Charlotte Mew, a celebrated poet in her time, is now almost forgotten. Born in 1869 in London, she had strong connections to the Isle of Wight where her father’s family owned a farm. Her father Fred was an Isle of Wight native, the son of Henry Mew who owned the Bugle Inn on Newport High Street (these days occupied by Waterstones). Her childhood visits to the island inspired many of her successful poems, including The Farmer’s Bride written in the local dialect. Despite her popularity, Charlotte struggled with feelings of being an outsider, possibly due to her sexuality. She fell in love with women who rejected her, and her mental health deteriorated over time. In 1928, she died by suicide at the age of 58. Charlotte’s story highlights the struggles faced by a talented writer in a time when acceptance of same-sex relationships and mental health treatment were lacking. It is important to rediscover and honour her work today.

Charlotte Mew was one of the most celebrated poets of her time, with famous fans including Siegfried Sasson and Thomas Hardy – whilst Virginia Woolf described her as “the greatest living poetess”. However, today, this talented, distinctive, and totally individual writer is almost forgotten – and her connections to the Isle of Wight are in need of rediscovery.

Charlotte’s story began at 30 Doughty Street, London, where she was born in 1869, the daughter of Frederick Mew and Anna Maria Marden. Her father Fred was an Isle of Wight native, the son of Henry Mew who owned the Bugle Inn on Newport High Street (these days occupied by Waterstones). His grandfather had been a well-known brewer, whilst his uncle Richard farmed at Newfairlee, a farm set on a gentle slope between Staplers and Fairlee Road, still accessed today by a rustic track called Mews Lane. Fred shipped off to London at the age of fourteen to start training as an architect, soon moving to the firm of H.E. Kendall in 1857. Six years later he had married his boss’s daughter Anna and moved to Doughty Street, where Charlotte would later be born. 

Growing up, Charlotte and her siblings would pack up their things and set off for the Island every May or June, in company with their loyal family servant Elizabeth Goodman. They were met at Newport by relatives from the farm, with a wagon waiting for their luggage and a carriage on standby for the children, soon whisking thema way for a summer at Newfairlee Farm.

Charlotte was “intoxicated by the open air and fields of corn” She travelled all over the Island and learnt the local dialect too. She’d walk along the field-path to the family’s church at Barton and sometimes stayed long enough into the year to see mid-September “Bargain Zadderdays” in Newport – a hiring fair where hundreds of men and women crowded the town in the hope of harvest work.

These visits to the Island during her ‘magical childhood’ were deeply influential for Charlotte in later life and inspired a number of her most successful poem – including The Farmer’s Bride, which she wrote completely in the Isle of Wight dialect. Carisbrooke seems to be the ‘old and very steep’ town with a ‘gabled house facing the castle wall’ in the poem Ken, whilst another Saturday Market with its ‘pitchers and sugar-sticks, ribbons and laces’ seems to be set in the hustle and bustle of Newport on a market day. These poems, though often tragic (dealing with topics including mental illness, unhappy marriages, and abortion), helped Charlotte become one of the most popular writers of her day. However, deep down she was struggling.

She felt an outsider for her whole life, in part, no doubt, due to her sexuality. A number of historians describe her as lesbian, but she could have easily fallen into other parts of the LGBTQ+ spectrum. She chose to cut her hair short, role her own cigarettes, and increasingly wore masculine clothes in later life.  We know she fell in love with two women, both of whom unfortunately rejected her when she expressed her true feelings. Sadly, it is also possible she considered her orientation a symptom of the mental illness which ran in the family  (two of her siblings developed schizophrenia, with sister Freda spending sixty years in an Isle of Wight mental hospital).

Things to a turn for the worse in 1928 when Charlotte descended into deep depressing and was admitted to a Marylebone nursing home where she later died by suicide by drinking disinfectant, aged just 58.  Having been an outsider in her own lifetime, it seems all the more important to give Charlotte the recognition she deserves today. If only she had lived in a time, like now, when same-sex relationships were accepted and mental health treatment more advanced, there’s no telling where her incredible talent could have taken her.