Marching Men

Literary reputations come and go, rise and fall like food fads and fashion. Marjorie Pickthall – once so highly regarded that she was considered the best Canadian poet of her generation – is now mostly forgotten.

Pickthall was something of a child prodigy. At 15, she sold her short story “Two-Ears” – about an Iroquois boy who wants to prove himself a warrior – to the Toronto Globe for $3. Her poetry and prose were generally well-received and her reputation grew.

For once the reviewers and critics generally were of one opinion that the work was the product of genius undefiled and radiant, dwelling in the realm of pure beauty and singing with perfect naturalness its divine message. 

Anne of Green Gables author L.M. Montgomery’s wrote “….her death was a woeful loss to us….I love and reverence the artistry of her verse….”

Part of her popularity was due to her rejection of modern verse which earned her a conservative following. She was also a safer and more genteel alternative to some of the popular verse of poets like Robert Service.

Born in Victorian England she grew up in conservative Toronto. Her middle class upbringing together with the conventions and expectations of her readers, reviewers and critics seem to have trapped her as a poet. Her development as a distinctive and modern women’s voice was delayed. Her premature death in 1922 at the age of 38 silenced her voice and sealed her reputation.

Her early work was acclaimed by readers, reviewers and critics. Reading it now it seems so dated in its nineteenth century sentiment and religiosity. It certainly didn’t challenge poetic conventions. I haven’t read much of it, but her later work is said to show her struggling with these respectable and patriarchal norms and indicate the emergence of a more distinctive voice. Whatever the facts, it is clear that Pickthall had a gift for verse in the Victorian romantic tradition.

Pickthall’s health was fragile but nonetheless she travelled and worked and wrote prolifically – poetry, prose and essays. She was living in London when the war began. Appalled at the loss of life – and wanting to contribute to the war effort – she trained as an auto mechanic. When she failed to find a position as an ambulance or truck driver, she enrolled in a gardening course and worked as a market gardener. The essay she wrote about that experience “Women on the Land in England”. does not seem to be available anywhere online, which is a pity.

Pickthall was best remembered for her poetry which was often seen as sweet and spiritual – a sentimentalizing that was not borne out by her life or her prose. As always, the truth of her personal and literary story is far more complex.  

Here’s “Marching Men” – one of few poems still found in anthologies. The religiosity may sound alien to a modern ear but by equating the lives of soldiers with Jesus Christ she attempts to give spiritual meaning to the soldiers’ deaths as well as to the pain inflicted by their suffering and sacrifice.