Frances Cornford (30 March 1886 – 19 August 1960) an English poet, was a member of the famous Darwin-Wedgewood family. She was born in Cambridge, the only child of botanist Sir Francis Darwin and his second wife, Ellen Wordsworth Crofts. Frances Darwin was a granddaughter of the British naturalist Charles Darwin. She spent her formative years in Cambridge where she was educated privately, almost exclusively at her home, and grew up among a wide social network of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Her mother died when she was seventeen; she and her father moved for a short time to London, but soon returned to Cambridge where Frances spent most of the rest of her life. As her father had a similar Christian name – Francis – she came to be called “FCD”, the C referring to Crofts, her mother’s maiden name. After her marriage, in 1909, to the classicist and fellow poet Francis Cornford, a fellow of Trinity College and afterwards Laurence professor of ancient philosophy at Cambridge, she became known as “FCC”. They had five children together – two girls and three boys.
She was twenty-eight when World War 1 broke out in August of 1914. She was a friend of the English poet Rupert Brooke and, when he went to war in 1914, they continued to correspond. A letter written to her from the Front reads: I have to report that your sleeping-bag was heavily shelled & demolished by fire in Antwerp last week. Awfly sorry. We all pay our little bit, these days. After his death from blood-poisoning in 1915 she wrote the brief elegy included below. Another interesting poem, Féri Bekassy was written when she received news of the death of her friend Ferenc Békássy, a Hungarian scholar and poet who had entered Cambridge in 1911, and later left England and his Cambridge friends to join the Austro-Hungarian army. He was killed in action four days after arriving at the Eastern Front on June 22, 1915.
Frances Darwin started writing poetry at sixteen. Her first collection, The Holtbury Idyll appeared in 1908 and included a short piece about the sight of a fat woman walking in a field, viewed from a train. The poem, To A Fat Lady Seen from the Train, (see below) became her most anthologized and most controversial poem. A second collection Poems was published in 1910. One of her early books was a ‘morality’ play, Death and the Princess (1912). Further poetry collections included Spring Morning (1915), Autumn Midnight (1923), and Different Days (1928). Mountains and Molehills (1935) was illustrated with woodcuts by her cousin, the artist Gwen Raverat. In 1944 she collaborated with Esther Polianowsky Salaman to translate Poems from the Russian. Travelling Home (1948), was to be her last original collection. In 1954 her Collected Poems was the official choice of the Poetry Book Society. By that stage her reputation had grown sufficiently for her to be seen as a distinguished minor poet of the Georgian period. In 1959 she was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry in recognition of her life’s work. On a Calm Shore, with prints by her son Christopher, was published in 1960 and was Frances Cornford’s last book of poetry. She wrote the preface shortly before her death, but did not live to see its release.
Frances Cornford died of heart failure at her home, 10 Millington Road, Cambridge, on 19 August 1960. She was 74 years old. She was predeceased by her son, John Cornford (1915–1936), a poet and Communist who was killed in the Spanish Civil War. She was also predeceased by her husband, Francis, who was cremated at Cambridge Crematorium on 6 January 1943. She was buried in the Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge, formerly known as the burial ground for the parish of St Giles and St Peter’s. This is where many of the academics and non-conformists of Cambridge ended up during the 19th and 20th centuries. Her father, Sir Francis Darwin, shares the grave. (Her mother Ellen Wordsworth Darwin, née Crofts, is buried in St. Andrews Church’s churchyard in Girton, Cambridgeshire.) The gravestone (see right) was designed by the famous English sculptor and stone-mason, Eric Gill. This memorial was designed and made after the death of Francis Darwin. The inscription for Frances Cornford was added after Gill’s death.
TO A FAT LADY SEEN FROM THE TRAIN
Frances Cornford’s To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train was published in 1908 in her first collection, The Holtbury Idyll. Here is the short text:
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?
As Frank Hudson explains: no one considers Cornford an Imagist, and this poem was written and published before other pioneering Imagist train poems like Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” or Sandburg’s “Limited.” But in its straightforward immediate language, specific color imagery, compression, and avoidance of sentimental emotional language, it follows the intent of those later free-verse Imagist poems. As well as being her most-popular and most anthologized poem, it is also her most controversial suffering accusations of cruelty and insensitivity, what might be called “fat-shaming” today. It has also been called offensive and moralising.
Frank Hudson also explains the controversy: This short poem in the tricky triolet form is as catchy as a nursery rhyme and is fairly well known in Cornford’s native Great Britain. Besides that earworm quality, the poem is weird in its shocking and concise frankness of observation, even more so when one considers it was published in 1910, pre-Prufrock and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. It seems to have raised a little ruckus in its time too, as A. E. Housman and G. K. Chesterton both wrote parodies of it.
This is the Housman parody entitled O Why Do You Walk:
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?
Commenting on this parody Terese Coe writes: 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.)
Chesterton, who was famously fat, seemed upset by the line O fat white woman whom nobody loves and entitled his response The Fat Lady Answers, sometimes entitled The Fat White Woman Speaks:-
Why do you rush through the field 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 as such?
And how the devil can you be so sure?
Guessing so much and so much.
How do you know but what someone who loves
Always to see me in nice white gloves
At the end of the field you are rushing by,
Is waiting for his Old Dutch?
My own view is that the satire and the parody is weakened by the second stanza which I see as redundant.
Interestingly, the first lines of this poem were spoken by a character in Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel Murder is Easy which, in time, led to a recipe for a White Lady or Dame Blanche (which is a Belgian ice cream sundae) based on the poem and on the novel, by the food writer Taryn Nicole.
THE POETRY OF FRANCES CORNFORD
Ragwort, the title of the first poem below and the illustration on this site, is a common wildflower abundant in waste land, road sides and farming land. It is, with its yellow flowers and long stems, like “emperors who stand in state”. However, it is often unwanted by landowners because of its toxic effect for cattle and horses, and because it is often considered a weed. Consequently it can be considered an apt metaphor for the poetry of Frances Cornford. For some her poetry exemplifies the best tendencies of the Georgian poets; for others, it exemplifies the worse.
That contradiction continues to manifest itself in responses to her poetry. Catherine Tufariello likes In France, whereas someone on Twitter (X) has called stanza two the worst stanza ever written. She certainly has her supporters. Here is the note on her from the 1950 edition of Louis Untermeyer’s anthology Modern British Poetry: Her first volume, Poems (1910), though unaffected, showed little trace of individuality. With Spring Morning (1915) a much more distinct personality expressed itself. Hers is a firmly realized, clean-edged verse, with a clarity of utterance which is also found in the more suggestive Autumn Midnight (1923). Her later verse in Different Days (1928) is no less spontaneous than the simple “A Wasted Day,” the acute and onomatopoetic “The Watch,” and the delightfully mocking triolet “To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train.” It is, however, more measured; gravity has been added without the loss of charm. Whether grave or mocking Mrs. Cornford’s tone maintains a quiet distinction. In the introduction to Cornford’s Selected Poems, Jane Dowson is aware of the contradictions. She notes that readers may miss the depths of Cornford’s poetry as they take the simplicity at face value and miss the undertow, for nearly all of Cornford’s work is infused with a sense of the impermanence of all human relationships.
My own view is that she is at her best in her shorter poems. One of these brief poems, All Souls’ Night, was a favourite of the late Philip Larkin and his intimate friend, Maeve Brennan. This poem suggests that a dead lover will appear to a still-faithful partner on that November date. Maeve, many years after Larkin’s death, would re-read the poem annually on that night. It was also recited at her funeral. The poem, On Rupert Brooke, has a brilliant concluding line. Another poem, He Says Goodbye in November, masterfully balances short and long lines.
Although limited by the constraints of her time and of her social network, Frances Cornford managed to write many poems that deserve a wider audience. I hope you enjoy this brief selection.
Brief Poems by Frances Cornford
The Ragwort
The thistles on the sandy flats
Are courtiers with crimson hats ;
The ragworts, growing up so straight,
Are emperors who stand in state,
And march about, so proud and bold,
In crowns of fairy-story gold.
***
On Rupert Brooke
A young Apollo, golden-haired,
Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,
Magnificently unprepared
For the long littleness of life.
***
Parting in Wartime
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.
***
A Recollection
My father’s friend came once to tea.
He laughed and talked. He spoke to me.
But in another week they said
That friendly pink-faced man was dead.
‘ How sad . .’ they said, ‘the best of men . .’
So I said too, ‘How sad ‘; but then
Deep in my heart I thought with pride,
‘I know a person who has died.’
***
Dawn
So begins the day,
Solid, chill, and gray,
But my heart will wake
Happy for your sake;
No more tossed and wild,
Singing like a child,
Quiet as a flower
In this first gray hour.
So my heart will wake
Happy, for your sake.
***
After the Examination
When someone’s happy in a house there shows
A chink of honey-coloured light beneath the bedroom door,
Where once a thunder-purple gloom oozed out across the floor;
And even the stairs smell like an early rose.
***
The Visit
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.
***
The New-Born Baby’s Song
When I was twenty inches long,
I could not hear the thrush’s song;
The radiance of the morning skies
Was most displeasing to my eyes.
For loving looks, caressing words,
I cared no more than sun or birds;
But I could bite my mother’s breast,
And that made up for all the rest.
All Souls’ Night
My love came back to me
Under the November tree
Shelterless and dim.
He put his hand upon my shoulder,
He did not think me strange or older,
Nor I him.
***
He Says Goodbye in November
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.
***
November Landscape
The lawns, the light, the shrouded trees are grey,
The lake in trance repeats the moveless day;
Yet, like a royal ghostly barge, moves on
In proud insulted thought, a single swan.
***
Late Home
The winds are out in the abysm of night;
The blown trees stoop.
But man invented fire and candle-light,
And man invented soup.
(Illustration to Late Home by Christopher Cornford,
son of Frances Cornford.)
***
On a Young Face at the Opera
Soon they must fade those cheek-bones petal-rounded
And that unwritten forehead, hyacinth-hair surrounded,
Soon says rage ruthless ever-ticking year,
And soon the silver music of Der Rosenkavelier.
LINKS
Poems
The complete text of Collected Poems
The complete text of Spring Morning
17 poems on the Textopian site
15 poems on the Poem Hunter site
12 poems on the All Poetry site
10 poems on the Poetry Nook site
3 poems on the My Poetic Side site
Frank Hudson on To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train
Biography
The University of Cambridge biography
The Wikipedia page on Frances Cornford
Brief Poems 
