The Milly Jourdain Archive

Monday, February 27, 2012

September Dawn

Milly Jourdain

The blue dark of my windows fades away
And over all a flood of colder light
Is softly spreading,
Till through the mist I see the dull red leaves.

The pure, chill air of dawn blows on my face,
And in the room the sheets grow white again.

A robin's song drops in the quiet air
So sad and fresh and incomplete.

The Sea Fog

Milly Jourdain

The fields below me are sodden and gray and the fog has blurred the line of the hills.

I sit by the hedge and think that every year the darkness will grow closer around me.

The fog has crept up and all is a sea of whiteness;
My face is wet with its gentle touch, and I can only see a few steps in front of me on the road.

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About Milly Jourdain

Milly Jourdain (1872-1926), who wrote under the pseudonym "Joan Arden," was the author of two books: A Childhood, which was a semi-fictional memoir, and Unfulfilment, a collection of poetry published in 1924 by Basil Blackwell. I first came across Milly’s poems as I was reading Hilary Spurling’s 1984 biography of Ivy Compton-Burnett, whose longtime companion, Margaret Jourdain, was Milly’s older sister. In addition to Margaret, an expert on furniture and the decorative arts, there were other fairly well known Jourdains in this large family: Philip, a mathematician and philosopher; Frank, a pioneering ornithologist; and Eleanor, who with a friend wrote a peculiar book in which they claimed to have seen the ghost of Marie Antoinette at Versailles.

Milly was the baby of the family and, like Philip, suffered from a hereditary disease known as Friedrich's ataxia, a rapidly advancing form of multiple sclerosis. Milly lived much of her life in isolation and great pain and died at the age of forty-four.

All biographical information about Milly Jourdain has been gleaned from Hilary Spurling's excellent biography of Ivy Compton-Burnett. As of now, I have been able to find no other source of information. But I am not a professional researcher, merely a regular writer and reader, so more information must certainly exist, somewhere.

A note: Milly Jourdain's poems are now in the public domain and are therefore legal to reprint. My commentary is not. I'm delighted to disseminate Milly's work, but please be kind about acknowledging your source, as I, in turn, have tried my best to do for Hilary Spurling.