~Believed to be May Kidson with one of her sons~
by Eva Bright
ed by D.P.G. Sheridan
ed by D.P.G. Sheridan
Mrs.
May Kidson (30 September 1858 - 9 August 1942), was born in the Eastern
District of the Island of New Providence, Bahamas. She was known for many years
throughout Australia for her charming verse, died at Cottesloe on August 9, 1942,
at the age of 84 years. She was the widow of C.B. Kidson, Sergeant-at-Arms of
the Legislative Assembly, and a daughter of the late Sir William Doyle (Chief
Justice of Gibraltar).
May Kidson occupied a unique position among
Westaustralian writers, for there was hardly a civic event chronicled for some
years that did not win its meed of poetic tribute from her fluent pen. Although
she has been an invalid for some years, she kept abreast of the times, was
bright and vivavious, and ever ready for a long chat with her friends. Evergreen
to her was the memory of her son, Edric, who was killed in action during the
Great War. She is survived by her son, Noel (late 10th Light Horse).
She wrote verse and song, and her best known war poetry
can be found in her small book of verse, ‘Memory’s Voices’. She had come to
Australia as a small child, growing up in Western Australia. She had two sons,
Noel and Edric, and it is clear that she loved them strongly. Her love and
grief over Edric’s death can be felt in many of her poems, such as ‘Spirit
Children’, ‘When the kit comes home alone’, ‘The Famous Charge of Our 10th
Light Horse at Gallipoli’ (which Noel took part in) and ‘My Hero’. Of course,
there are many others which identify her longing to see Edric again. In one
very short poem, ‘One Hour’, she shows how she will not succumb to grief,
though she has known it, but will instead, remember her son before he went off
to war. The ‘one hour’ she speaks of is metaphoric, in that it refers to any
moment she shared with Edric before he was killed. (The picture at the top of this page may be that one hour with Edric when he was quite young.) It even evokes the religious
symbolism in that Christ had asked His disciples to keep watch for only one hour. The
mother’s watch is much like the disciples’’, because it was a call to duty. For
May Kidson, that duty would linger on until she died in 1942.
One Perfect Hour shall live thro’
wastes of years
Like dew sweet flowers e’en
fresher for the tears –
We cannot stand apart unknown –
un-blest –
When life has found one perfect
Hour the best.
~The Kidson brother, Edirc and Noel~
She dedicated her book of war verse to her son, Platoon-Sergeant
Edric Doyle Kidson, of the 12th Battalion of the 3rd
Brigade, who fell at the head of his men, in a post of danger, leading a
screening party by order of the late Captan Lalor, on the heights at noon,
after the famous landing at dawn on the 25th of April, 1915. Her poetry
is mainly addressed to the women of Australia who have given up sons to the
war; ‘to those wives and mothers whose lot is perhaps the hardest to bear, in
that they are doomed to the torment of inaction, to grit their teeth and sit
and wait in silent endurance, for the sunny-eyed lads, who may never return to
the longing arms of wife, or the mother who bore them’. May Kidson doesn’t
dwell on the horrific realism of war, but rather sounds a message of faith and
comfort for yearning hearts. She bids the bereaved look forward to that
assuaging moment of meeting in the Hereafter, when Time is not and there shall
be no more tears. May is described as the poet with brave brown eyes, whose
fires no tears can quench, looks forward into the world for other mothers to
comfort, and has drawn on those splendid reserves one glimpses under her cheery
exterior, and gone on with her appointed task in this work-a-day world.
While there is not much information about May Kidson
available, there are still some things of interest which help to build her
picture. In the front of her book, ‘Memory’s Voices’, we are given another
interesting glimpse into the world of May Kidson.
A most singular coincidence is attached to the poem, ‘The
Mothers’ Battalion’, by May Kidson. It originally appeared in the Perth ‘Sunday
Times’ on June 30, 1915, subsequently appearing in the ‘Sydney Mail’, and
widely reprinted East. Lance-Corporal Sid Johnstone (son of a late
Surveyor-General in the West), of the gallant 10th Light Horse,
tells this curious tale of coincidence, showing in war days fact may be
stranger than fiction. He and Troop-Sergeant Noel Doyal Kidson (the elder son
of May Kidson), of the same regiment, were wounded and at Malta at the same
time. On returning to the firing line together they occupied, the first day, a
small dug-out, and the Johnstone noticed a familiar scrap of the ‘Sunday Times’,
evidently a bit torn off, floating round and blown into the dug-out by a
high-explosive shell. He picked it up, and saw there a copy of Mrs Kidman’s
verses, ‘The Mothers’ Battalion’, written by the mother of his mate, to whom he
handed it. While Sergeant Kidson was reading his mother’s verses for the first
time, a high-explosive shell went off quite near them. The coincidence is
strange, inasmuch as the Sergeant never received by ordinary channels one copy
of the ‘Sunday Times’ or ‘Sydney Mail’, or other paper containing it that were
posted to him. (Exchange)
Select
bibliography
Memory’s
Voices, 1918
Western
Women, May 1918
Sources:
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