Mary Gabrielle Collins was born on 31st August 1874 in Penderyn, near Aberdare, Wales, the eldest of eight children born to Henry Ellis, a banker, and his wife, Mary Collins, nee Akerman. Mary had the following siblings: Kate, Gwendoline, Henry, William, John, James and Isabel. The children were educated at home by a governess and the family had a German and a French maid servant.
By 1901, Mary had moved with her mother to London and was living at 67, Wiltshire Road, Brixton. By 1911, she was living in Temple Fortune, Golders Green. She was a writer and journalist and acting editor of a religious publication. Mary became a minister in the the Congregational Church and was based at the North Bow Congregational Church. Mary died in 1945 and was cremated at Golders Green Cemetery, London.
Mary Gabrielle Collins’ WW1 poetry collection was entitled “Branches unto the Sea”. It was published by Erskine Macdonald, London in 1916.
I very rarely comment on the poems featured. I don’t think it is fair unless one is able to discuss the poem with the writer. However, it is interesting that Mary’s most famous poem “Women at Munition Making” is heavily criticised these days but, as I see it, Mary is simply ‘telling it like it is’. The First World War was a terrible shock to the whole world - roles were reversed and every man, woman and child did their bit.
“Women at Munition Making”
Their hands should minister unto the flame of life,
Their fingers guide
The rosy teat, swelling with milk,
To the eager mouth of the suckling babe
Or smooth with tenderness,
Softly and soothingly,
The heated brow of the ailing child.
Or stray among the curls
Of the boy or girl, thrilling to mother love.
But now,
Their hands, their fingers
Are coarsened in munition factories.
Their thoughts, which should fly
Like bees among the sweetest mind flowers
Gaining nourishment for the thoughts to be,
Are bruised against the law,
‘Kill, kill’.
They must take part in defacing and destroying the natural body
Which, certainly during this dispensation
Is the shrine of the spirit.
O God!
Throughout the ages we have seen,
Again and again
Men by Thee created
Cancelling each other.
And we have marvelled at the seeming annihilation
Of Thy work.
But this goes further,
Taints the fountain head,
Mounts like a poison to the Creator’s very heart.
O God!
Must It anew be sacrificed on earth?
Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978)
Find my Past
https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2595876
https://sites.google.com/site/genealogycollins/?pli=1
