Frances Cornford

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Frances Cornford should not be confused with her husband Francis Cornford.

Frances Crofts Cornford (nee Darwin; 1886-1960) was an English poet.

She was the daughter of the English botanist Francis Darwin and Ellen Crofts, born into the Darwin — Wedgwood family. She was a grand-daughter of the British naturalist Charles Darwin. Her elder half-brother was the golf writer Bernard Darwin.

Frances Crofts married Francis Cornford; they had 5 children: Christopher, Claire, Helena, Hugh, and the poet John Cornford.

She wrote some great poems like The Guitarist Tunes Up:

With what attentive courtesy he bent
Over his instrument;
Not as a lordly conqueror who could
Command both wire and wood,
But as a man with a loved woman might,
Inquiring with delight
What slight essential things she had to say
Before they started, he and she, to play.

One of Frances Cornford's poems was a favourite of the late Philip Larkin and his lover Maev Brennan. 'All Souls' Night' uses the superstition that a dead lover will appear to a still faithful partner on that November date. Maev, many years after Larkin's death, would re-read the poem on All Souls:

My love came back to me

Under the November tree

Shelterless and dim.

He put his hand upon my shoulder,

He did not think me strange or older,

Nor I him.

Although the myth enhances the poem - it can read as the meeting of older, ex-lovers.