"My good lady, go home and sit still"

Mary HJ Henderson, 1917

In spring of 1918, Mary H.J.  Henderson published a small collection of poetry, In War and Peace, Songs of a Scotswoman. A London Times review noted that the author possessed "an accomplished gift of expression," and the forward to the book was written by John Oxenham, one of the most popular contemporary poets of the war. Oxenham provided a brief context for the poems, explaining that the author, Mary Henderson, “has had experiences beyond most, even for one living in these chaotic times.”* 

Henderson’s experiences were truly extraordinary, for she assisted Dr. Elsie Inglis in founding the Scottish Women’s Hospitals of the First World War, serving in hospitals in Russia and Rumania. Oxenham relates that at one point Henderson was nearly captured as a prisoner of war,  and he describes the dangers she encountered in her war-time service, as well as her dedication: 

In Russia she saw more than enough of the revolution—saw the victims being buried in scarlet coffins—and met the glorious Women’s Battalion of Death. Those quiet fearless eyes of hers have seen many grim sights—have looked Death in the face, and have not shrunk before the horrors of modern warfare. And yet, withal, she is a very woman, large-hearted, deep and high thoughted, sweet-voiced, full of tenderness for all humanity. Very restful too; yet full of Scottish grit and grip a great organiser, and one who sees things through. A dominant feature of her character is her strong civic conscience. She is a devoted upholder of Woman’s Suffrage, has a passion for Race-Welfare, and the care of the child is her speciality.... All her life her very best has been freely given for others. She is selfless to an extraordinary degree…. Her poetry is the joyous expression of her real self—the spontaneous outgiving of a soul that loves to sing, and instinct with higher things. She sings because she must.** 

Henderson’s poem “The Young Serbian” was anthologized in Catherine Reilly’s Scars upon My Heart (titled “An Incident”), and many of Henderson’s works describe the suffering of those in her care (such as “Rumania” and “A Russian Soldier”). But the first three poems in her collection are written for the women who gave so much, for those whose “path of duty still leads to the grave.”***  

Scottish Women's Hospital Royaumont staff

Henderson writes of the women setting out for overseas medical service who “laughed above the lurking submarine, / Clothing Death’s terrors in a happy sheen / Of debonair lightheartedness.” She dedicates her poem “Like That” to “The Rank and File of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals,” as she honors the women who guided stretcher-bearers “over shell-marked ground,” 

Elsie Inglis by Lady Francis Balflour
Creative Commons Wellcome Collection

Dauntless, clear-eyed, strong-handed, even when
        The bullets flung the dust up from the road
        By which you bore your anguished, helpless load.****

But the poem that most captures my imagination is that written in memory of Elsie Maude Inglis, the Scottish surgeon and suffragette, who upon volunteering to organize war hospitals and donate her services as a physician was told by the British War Office, “my good lady, go home and sit still.”†



In Memoriam
Elsie Maude Inglis

Scotland has gathered you, dear daughter, to her breast;
Beneath the shadow of the Castle Rock you passed to rest.
Yet we who followed in that long, long line
Of those who came to honour at the shrine
Of one who held her life a little thing,
Loving her country and her country’s king,
Her country’s honour, and her country’s name,
Loving its glory, bitter for what shame
Might blur the brightness of Great Britain’s fame—
We know you are not dead.

The hands, indeed,
So quick to minister where there was need,
The hands we loved, may not touch ours again,
May not alleviate our mortal pain;
They lie quiescent in the hands of God.
Yet we who followed when your footsteps trod
Beyond our Island shores, who knew your quick
Instinctive action for the helpless sick,
Your clear-voiced answer when there came the call
For succor from a nation like to fall,
Who saw that undulled radiance in your eyes
Given to those with whom “The Vision” lies—
We know that in that Flag-protected cask
Lies but the weariness of her whose Task,
Grown greater than her tired mortal frame,
Bears her beyond to greater strength and fame.
            —Mary H. J. Henderson

Born in India in 1864, Inglis and her family returned to Scotland when she was fourteen. She trained as a physician and surgeon in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and in 1904 she established a hospital staffed entirely by women that provided maternity care for the poor in Edinburgh. 

Elsie and some of her sisters by Ethel Moir
Creative Commons

Although she turned fifty just days after Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, Inglis was determined to assist in providing medical care for wounded and refugees and was instrumental in founding the Scottish Women’s Hospitals (SWH). The Scottish Red Cross denied Inglis’s request for funds, explaining that given their partnership with the British War Office, they were unable to support “a hospital staffed by women.”†† 

However, despite repeated obstacles, Inglis and the Scottish Women’s Hospital raised funds sufficient to send fourteen hospital teams to Belgium, France, Serbia, and Russia. Inglis spent much of her overseas service in Serbia, guiding her medical teams through typhus epidemics and desperately overcrowded conditions (at one point, seven physicians were treating 11,000 wounded). Inglis and her staff repatriated the wounded, gave aid to refugees, and even survived capture by enemy troops. There are numerous memorials to her still in Serbia, where she is perhaps better known than in Great Britain. 

Dr. Elsie Maude Inglis died on Nov. 26, 1917, a day after her return to Britain due to failing health exacerbated by the grueling conditions she endured in her unfailing dedication to others. Henderson's 1918 volume of poetry was published "In aid of the Dr. Elsie Inglis Memorial Fund." The story of these women and others like them is integral to the full history of the First World War and deserves a wider audience. 
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*John Oxenham, forward to In War and Peace: Songs of a Scotswoman, by Mary H.J. Henderson, Erskine Macdonald, 1918, pp. 5–6.
**Oxenham, In War and Peace, pp. 6–7.
***Mary H.J. Henderson, “A Grave in France,” In War and Peace: Songs of a Scotswoman, Erskine Macdonald, 1918, p. 11.
****Henderson, “Like That,” p. 12.
† Steven Brocklehurst, “The female war medic who refused to ‘go home and sit still,’” BBC Scotland News, 26 Nov. 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-42096350.
†† Margot Lawrence, A Shadow of Swords: A Biography of Elsie Inglis, Michael Joseph, 1971, p. 99.