, but the better ones I've discovered since buying a selection of her poems from Enitharmon are not readily accessible, so I have reproduced them below.

Housman was cutting about her poem 'To a Fat Lady Seen From the Train'




<FONT >O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?</FONT f></pre>

Or this one from the Enitharmon site:


<u>He Says Goodbye in November</u>

You say you know that nature never grieves:
I also see the acquiescent leaves
Fall down and rot
As down the derelict statue runs the rain;
But you believe that spring will come again
And I do not.

<u>The Watch</u>


I wakened on my hot, hard bed;
Upon the pillow lay my head;
Beneath the pillow I could hear
My little watch was ticking clear.
I thought the throbbing of it went
Like my continual discontent;
I thought it said in every tick:
I am so sick, so sick, so sick:
O death, come quick, come quick, come quick,
Come quick, come quick, come quick, come quick...


There are some superb little poems in the collected, which makes clear the darkness that belied the simple exterior of her work - and thus reputation:

<u>Childhood</u>

I used to think that grown-up people chose
To have stiff backs and wrinkles round their nose,
And veins like small fat snakes on either hand,
On purpose to be grand.
Till through the bannisters I watched one day
My great-aunt Etty's friend who was going away,
and how her onyx beads had come unstrung.
I saw her grope to find them as they rolled;
And then I knew that she was helplessly old,
As I was helplessly young.

<u>The Visit</u>

There is a bed-time sadness in this place
That seemed ahead so promising and sweet,
Almost like music calling us from home;

But now the staircase does not need our feet,
The drawer is ignorant of my brush and comb
The mirror quite indifferent to your face.


<u>Parting in Wartime</u>

How long ago Hector took off his plume,
Not wanting that his little son should cry,
Then kissed his sad Andromache goodbye -
And now we three in Euston waiting-room.

<u>Country Idyll</u>



<FONT > Deep in the stable tied with rope,
The cow has neither dignity nor hope.


With ugly, puzzled, hot despair
She needs the calf that is not there,
And mourns and mourns him to unheeding air.


But if the sleeping farmer hears,
He pulls the blanket higher round his ears.</FONT s></pre>

I'm curious to see what others think of Cornford and her work.

Nigel

[hector]

Cornford was unlucky with 'Oh fat white woman'. There's not only Housman's version; if I remember aright Chesterton also wrote a parody and reply.

[Catherine Tufariello]

Thanks for posting these, Nigel. I stumbled on a volume of Cornford's poems last year while browsing in the public library, and like you I think the best of them are very fine. Her apparent simplicity can be devastating. The triolet has made a tempting target for parody, but it's also impossible to forget (it's the startling, risky apostrophe to the "fat white woman" that makes the poem). "Childhood" is also powerful and memorable. I think it's a shame that her reputation has declined so precipitously.

Here is another by her that I like.

IN FRANCE

The poplars in the fields of France
Are golden ladies come to dance;
But yet to see them there is none
But I and the September sun.

The girl who in their shadow sits
Can only see the sock she knits;
Her dog is watching all the day
That not a cow shall go astray.

The leisurely contented cows
Can only see the earth they browse;
Their piebald bodies through the grass
With busy, munching noses pass.

Alone the sun and I behold
Processions crowned with shining gold --
The poplars in the fields of France,
Like glorious ladies come to dance.

[Jerry Wielenga]

I had never heard of her but really like the selection posted here. I'm going to nose around on-line a bit to see what more there is to find. Great, inspiring stuff! Thanks Nigel and others,

- Fugwozzle

[David Anthony]

"To a fat lady" is the best triolet I know.
It has a lovely lilt, and a fine sharp edge; it also takes its chances, of course, and leaves itself open to criticism for assuming too much; but to me it's all the more powerful for that.
I think Housman did his own reputation no good service with that petty parody; and I say that as a great admirer of his.
Regards,
David

[Carl Sundell]

Here is Chesterton's parody of Cornford's poem"

Why do you rush through the fields in trains,
Guessing so much and so much.
Why do you flash through the flowery meads,
Fat-head poet that nobody reads;
And why do you know such a frightful lot
About people in gloves and such?

"The Fat White Woman Speaks" ( (1933)) an answer to Frances Cornford.

[Terese Coe]

Since no one has posted the Housman parody of Cornford's triolet, voila:

O why do you walk through the fields in boots,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody shoots,
Why do you walk through the fields in boots,
When the grass is soft as the breast of coots
And shivering-sweet to the touch?


The Cornford triolet has a mean-spiritedness that puts me off. She sees the woman from a passing train and immediately knows the "fat white woman" is unloved. That's asking too much of my suspension of disbelief.

There's a simple answer to Cornford's question. The poor woman wore gloves to prevent a nettle rash, possibly an allergic rash. (She was no doubt a precursor of Michael Jackson.)

I much prefer Chesterton's parody. The sheer offhandedness of "Fat-head poet that nobody reads" is brilliant when followed by the absurd understated cynicism of his final lines! Chesterton is persuasive (and lovable) though dead, whereas Cornford's triolet is deathly in its failure to persuade or love.

[Jim Hayes]

Cornford's triolet wasn't intended to convey love whatever about persuade(?) As regards the former, it cannot consequently be faulted for any perceived failure in that respect, however it is more successful in the latter in that it does convey a persuasive picture of a indulgent insensitive individual who has insulated herself at least from her immediate surroundings amd most probably intellectually also in Cornford's perception of her.

A parody, however clever it may be, still draws for its inspiration on the creativity of the original. Chesterton's "Fat-head poet that nobody reads" is as cruelly easy as it is inaccurate. Frances Cornford has stood the test of time, and in point of fact was featured by Wiley Clements in one of the later issues of the Susquehanna Quarterly. The onomatapaeia of The Watch is masterful and has rightly earned her a place in all good anthologies.

Housmans's parody is merely an extension of the Cornford conceit



[This message has been edited by Jim Hayes (edited June 13, 2002).]

[Nigel Holt]

Thanks for all your responses.

I'm in the pro-Cornford camp. I think that there is an over-emphasis on this triolet, which is not one of her better poems, I feel.

What she did as a middle-class woman of her time (she was the granddaughter of Darwin, and a descendant of Wordsworth), was just as Housman used a simple idiom to say profound things. I think it was also difficult for Cornford, as she was expected to write as women of her position were at that time - just as Housman could not admit to being gay, I get the impression her family and friends were of the opinion that she should stick to 'trivial matters' rather than take on the metaphysical or political.

Sometimes though, reading her work, I'm reminded of Elaine Showalter's famous quote that 'the personal is the political', and that she is able to use the traditional tropes in her favour, to ultimately subvert them.

I am delighted with her later work especially, and find it not only formally intriguing and a delight to read, but also something that has a lot to say.

Thanks,

Nigel

[hector]

"an indulgent insensitive individual...insulated...from her immediate surroundings": surely that is the observing persona in this poem? After all, she is sitting in a passing railway carriage looking at the woman through a window. As for Cornford, her family were famously radical, so would not have objected to "metaphysical or political" involvements. Housman's adaptation reveals the underlying attitude of the speaker. I would like to think that Cornford herself was ironic about the "speaker" of the poem, but...
I agree that Cornford is a fine poet elsewhere, but (like T.E.Brown with "A garden is a lovesome thing, Got wot") she has been, perhaps unfairly, remembered for this. Perhaps minor poets, Laodicean poets, are more easily remembered for their poetic sins than their virtues.