War Poet Jessie Pope by David Beer

By bridge and battery, town and trench,

     They’re fighting with bull-dog pluck;

   Not one, from Tommy to General French,

                        Is down upon his luck.

       There are some who stand and some who fall,

                But how does the chorus go—

                          That echoing chant in the hearts of all?

“Are we down-hearted? NO!”

While reading Jessie Pope’s 1915 War Poems, (published now by Forgotten Books in their Classic Reprint Series) I found myself rather enjoying her work. Visions of a young Maggie Smith singing “I’ll Make a Man of You” in Oh! What a Lovely War came to mind, as did memories of patriotic songs we sang in school many years ago in Devon. Pope’s war poems bring a different attitude toward the war than we’re used to getting from the established war poets. 

It’s not hard to see why her work, consisting of easy rhythm, pleasant rhyme, and pro-war sentiment, was considered simplistic and jingoistic. Also, the fact that Wilfred Owen ironically dedicated early versions of his "Dulce et Decorum Est" to a "Certain Poetess" (meaning Jessie) didn’t help. People assumed that Owen was mocking her simple-minded support for the hideous and brutal war as portrayed in his and other war poets’ work. However, it’s worth remembering that Pope’s poems reflect an attitude in Britain at the start of the war—whereas Owen’s poetry is written as a result of experiencing it.

Born in 1868, she was educated at North London Collegiate School and soon became a regular contributor to Punch, the Daily Mail, and the Daily Express as well as to other high-brow publications—very impressive accomplishments for a woman of her time. Before the war she published humorous light verse and wrote verses for children's books such as The Cat Scouts. She also edited and found a publisher for a novel of social criticism after its author died. 

Jessie Pope

When war broke out, Jessie was ready to take up arms for her country with her light verse just as eagerly as many young men took up rifles. Her two “recruiting poems” are usually all we find of her in an anthology today—if we find anything. These first appeared in the Daily Mail and seem to have established her reputation regardless of what else she wrote. 

“Who’s for the Game?” is typical of her approach, pressuring young men to enlist by piling rhetorical questions on them. Given the context in which it was composed—Britain as it went to war—the sentiment is not, at least to my mind, surprising or overly enthusiastic. Neither Britain nor Pope saw clearly what they were about to get into:

Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played,
The red crashing game of a fight?
Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid?
And who thinks he’d rather sit tight?
Who’ll toe the line for the signal to ‘Go!’?
Who’ll give his country a hand?
Who wants a turn to himself in the show?
And who wants a seat in the stand?
Who knows it won’t be a picnic, not much,
Yet eagerly shoulders a gun?
Who would much rather come back with a crutch
Than lie low and be out of the fun?
Come along, lads— but you’ll come on all right—
For there’s only one course to pursue,
Your country is up to her neck in a fight,
And she’s looking and calling for you.

The other poem, “The Call,” written in 1915, expresses similar sentiments using the same techniques while subconsciously waving a white feather in front of young men who need to be pressurized to join up. The tone again is colloquial with its use of dialect and the repeated word “laddie” to make its message up close and personal. The first of its three stanzas is typical:

Who's for the trench -
Are you, my laddie?
Who'll follow French -
Will you, my laddie?
Who's fretting to begin,
Who's going out to win?
And who wants to save his skin -
Do you, my laddie?

This however isn’t the only war poetry Jessie Pope wrote. Her subjects include pride in Kitchener’s Army, a Cossack charge, Gallipoli, an ANZAC hat, the war budget, German propaganda, and the admirable job women were doing in the workforce. Since she never had any doubt about the outcome of the war, she produced a poem to be sung to the tune of “Marching Through Georgia” as our troops marched into Germany, as she was sure they would. In “To a Taube” she combines a sense of wonder at flying machines (“A dove in flight and shape and hue/The dove of war”) with the horror of aerial bombing. The Taube becomes a bird of prey, and is also

A thirsty hunter out for blood-
Drinking adventure to the dregs-
Where hidden camps the country stud
You drop your eggs,

and the concluding stanza presents us with a far from jingoistic observation:

Thus, man, who reasons and invents,
Has inconsistently designed
The conquest of the elements
To kill his kind.

Jessie Pope could also paint a domestic scene realistically and movingly, a scene played out by countless women in their homes as they sat knitting and thinking of their "boys" at the front. In “Socks” she does this in five short stanzas opening with an image of knitting needles (“shining pins”) and ending each stanza with a refrain consisting of the technical language of knitting:

Shining pins that dart and click 
In the fireside’s sheltered peace 
Check the thoughts that cluster thick - 
20 plain and then decrease. 

He was brave – well, so was I – 
Keen and merry, but his lip 
Quivered when he said good-bye – 
Purl the seam-stitch, purl and slip. 

Never used to living rough, 
Lots of things he’d got to learn; 
Wonder if he’s warm enough – 
Knit 2, catch 2, knit, turn. 

Hark! The paper-boys again! 
Wish that shout could be suppressed; 
Keeps one always on the strain – 
Knit off 9, and slip the rest. 

Wonder if he’s fighting now, 
What he’s done an’ where he’s been; 
He’ll come out on top somehow – 
Slip 1, knit 2, purl 14.

They’re out to show their grit

One more poem will suffice to illustrate the diversity of this poet so often maligned as simplistic and narrowly focused. Those who denigrate her are probably unaware that in her prewar years she was already considered a noted writer of light verse and a successful publisher and journalist. Social historians also see her as a member of a group of significant (but now forgotten) home-front female propagandists such as Mrs Humphry Ward, May Wedderburn Cannan, and Emma Orczy. Some of her work indicates that she was not opposed to the Suffragette movement. Her poem "War Girls," similar in structure to her other poems, expresses sentiment worthy of Sylvia Pankhurst in the way it celebrates how the war has created opportunities not previously open to women:

There’s the girl who clips your ticket for the train,
And the girl who speeds the lift from floor to floor,
There’s the girl who does a milk-round in the rain,
And the girl who calls for orders at your door.
Strong, sensible, and fit,
They’re out to show their grit,
And tackle jobs with energy and knack.
No longer caged and penned up,
They’re going to keep their end up
Till the khaki boys come marching back.

There’s the motor girl who drives a heavy van,
There’s the butcher girl who brings your joint of meat,
There’s the girl who cries ‘All fares, please!’ like a man,
And the girl who whistles taxis up the street.
Beneath each uniform
Beats a heart that’s soft and warm,
Though of canny mother-wit they show no lack;
But a solemn statement this is,
They’ve no time for love and kisses
Till the khaki soldier boys come marching home.

After the war Jessie Pope continued to write poetry and children’s books and even a short novel. In 1926, when she was 61, she married a widower bank manager and moved from London to nearer the east coast of England. She died in Devonshire at age 76 in December 1941, during some of Britain’s darkest hours of the Second World War but fortunately far from the dangers of Germany’s new and more deadly versions of the Taube and its “eggs.”

P.S. You can go to YouTube if you like, search for Jesse Pope, and enjoy several different contemporary readings of her poems.