I borrowed a wonderful book from my friends Clive and Sue Nunn over the weekend.
Called ; The Week-End Book and published in 1928 it is a
compendium of poems, prose, recipes,games and even first-aid.
A typical Commomplace Book in fact, and, as Clive pointed out, a natural
ancestor of the blog.

There is a whole section of protest poems under the title of “Poems of Hate” which is illustrated by this picture.

After a search I found the poem it referred to;

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?

I must say I thought it was a little unfair, so I started
to look up the author Frances Cornford in the internet.

I was rather pleased to find that I wasn’t alone.

None other than G K Chesterton also thought that the
Fat Lady got a raw deal and he refuted it thus:

Why do you rush through the fields in trains,
Guessing so much and so much.
Why do you flash through the flowery meads,
Fat-head poet that nobody reads;
And why do you know such a frightful lot
About people in gloves and such? —

Chesterton, ‘The Fat White Woman Speaks’
(c. 1933); an answer to Frances Cornford.