Female Poets of The First World War: Leonora Speyer, Lady Speyer (1872

Tuesday, 25 October 2022

Leonora Speyer, Lady Speyer (1872 – 1956) - American poet and violinist

Leonora Stosch

Born in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., on 7th November 1872, Leonora was the daughter of Count Ferdinand von Stosch of Mantze in Silesia, who fought for the Union during the Civil War, and his wife, Julia, nee Schayer, who was a writer from New England. Leonora learnt to play the violin as a little girl. She then studied music in Brussels, Paris, and Leipzig and went on to play the violin professionally.

Leonora's first husband was Louis Meredith Howland, who she married in 1894, but they divorced in Paris. In 1902, Leonora married London banker Edgar Speyer (later Sir Edgar), in St. George’s Hanover Square, London. The couple lived in Cavendish Square W, St Marylebone, London until 1915. Leonora had four daughters: Enid Howland with her first husband and Pamela, Leonora, and Vivien Claire Speyer with Sir Edgar.

Sir Edgar's family were of German origin and, following anti-German attacks on him during the First World War, the couple moved to the United States of America and lived in New York, where Leonora began writing poetry. She won the 1927 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection of poetry entitled “Fiddler's Farewell”.

Here is one of Leonora's poems:

“April on the Battlefields”

April now walks the fields again,

Trailing her tearful leaves

And holding all her frightened buds against her heart:

Wrapt in her clouds and mists,

She walks,

Groping her way among the graves of men.

The green of earth is differently green,

A dreadful knowledge trembles in the grass,

And little wide-eyed flowers die too soon:

There is a stillness here —

After a terror of all raving sounds —

And birds sit close for comfort upon the boughs

Of broken trees.

April, thou grief!

What of thy sun and glad, high wind,

Thy valiant hills and woods and eager brooks,

Thy thousand-petalled hopes?

The sky forbids thee sorrow, April!

And yet —

I see thee walking listlessly

Across those scars that once were joyous sod,

Those graves,

Those stepping-stones from life to life.

Death is an interruption between two heart-beats,

That I know —

Yet know not how I know —

But April mourns,

Trailing her tender green,

The passion of her green,

Across the passion of those fearful fields.

Yes, all the fields!

No barrier here,

No challenge in the night,

No stranger-land;

She passes with her perfect countersign,

Her green;

She wanders in her mournful garden,

Dropping her buds like tears,

Spreading her lovely grief upon the graves of man.

From “The Second Book of Modern Verse: A Selection from the work of contemporaneous American poets”. Edited by Jessie B. Rittenhous,Editor of “The Little Book of Modern Verse”, 1919.