Well, dearest, you must think me quite…
‘Ardenlea’,
Queen’s Drive,
Ilkley,
Yorkshire.
October 9th, 1916
Dearest Lillian,
I am writing this in the library of the railwaymen’s convalescent home on the edge of Ilkley Moor, where ‘Life Passes in A Pleasant Dream’ – that is according to the sign over the door. I am supposed to be making the second of my one-hour daily visits with Jim, but he is asleep, so instead I am sitting by an open window in the library, looking at the autumn display in the gardens, the low sun on the Moor beyond, and writing to you at last. (I should say that I started a letter to you three days ago, on my first arriving here. It was an account of a nightmare and I decided, after a turn in the park, that it was altogether too strange to send.)
The shell smashed Jim’s right femur (that’s a thigh bone to you and me), and when he was brought to Ilkley, it was discovered that the bone had not been set properly by the army doctors, so it was re-set here at the Ilkley hospital by another army doctor, name of Hawks, but I take comfort from the fact that this one is a Colonel. (You can’t get much higher than that, can you?)
Hawks let me know through one of his nurses that the re-setting had gone extremely well (but then he’d hardly say he’d fouled it up, would he?) and that Jim’s leg ought to mend without difficulty. He does seem very quiet, and very pale, and he talks in his sleep. Just now in his room, he was muttering over and again, ‘little and often, little and often’ and ‘fine style, fine style’. I’ve no idea what this means, and fear it may mean nothing at all.
But let me tell you a little about this place.
The house was opened last year by a man with the perfectly ridiculous name of Sir Godfrey Glanville Gordon, General Manager of the North Eastern Railway, which is quite appropriate since he founded the North Eastern Railway