OSE WWI Transcriptions from the Archives

We live, then, in a bungalow on a volcano almost on the equator: the bungalow is extremely homey and we rather delight in a Robinson Crusoe manner of living, having set out at only 3 days’ notice with no knowledge of the place (for it took much permission and time to get permission to bring Jess here, since they did not know that I was married), and having no gear for a proper house at all. Our pictures are either photographs or illustrations on magazine covers and some of the so-called furniture is home-made. Please forgive the magazine covers, they are not really so bad. The volcano is very clearly in evidence, in fact there is scarcely anything that is not volcanic on the island; that is to say there is no grass, nor yet a tree, neither herb, nor flower – except in our gardens, watered assiduously with much-used bathwater! Everywhere there is clinker. Great cliffs of it, boulders of it, lumps, nobbles, dust of it; there is in fact nothing but it, and clinker is the most indescribable shapeless, jagged, rent and torn jumble of untidiness that exists – at least I hope so. It looks exactly as if some monumental accident had happened – which without doubt is the case, but what I mean is that it looks like it. There are only two roads, but a number of tracks, without which it is pretty nearly impossible to cross the clinker; no mere walking will do it, it is a matter of desperate climbing. Then there is the Equator I mentioned; a warm place I hear. Now as a matter of fact the climate here is delightful; it is always beautifully sunny and there is always a lovely strong, steady, and not gusty S.E. Trade wind, with the result that we are really quite cool and being isolated from the world there must be only 3 or 4 (million) attenuated microbes on the island. It is a very good place for children anyway. And yet my work is not so dead flat as this suggests; I have had at time quite a number of cases and besides all manner of side issues fall to our department which I should not have got in a ship to the same extent – such as sanitation, ventilation, water supply and consumption, and also veterinary work quite a lot. Still with an eye on the workhouse on our return I am doing some heavy reading on my own account and got out the current medical literature to try to keep abreast of the day, for medical wheels are revolving these days. But it is difficult; I find I forget the A.B.C. of the game because I don’t get practical use for it, and I haven’t time to read everything. I had an idea of reading up for the Fellowship exam, but the general knowledge takes such a lot of keeping up that I think I must let that drop – that is to say I am making no progress whatever with it at present. I did not tell you in the earlier volumes of the letter that I was able to get my B.M. Oxon. before I left England, for which I cannot be too devoutly thankful now; my life would be ruined with that sort of Damocles hanging over me. As it is I am really fearfully happy; my wife and the brat are extremely well and both perfectly charming. The daughter is still, I regret to say, a heathen, for we have no clergy here, but are content – I mean are forced to be content – with a visit from the Bishop of St Helena every 6 months for ten days or so. When he pays us his next visit the child will be baptised and named Christine Joan. At present she goes by Baby Jane Tuppence or in fact ‘Hi! or any loud cry’. A remarkable thing happened a month or two ago: with the words “a gentleman to see you; looks like a parson”, I was hauled off the worst golf-links in the world and returned home to find Reynolds [OSE] major sitting there smoking a pipe. He was travelling to the Transvaal to take on the parish of Roodepoort – his address is The Vicarage – and found it to be convenient to choose a ship that touched here because he saw in some paper that I had got this appointment. Particularly genial I thought it was, and I was very glad indeed to see someone I knew, he was also able to tell me considerable news about O.S.E. I heard from Mr. Gillett [OSE] – C.S.G. I’m allowed to call him now – the other day; he was very interesting but told me little about himself; I gathered that he was working for the National Mission rather hard. My brother Cuthbert [OSE] is still in France, a Sergeant in the Artists Rifles and was home on leave immediately before Christmas after a 2 nd year out there. My brother-in-law Bernard Bailey [OSE] won the Military Cross for very – I’m sorry I remember you told me that yourself! I don’t know any further details that the papers gave. Do you know he has a son?

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