She was a poet, essayist, co-editor of literary magazines, mother of eight, worked to clean up slums and prevent cruelty to animals, and helped found the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society.
Her mother and father were friends of Charles Dickens and were well educated themselves. Her father insisted that she and her sister Elizabeth have a classical education and they were home-schooled. As a teen she began writing poetry, inspired by the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti. She converted to Catholicism in 1868 and her writing took on more religious overtones. She then met Wilfrid Meynell, a publisher and editor and also a Catholic convert, in 1876 and they married the next year. Together they published several journals, including Merry England. The poet Francis Thompson (The Hound of Heaven) sent the Meynells a manuscript of his poetry and they published him in the magazine.
Her poetry was well-received but Meynell always thought her early work immature and preferred her later work in her essays. Although she suffered from ill health most of her life, she did go on a lecture tour for several months to the United States in 1901 and took part in marches for women’s suffrage.
The first World War took its toll on the Meynells, losing a son-in-law at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Quite frail towards the end of her life, she died in 1922. Her final volume of poetry Last Poems was published the year after her death.
Summer in England, 1914
On London fell a clearer light;
Caressing pencils of the sun
Defined the distances, the white
Houses transfigured one by one,
The 'long, unlovely street' impearled.
O what a sky has walked the world!
Most happy year! And out of town
The hay was prosperous, and the wheat;
The silken harvest climbed the down:
Moon after moon was heavenly-sweet,
Stroking the bread within the sheaves,
Looking 'twixt apples and their leaves.
And while this rose made round her cup,
The armies died convulsed. And when
This chaste young silver sun went up
Softly, a thousand shattered men,
One wet corruption, heaped the plain,
After a league-long throb of pain.
Flower following tender flower; and birds,
And berries; and benignant skies
Made thrive the serried flocks and herds. —
Yonder are men shot through the eyes.
Love, hide thy face
From man's unpardonable race.
Who said 'No man hath greater love than this,
To die to serve his friend'?
So these have loved us all unto the end.
Chide thou no more, O thou unsacrificed!
The soldier dying dies upon a kiss,
The very kiss of Christ.
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