Eileen Hall Explained

Eileen Hall was an American poet. She was a friend of Ford Madox Ford's.^[1] She married Dr Michael Lake^[2] and her first collection - The Fountain and the Bough (1938) - is dedicated to him. After the marriage she was also known as Eileen Lake and Eileen Hall Lake.

Hall was born in Antigua; her father's family was from Oxford and her mother's family was part French and part Irish, the French side having been in the West Indies since the mid seventeenth century.^[3]

Hall travelled to Paris with her friend the painter Janice Biala. Hall's friend Willard Trask invited both women to one of Ford Madox Ford's regular Thursday afternoon salons.^[4] Ford and Biala fell in love, and stayed together until Ford's death in 1939.^[5]

Works

• The Fountain and the Bough, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938.

Notes and References

1. Ford Madox Ford, in a letter dated 10 November 1936 refers to his "friend Mrs Michael Lake"; see http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/ead/htmldocs/RMM04605.html
2. a dedication to Ford Madox Ford's late memoir Return to Yesterday reads '[to] Dr. Michael and Mrs Eileen Hall Lake'.
3. Dust jacket note of The Fountain and the Bough, 1938.
4. Max Saunders, Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life, page 370, and Jason Andrew, 'Ford + Biala: A Fateful Meeting: The Letters of Janice Biala', in P.N.Review 182, Vol. 34 No. 6, July - August 2008, pages 28 - 33.
5. Jason Andrew, P:R.Review 182, page 33.