This article written by Jackie Rickenberg was published in the Parish Magazine in April 2021
Following on from the piece last month on children’s author Monica Edwards, there is a very pleasing connection with this month’s subject, Margaret Woods. She was - in her latter years - a long term Thursley resident, and was a renowned author and poet, but in a strange quirk of fate, she lived all her days in Thursley, in Vine Cottage, also the home today, of Monica’s son, Sean. Margaret lived here for twenty-five years, and Vine Cottage was her last home. Her Times obituary called her “one of the most distinguished women writers of her day” and she moved in the most eminent intellectual circles of the Late Victorian epoch. Her presence in the village, would certainly have lent it an air of distinction.
Margaret came from a highly academic family. She was born Margaret Louisa Bradley, although called Daisy by those close to her, and she was the third of seven children of the Reverend George Granville Bradley and his wife Marian. At the time of her birth in 1855, he was a master at Rugby; when she was three, he became Headmaster of Marlborough College; when she was fifteen, Master of University College, Oxford; and when she was twenty-six, Dean of Westminster. One of her two brothers, Arthur G Bradley, wrote numerous works of history and travel, and all four of her sisters published fiction and poetry. A high achieving family, if ever there was one!
After being home educated, Daisy’s early work owed much to her admiration of two family friends, Lord Alfred Tennyson, who could reduce her to tears of emotion whilst reading his works aloud in her presence and Matthew Arnold, who had been a pupil of her father’s at Rugby. In April 1928 she was to record a BBC radio interview entitled “A girl’s memories of Tennyson”. Although best known as a poet, her novels also earned the respect of critics.
Her marriage at age twenty-four to Henry G Woods, Fellow and Bursar of Trinity College, Oxford, was happy and she was devoted to their three sons born in the 1880’s. However, happiness in her family life could not offset Daisy’s dislike of Oxford society, although there were exceptions when the artist William Rothenstein and poet Laurence Binyon became devoted friends. But she denigrated Oxford life on the whole as “that circle of Purgatory”! No surprise then that in the summer of 1897 her husband announced his sudden resignation as President of Trinity College, and he moved eventually on to an appointment in 1904 as Master of the Temple which took them to the imposing Master’s House, built by Wren, just off Fleet St, London. This enabled Daisy to flourish and become a central figure in the literary scene of that time. However, the death of her husband in 1915 ended this productive and gratifying period of her life. In reduced circumstances, due to the financial irresponsibility of a much-indulged son, she stayed with relatives and friends for some years before settling in Thursley.
Vine Cottage, was then owned by Mr Allen from Elstead and let to Mr and Mrs Harbutt, and it was from them that Daisy rented rooms. With her charm and the beauty of her delicate features still apparent, she had no trouble in making friends with her neighbours. She fully participated in village life, attending church, sharing in the work of the Women’s Institute and during the war, helped in the village run canteen. She was well looked after by Mrs Harbutt and Daisy left her an annuity of £26, which must have been well earned, as a grandson was to report that he doubted Daisy could have even boiled an egg! Her strengths lay elsewhere and he remembers her in her seventies flawlessly reciting poetry in the most beautifully resonant voice.
During Daisy’s early days at Vine Cottage, she would walk the three quarters of a mile to catch the bus to Godalming – less if good weather permitted a short cut across the fields – and from there she could take a train to London and sometimes onward to Oxford. This meant she could keep up with her literary connections and maintain lifelong friendships. However, a crippling injury in 1934 greatly curtailed her mobility. After alighting from the bus in Thursley at the Red Lion pub (now Bridle Cottage), she was knocked down by a motorcyclist and suffered a broken leg. This meant she had to forego the London meetings of the Royal Society of Literature, on which she served on the Academic Committee, and many other professional engagements.
As her physical energy waned, and her eyesight began to fail, research became almost impossible and Daisy published no poetry or fiction. Her final essay, on the Oxford of her girlhood, appeared in 1941, and she passed away at the age of ninety in 1945. In the 1930’s whilst living at Vine Cottage, the artist Thomas B Yates RBA lived almost next door in The Lodge. He painted a most beautiful portrait of her (below)and it was accepted for, and hung in, the 1936 exhibition of The Royal Academy of Arts. A fitting testimony of an admirable woman and yet another famous “Thursleyite”. Note the church in the background.
To the Forgotten Dead By Margaret L. Woods To the forgotten dead, Come, let us drink in silence ere we part. To every fervent yet resolvèd heart That brought its tameless passion and its tears, Renunciation and laborious years, To lay the deep foundations of our race, To rear its mighty ramparts overhead And light its pinnacles with golden grace. To the unhonoured dead. To the forgotten dead, Whose dauntless hands were stretched to grasp the rein Of Fate and hurl into the void again Her thunder-hoofèd horses, rushing blind Earthward along the courses of the wind. Among the stars, along the wind in vain Their souls were scattered and their blood was shed, And nothing, nothing of them doth remain. To the thrice-perished dead.