Word: thompsons
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...London winter of 1887, a grubby manuscript fell into the mailbox of the monthly Merry England. Editor Wilfrid Meynell promptly pigeonholed it and did not look at it for six months. By then the author, a certain Francis Joseph Thompson, had disappeared. Letters addressed to him went unanswered. At last Meynell resorted to the oldest author-tracing trick of the trade: he printed one of the submitted poems, The Passion of Mary, and found his poet...
...began an editor-writer relationship which lasted until Poet Thompson's death almost 20 years later. It is the theme of this double memoir by Meynell's daughter Viola, who draws two clear, contrasting portraits of two utterly different characters. Based largely on her father's private papers, her book provides not only a sheaf of new Thompson letters but also evidence that without steady, warmhearted Editor Meynell, Thompson, the poet, might never have existed...
...Wreck of 29. Francis Thompson was the son of a North-country doctor who did his best to give his boy a good start. But his son was one of those people who are too timid to say yes or no in any decision, who allow others to decide for them -and then surreptitiously slide out from under the decision. Dr. Thompson believed that his son was a happy medical student-until he found that Student Thompson never went near the lecture halls if he could help it. Not until a few years later did father Thompson discover that...
Meantime, Francis Thompson made his home in the streets of London. He picked up an odd penny here & there by holding horses and unloading baggage from cabs. When Editor Meynell found him, he was a wreck of 29, his health half ruined by exposure and laudanum. Thompson, like Meynell, was a Roman Catholic, and it was to a Sussex priory that Meynell first sent him, hoping at least to save his life...
Meynell got more than he bargained for. Tormented by the struggle to break the opium habit, Thompson distracted himself by writing poems, essays and book reviews. He soon became well enough to return to London, where, in 1893, Meynell arranged publication of his first volume, Poems. But those who imagined that he would now become a reformed "success" were sadly mistaken. Thompson went on writing to the day of his death-and spent most of the proceeds on laudanum...