Saturday 7 October 2017

Edward Verrall Lucas - E.V. Lucas - (1968 - 1938) - British

Edward Verrall Lucas, a Quaker poet, writer, journalist and publisher, was born in Eltham, Kent in 1868.  He was the second of four sons and three daughters born to Alfred Lucas and his wife Jane, nee Drewett.

Edward was educated at The Friends’ School in Saffron Walden. After leaving school Edward worked in a bookshop in Brighton before becoming a journalist for a Brighton newspaper.  He then went to London to work on an evening paper. 

In 1897, Edward married Florence Elizabeth Griffin, whose father was American, and the couple had a daughter, Audrey.

In 1904, Edward began working for “Punch” magazine and became assistant editor.  He worked there for 34 years and in 1924 he also became Chairman of the publishers Methuen.

Edward became a close friend of J.M. Barrie and joined Barrie’s recreational cricket team.  Barrie’s cricket team played their final match on 28th July 1913 against E.V. Lucas’s XI at Downe House School, which was at that time housed in Kent in a property that had belonged to Charles Darwin. E.V.’s daughter Audrey Lucas, was a pupil at Downe House School at that time.

During the First World War, E.V. Lucas worked as a Secretary for the British Red Cross in Italy.  His WW1 poetry collections were:  “The Debt” (Methuen, 1914; “Guillaumism: two aspects (Clement Shorter, 1914); “Swollen-headed William: painful stories and funny pictures after the German” (Methuen, 1914); and his poems were published in four WW1 poetry anthologies.

Edward and his wife Elizabeth set up and ran a home for French children orphaned by the war with financial aid from J.M. Barrie in a chateau in France. "Bettancourt" was on the River Marne and in the war zone and was a refuge for children orphaned or displaced by the War.  Their daughter Audrey, who was also a poet, helped out during the school holidays.

https://femalewarpoets.blogspot.com/2013/10/todays-ww1-female-poet-audrey-lucas.html

Soon after the end of the war Edward and Elizabeth separated and Edward died in a nursing home in Marylebone, London at the age of seventy.



This is my favourite poem by E.V. Lucas - I read it when I was in primary school, where we were encouraged to read poems and to have a go at writing poems ourselves.

"The Windmill"

If you should bid me make a choice
'Twixt wind- and water-mill,
In spite of all the mill-pond's charms
I'd take those gleaming, sweeping arms
High on a windy hill.

The miller stands before his door
And whistles for a breeze;
And, when it comes, his sails go round
With such a mighty rushing sound
You think of heavy seas.

And if the wind declines to blow
The miller takes a nap
(Although he'd better spend an hour
In brushing at the dust and flour
That line his coat and cap).

Now, if a water-mill were his,
Such rest he'd never know,
For round and round his crashing wheel,
His dashing, splashing, plashing wheel,
Unceasingly would go.

So, if you'd bid me take a choice
'Twixt wind- and water-mill,
In spite of all a mill-pond's charms,
I'd take those gleaming, sweeping arms
High on a windy hill.

Sources:
Catherin W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War:  A Bibliography“, (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978), p. 204.
Audrey Lucas “E.V. Lucas A Portrait”
Find my Past: Register of British Red Cross WW1 Overseas Volunteers
https://search.findmypast.co.uk/record?id=gbm%2fredcro%2f5647
and
https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=E.%20V.%20Lucas
Photograph of E.V. Lucas in 1895.