Geoffrey Watkins Smith - 13th Rifle Brigade, kia 10/7/16

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Another Memorial book that I have been asked to place here.

Privately Published in Oxford 1917 for Private Circulation, number 100 of 125 produced.

Scholar, Tutor & Fellow at New College, Oxford. Lecturer and Demonstrator in the Department of Zoology and Comparitive Anatomy at Oxford.

Geoffrey in the Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association at Plymouth, 1913.

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PREFACE

It fell to my lot to put this book together. Each copy is to be numbered and presented to a near relation or intimate friend and name inscribed. The book therefore is beyond, or I might better say safely within, all criticism, fenced about by a close and affectionate circle, so that readers will only be looking here for what they want to see or love to remember.

My own contribution was begun the day after we heard of Geoffrey's death, two or three months before I took in hand the task of reading and selecting his letters. I am glad that was so. Since reading the letters I found another picture of Geofrey shapes itself: he becomes idealized; I feel as if I never done him justice, and never could do him justice now. But this is fanciful, eternally true no doubt, but meanwhile false. So far as one human being can give a true impression of another, July 16 remains true. It is what it is and nothing more, a sister's words about a brother. 'What you see is somtimes more and sometimes less than what I see and cannot express,' wrote a friend. It is the less that troubles me. To his friend, G.C. Siordet, we all owe a debt of gratitude; he has supplied the last precious details, and has drawn independently his own beautiful portrait. We are also grateful to Professor Bourne and Mr. Percy Matheson for their joint notice in The Times, and especially to the former for permission to print his letter on page 10; and finally to Warden Spooner for his address in New College Chapel, which seemed to us so fitting in its pure simplicity. These various contributions have been arranged according to the order in which they were written.

To any one that knew Geoffrey it is needless to say that where in his own letters portions have been omitted, it is not because there was ever a word written which could have caused pain or offence.

Dorothy V. White.

November 1916.

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Postcript, Feb. 24, 1917.

In accordance with present regulations it was necessary to submit proof sheets of this book to the Censor. I much regret that all the names of places mentioned in the letters from camp in England and from France have been deleted. The names of French towns and billets had of course been supplied by Geoffrey at the time, but I had taken some pains to discover them in preparing the letters for the press. I am also sorry that one or two passages in Mr. Siordet's paper have had to be sacrificed. I have put asterisks at all these excisions.

Mr. Siordet makes no mention of his own part in the attack of July 10. For 'Conspicuous gallantry' he was awarded the Military Cross. 'After his company commander had been killed...... he rallied the company under heavy fire, and consolidated the position gained. When the order to withdraw was given he brought the battalion back to our trenches, remaining on duty until wounded himself.'

Two days ago we heard that he had been killed in action on the Tigris on the 9th of this month. His name now stands with Geoffrey's - and with I wonder how many other friends of Geoffrey's ! - on the Roll of Honour :- 'the noble and great who are gone.'

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Gerald Caldwell Siordet

In September 1914 he received a commission in the 13th Rifle Brigade, and during most of 1916 was in France. In September of that year he won the Military Cross by a piece of remarkably fine work. His battalion was ordered to attack, as he afterwards wrote, "at 20 minutes notice......ten minutes after the attack had been launched, it was countermanded. The reserve never cam up, and I, one other officer, and what remained of the battalion, were left three quarters of a mile in advance, in front of Pozieres."

He rallied the battalion and brought it back to the trenches with great skill and courage, but two of his greatest friends (well known to Oxford), Geoffrey Smith and Foster Cuncliffe, had fallen, and every officer in the attack except himself had been killed or wounded. At the end of the year he was sent to Mesopotamia, attached to the 6th Kings Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, and on February 9, 1917, he fell while leading his company in a successful attack upon a Turkish line near Kut.

He wrote such poems as "To The Dead"

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Obituary Notice in 'The Times' Roll of Honour.

Captain Geoffrey Watkins Smith, Rifle Brigade, who was killed on July 10, was educated at Temple Grove, East Sheen, at Winchester College, of which he was a scholar, and at New College, Oxford, where he as a scholar he took a First Class in the Natural Science Schools, and was subsequently Fellow and Tutor to the time of his death. He was also a Lecturer and Demonstrator in the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at Oxford. He was the youngest son of the well known London magistrate, Mr. Horace Smith, and a brother of the headmaster of Sherbourne School.

Shortly after the outbreak of the war he received a commission in the Rifle Brigade, obtaining his company in July 1915, when the battalion went to the front. He was killed about half past nine on the night of Monday, July 10, by a shell which killed two other company commanders in a German trench, which they had just taken. The Regimental chaplain writes: 'Every single man of the battalion has a good word to say for him, and he was beloved by all,' All the men adored him.

A man of lovable character and charmiong disposition, excelling in active sports, particularly in golf and lawn tennis (he represented Oxford against Cambridge in the latter game), Geoffrey Smith was distinguished by the number, the brilliance, and the originality of his scientific researches.

His death is an irreparable loss not only too the Zoological School at Oxford, but to zoological science in general, for, had he survived, he must have risen to the forefront in the zoological world. Among his most important contributions to science may be mentioned his splendid monograph on the Rhizocephala - the only volume in the famous monographs of the Fauna and Flora of Naples written by an Englishman; his memoir on the Anaspidacea living and fossil; his monographs of the Freshwater Crustacea of Tasmania and the Freshwater Crayfishes of Australia; and, perhaps most original of all, his series of studies on the Experimental Analysis of Sex, published in successive volumes of the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science.

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In these last Geoffrey Smith was following up clues suggested to him by his early researches on the Rhizocephala, and he attacked the problems by methods entirely his own. He had already discovered much that was important and suggestive, but the work he had undertaken was to be that of a lifetime, and was left unfinished when he accepted a commission in November 1914, to be taken up again as soon as he was able to return to his work. Now it seems hardly probable that anyone will be able to carry it on as he would have done. Hard as he worked - and the long list of valuable memoirs produced in the short space of ten years is a testimony to his industry - Captain Smith was by no means a recluse seldom seen outside of his laboratory. As is often the case with genius, his work sat lightly on him. Excelling in eveything he undertook, he endeared himself to all by his modesty, his courtesy, and a certain boyish charm puculiarly his own, whixh was accentuated by his active and youthful appearance. As he was in his daily intercourse with his friends and colleagues, so he was in scientific arguement and controversy. He had an excellent literary style, and, while conceding no points in a dispute, he dealt with his opponents with an almost old-fashioned grace and courtliness rare in Controversial scientific literature.

Besides his contributions to the literature of science, he published in 1900 a slim volume of poems, entitled Village Carols, of great charm and originality.

A colleague writes: "In his own college Geoffrey Smith will be long and deeply mourned; he can never be replaced. A man of rare scientific insight and uncommon literary gifts, he carried his knowledge lightly and had something of the bright and untroubled spirit of an earlier world. In work and play he never wasted time or strength; his mind was always alive and at the centre of the argument; he had a keen eye to see and could tell what he swa, and he had imagination to think out theory. Those among whom he lived, whatever their studies, knew him for a man of genius, who would do great things, and they loved him as one of the best of companions and friends. New College, like other societies, has given of its best; two brilliant colleagues, Cheesman and Heath, were killed last year, and by Geoffrey Smith's death the last and not the least distinguished of a gifted trio of tutors is taken from us.'

Reprinted from The Times, July 24, 1916.

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The Cheesman referred to in the above posting was Lieutenant George Leonard Cheesman, Hampshire Regiment who after getting a First Class in Literae Humaniores, taught at Christ Church for a year and then gained a fellowship at New College.

He won the Arnold Prize in 1911 with an essay on the 'Auxilia of the Roman Army,' which was published. He was a member of the Council of the Society for the promotion of Roman Studies and wrote several articles.

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Letter from Professor Bourne to Newell C. Smith

Saville House, Oxford.

July 26, 1916.

My Dear Nowell,

Thank you so much for your letter. I should have written to you before, but somehow I have not had the heart to write, even to his nearest relatives, about Geoffrey, - I am inconsolable about him. He was himself, unique, outstanding, unlike anybody else, a genius and lovable in the very highest degree. He cannot be replaced here, and it is a wrench to me to go to the laboratories and to think that I shall never see him there again.

I won't even try to express my feelings to you: they are such as if Geoffrey had been my own son, and feeling as I do, you will understand how much I sympathize with you and your father - to whom please communicate my very sincere sympathy.

As for the notice in The Times: it is sadly mauled by the editor, who cut out sentences carefully chosen, and in particular one which, to my mind - and I know that I am right - expressed the whole truth. I wrote that 'to him was given the gift of penetrating the secrets of nature'. As far as his scientific work goes, that sums up the whole matter - he had the divine gift, and what more can one say ? But beyond that gift, how winsome, how lovable, how charming in his modesty and strength of intellect combined !

Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus tam cari capitis ?

I put this quotation at the end of the notice - it is so apt, but the editor cut out that too. It expresses what I and many others here feel. Quis pudor aut modus to our regrets and longing that things might have turned out otherwise ?

I had always hoped that when I retired from the Linacre Chair......as I used to imagine (before the war), I should have the pleasure of seeing him at my place in the country, where I had hoped that he would make long stays, and carry out experiments, and join in the shooting and country sports, as indeed he has already done there, during my father's lifetime. He was as much a pleasure to me when out partridge-shooting, as in any other capacity.

You see what I used to plan...........

Now all those dreams are vanished, and there will be nobody who can replace him in my happy dreamland, which, but for this war, might well have been realized.

Well, good-bye, and my love to you and all who are his kin.

Yours ever,

Gilbert C. Bourne.

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July 16, 1916.

I want to write down one or two of my last recollections of Geoffrey. He was with us some time at the end of March or beginning of April. I know we said he was due home again at the beginning of July. I went with him to Enfield to see his servant's wife. He would not ask her to come to Beckenham: he said she might be busy, not able to leave her work. It seemed to me that he would be putting himself to more trouble than ought be expected, considering how short his holiday was, but the matter hed evidently been thought out and he had made up his mind to go. I afterwards came to the conclusion that he had wanted to see her in her own home.

It was an out-of -the-way sort of journey. We drove in a cab from Enfield station through rather dreary commonplace streets; it was inclined to rain. We talked a great deal. I told him of my new appreciation of Dickens, how much I had enjoyed the poetical beauty, the dream beauty, of the Old Curiosity Shop, and how much I was enjoying the humour of Nicholas Nickleby. He said he thought I had lighted on the two best examples of Dicken's sentiment and humour, smiling to himself as he recalled the queer actor humour - he was not quite sure of his name - father of the Infant Phenomenon. Soon after his return to the front he sent me a copy of Martin Chuzzlewit. We then spoke of Thomas Hardy, also with me a sudden new favourite. The only thing I can clearly remember is his emphatic dislike of Jude the Obscure.

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You might read it after reading all the others, and in the light of the others it might be endured, but if a history of that sort must be told, then let us have it properly drawn up in the form of a medical report; it was not a fit subject for Art - this was impatiently, with gesticulation. I belive that I am right in saying that he thought, as I did, The Trumpet Major the happiest of all novels, but of this I cannot be certain, for he may only have taken into consideration those few I had read. For a long time we could not recall the name of The Reurn of the Native. He spoke of Mary Lamb's Mrs. Leicester's School. My impressionis hat he had just been reading it, though it seems a strange book to carry to war. He had enjoyed it very much; it was nothing very exciting, just the girls at school telling their experiences. I will mention here, though I cannot be sure whether it was on this occasion, that he spoke of the popular song 'Keep the home fires burning'. We were unaminous in our appreciation of it, words and tune, only I took exception to 'Turn the cloud inside out', as an awkward sort of pleasantry in a song the general tone of which was distinctly serious and pathetic; but Geoffrey would not have that: he saw nothing against the line, in fact he rather liked it.

I was with him throughout his interview with Mrs. Robinson. She was not at all what I expected; she was quite a girl, pretty, and clever. I said very little. Geoffrey spoke to her exactly as he would have spoken to a highly-educated, highly-bred lady. This sounds bald and stupid, bit I dot know how else to put it, and it is, after all, only stating a fact which struck me at the time. The reason this was, I suspect, that he had no two ways of speaking or behaving. Social questions did not interest him much; differences between rich and poor would seem a barren subject as compared with differences between one microscopic atom and another, or for that matter between one individual human being and another; his business was the study of life as it is, not the betterment of it, and I well recollect his half-mock, half genuine despair when any of us asked him what practical result - what cure for what ailment for instance - would follow some particular investigation in which he happened to be absorbed.

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I wander from my story, but nevertheless I will pursue my wanderings and then return to our three selves seated in Mrs. Robinson's house.

The betterment of life. If questions of riches and poverty did knock at his brain, neither, should I guess, did the sister questions of virtue and vice. He seemed absolutely healthy and happy by temperament, 'moderate' was what I said to Janet only the night before we heard of his death and we chanced to be talking of him, moderate by natural instinct. He wanted enough of eveything but not too much. He worked hard at science, he read widely, he wrote poetry, he went to the Opera in Munich and Naples, he played golf and tennis and excelled, and cricket and football in earlier days, he was enthusiastic at one period for fencing, he travelled; and yet whole hearted as you would say he was over each one of these interests, you could never say that the others suffered, and amid them all he moved in perfect liberty. Moderate in his ambitions, I think he would never have tried to be anything he could not be or anything he was not justified in being. In sports he was content to be an amateur, and though from time to time playing with professionals and hotly contesting the games, real onslaught in every line of his lithe figure and battle in his eyes, it would appear afterwards as he gradually cooled down that he had no intention of one day aspiring to rank with these opponents, let alone above them, no matter how close upon their heels he seemed to us to be. Even in science - of course his chief concern - I do not think he had consciously set himself to be pre-eminent. He would have liked to be numbered amongst the Fellows of the Royal Society, but he talked also of this ambition moderately, talked a great deal of it one day before the war walking to Hayes Common, but moderately; he took it for granted that there were other men as able as himself in this direction or in that; there was no striving to be the first for first's sake. Ambition, however, in a moderate form there was: he certainly wished to succeed where he was meant to succeed; if it was clear that a prize was within his reach he marked out out that prize for himself. Supposing he failed, could any one have been more moderate in disappointment ?

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Moderate in his needs and desires, neither etravagant nor economical. With a healthy relish of good things there would apparently be no difficulty in knowing when to stop; he would stop easily, naturally, instinctively. It might look axtravagant to order soles for breakfast every morning at Oxford - it had proved ruinous anyway - till it was discovered that he thought soles a staple breakfast dish, what everyone had or ought to have; ham and eggs would suit him quite as well. What fun over that ! And again what fun over our attempt to make out what he did with his income (then perhaps six hundred a year) when with the amiable wish to satisfy us he never got faryher in his reckoning than 'Battels' whioch he computed at £30.

It was this happy enjoyment of things, whether it was skating at Munich or bathing at Naples, or whether it was the absurd narration of absurd events recently happened to him - how he ran short of money at Hobart and gave a reference to his Oxford Banker, which mercifully was not taken up as he subsequently discovered that he had overdrawn his account - or whether it was his delight over 'Business as Usual' at Prince's Restaurant - humming to us under cover of the clatter of dishes 'When we've wound up the watch on the Rhine' - or whether it was Professor Townsend's pianola, revealing the hitherto unrealized beauties of Chopin, or the 'Charlie Charlie' reveille in camp which was making it almost a pleasure to get up in the morning, or whether it was a green liquer (was it green after all ? I forget: it may have been cherry coloured) which Janet and I insisted on his taking in Paris on the last night of our cycling trip on the Loire - happy holidat ! there can never again be just that sort of companion - it was this healthy enjoyment (God be praised !) which made him our most precious guest in family life.

[Clive Harris]

Hi Andy,

I was particularly interested in this post, the 13th Rifle Brigade had a contingent known as the Niblicks Brigade, the brainchild of Albert Tingey as professional Golfer he attempted to form a Golfing Pals unit of professionals & caddies. They numbered almost 60 by December 1914 so formed a Platoon of the 13 Rifle Brigade. Julian & I have a full chapter on the unit in our Sportsman Book "The Greater Game" out later this month.

One of our sources was "The Roll Call of Sport" published by the Field Magazine as a special supplement in July 1919, I have just checked and Geoffrey is ommitted from this though there is a cracking photo of his colleague in the Cambridge Golf Team M Hemnant was also killed with the Rifle Brigade and is today commemorated on the Menin Gate.

Your line A man of lovable character and charmiong disposition, excelling in active sports, particularly in golf and lawn tennis (he represented Oxford against Cambridge in the latter game), Geoffrey Smith was distinguished by the number, the brilliance, and the originality of his scientific researches. presented another golfing link to the battalion so I am thrilled and indebted to you for posting this.

PS I thought of you when on two sisters last August, possibly returning this November so get in touch before then,

yours, aye'

Clive

[marina]

I found Siordet's poem 'To The Dead':

TO THE DEAD

BY GERALD CALDWELL SIORDET

(Killed in action February 9, 1917)

INCE in the days that may not come again

The sun has shone for us on English fields,

Since we have marked the years with thanksgiving,

Nor been ungrateful for the loveliness

Which is our England, then tho' we walk no more

The woods together, lie in the grass no more,

For us the long grass blows, the woods are green,

For us the valleys smile, the streams are bright,

For us the kind sun still is comfortable

And the birds sing; and since your feet and mine

Have trod the lanes together, climbed the hills,

Then in the lanes and on the little hills

Our feet are beautiful for evermore.

And you if I call you, you will come

Most loved, most lovely faces of my friends

Who are so safely housed within my heart,

So parcel of this blessed spirit land

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Marina,

There's a little bit more of Siordet's 'To The Dead'

So parcel of this blessed spirit-land

Which is my own heart's England, so possest

Of all its ways to walk familiarly

And be at home, that I can count on you,

Loving you so, being loved, to wait for me,

So may I turn me in, and by some sweet

Remembered pathway find you once again.

Then we can walk together, I with you,

Or you, or you, along some quiet road,

And talk the foolish old forgiveable talk,

And laugh together: you will turn your head,

Look as you used to look, speak as you spoke,

My friend to me, and I your friend to you.

Only when at last, by some cross-road

Our long shadows, falling on the grass,

Turn us back homeward, and the setting sun

Shines like a golden glory round your head,

There will be something sudden and strange in you.

Then you will lean, and look into my eyes,

and I shall see the bright wound at your side,

and feel the new blood, flowing to my heart,

Your blood, beloved, flowing to my heart,

And I shall hear you speaking in my ear -

O not the old, forgiveable, foolish talk,

But flames, and exultations and desires,

But hopes, and comprehensions, and resolves,

But holy incommunable things,

That like immortal birds sing in my breast,

And springing from a fire of sacrifice

Beat with bright wings about the throne of God.

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Hi Clive,

Long time since Ypres my friend. I have a few memorial books to officers in the 13th RB if you need anything from them.

I would love to see anything that you can share from 'The Roll Call of Sport'.

Thank you for your thoughts whilst on Two Sisters, not happy memories I am afraid. I hope that you said hello to my life long friend, L/Corporal Andy Uren, 45 Marine Commando, as we talked about, who lost his life there and the other marines killed on Two Sisters. I still miss Andy after all this time, we grew up together from infancy and a better friend one could not wish to have.

R.I.P. Andy

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I say 'guest' because after he left Winchester he was never with us for very long. First there was the flight to Munich University, only three or four months I suppose, but it seemed a great space of time to me and a marvellous enterprise; then as many years in Naples; then Tasmania; the terms at Oxford; parts of the Summer Vacations at Devonport, working in the Marine Laboratory; and besides all this at least two winter holidays in Switzerland, a holiday in Ireland, a holiday in France - a life as full and active as that did not leave long spells at home.

Perhaps at one time we thought that he might have considered the movements of the rest of the family more when making his own plans, but were we right ? It was just because he did not consider, did not struggle to arrange beforehand and then to fret to adapt arrangements, did not, in short, strive to live every one else's life as well as his own (distinctly with us a family failing) that when he did arrive he was like the freshest sunniest coolest summer's day. One cannot expect above a fortnight or three wekks of days like that at a stretch. I will say here, however, that of late years we had noticed a change in this respect; the days were just as fresh and sunny, but we were allowed more and more of them. After his settling in Oxford as Fellow and Tutor of his College (we thought he would never settle in but he did, and became true Oxford to the bone, a thing he had protested against in undergraduate and early graduate days), when his sojournings in foreign lands were over, he became more - what am I to call it ? domesticated (we used to say he was in love), more anxious if we were anxious, more careful to answer the only important questions in a letter, more mindful of dates for family gatherings; and yet this increasing thoughtfulness was carried without weariness, the gaiety and zest remained, the little added gravity was charming. 'It is just this year', writes Hermann David, 'since G. came to Marlborough and dined with us. I shall treasure the memory as long as I live. I can see him now - absolutely calm, modest, and prepared - a veritable Sir Galahad.'

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I come to what seemed to me his outstanding virtue, perfect sweetness of temper. I can find no words for it. Each of us brothers and sisters, none bad-tempered, all one may say good-tempered enough, each will step back and thrust him forward. No credit to him, if you like: a gift straight from heaven; an incredibly sweet temper. It used to seem to me (almost envious) that he never had anything to try his temper. He was, so I thought, always successful and fortunate. He could do anything with ease. His looks to begin with, were a passport anywhere. When he came home from Winchester once, a lad of about sixteen (I think it was after measles) and burst into the room where we were seated for lunch - a large party, and I believe I am right in saying that his old private schoolmaster, Mr. Edgar, was there - a murmer of admiration went round the table. I wonder if others noticed it. He was then beautiful; on that day, hot and flushed from travelling, and with the added brilliance of a convalescent, especially beautiful. 'A young Shelley' so Agnes Guest used to say - and writing a tragedy too ! - she was never tired of praising his beauty. Alas ! youth leads to manhood, the bloom is lost. Agnes used to shake her head and tell us it must go: 'they spoil their eyes with reading and their complexions with tobacco smoke;' and I suppose we had gradually to submit to her verdict. But despite all this, and despite the fact that he refused to allow the dentist to fill a too obvious gap (the dentist by the way was allowed to make the tooth as a reward for causing so little pain, but the tooth was put away in a drawer and no amount of chaff could get into its destined portion), despite all this there was still a great charm and distinction in his appearance.

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Two or three years ago he gave a more or less popular lecture at the request of Mr. Maurice Peel to the Men's Society of St. Paul's Church, Beckenham, on his Tasmanian expedition. There were lantern slides. Geoffrey stood on the platform with a long wand, every now and then appearing with the wand across the great sheet to point out some special feature of the scene, some giant forest tree, or thick tangle of undergrowth, himself so lender and elegant. This (to interrupt for a moment) was the sole occasion in which I heard him lecture. It is for his Oxford contemporaries to speak of that side of him. At 'Eights' in 1914 when we, that is to say, my father and mother and I, Mr. and Mrs. Puckle and Dorothy, struggled with him through the crush of an Evening Conversazione given by the Junior Scientific Club, the Puckles overheard 'There's Geoffrey Smith. He'll be a big man here some day'. We had to accept the current opinion; we had not the technical knowledge to form opinions of our own. As to this Beckenham lecture I shall only say that showing no gift of rhetoric, where of course rhetoric would have been quite out of place, he thoughtfully, modestly,, and with occasional lapses of halting and hesitation, also I must admit with occasional hints of fine enthusiasm behind - insight and instinct and power almost unmaneable - talked of his subject. We wished he would also talk of himself, give us some of those stories which have made us, and him too, cry with laughing, bur nobody could 'draw' him that quiet mysterios evening; he seemed provokingly on the brink of a ridiculous reminiscence, but each time it was carefully put aside. At the end of the lecture (and this is why I tell this story) Mr. Peel, in thanking the lecturer, said that he sat there listening to the wonders of these pimaeval forests, and looking at these really beautiful slides, he could not help feeling as if he were being led into some Fairyland, and the lecturer (if he might be allowed to say so) were the Fairy Prince.........at this point a pleased little buzz of amused concurrence; but I wondered if the audience and even Mr. Peel himself could see the smile as clearly as I saw it.

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Prince Fortunatus ! No wonder he was unruffled. No wonder that on the very rare occasions when some petty inconvenience crossed his path he would be slightly petulant with a petulance that was entirlely amiable, petulant not because things are always going wrong, but because they are always going right and you expect them to, and now for some unaccountable reason one of them has gone a little out of its course. No wonder then that a cold in his head was a 'poisonous cold', and yet he suffered pretty frequently from a kind of 'hay-fever' about which nobody could persuade him to distress himself at all. No wonder then, as we are told,, after a long hot march back to billets, when he dropped his only clean vest in the bath, he took to his bed and refused to be comforted except more or less by his dinner.

An incredibly sweet temper. He literally could not understand discontent or gloom or jealousy or moodiness or spite, could not understand them. If he met with them, either he did not recognize them and passed them by unconscious, or else he mistook them for something amusing (which I must say they immediately became), or else he actually as well as metaphorically opened his eyes at them. I remember his amazement over a very spoilt young wife who luched at a table near us at Chenonceaux on that same cycling trip on the Loire. I understood her; I might almost feel with her, might be dimly aware that I had the key to her scowlings and sulkings in my own heart, but Geoffrey simply stared. How awful to live with anyone who looked so horribly discontented ! A man really would be justified in saying that he could not live with such a woman. It was some time before he forgot her. Again Janet and I said to ourselves that he must be in love. In Tours we saw an English book displayed in a bookseller's window entitled Mrs. Geoffrey. We made him cross the street to look at it and spoke of it as an omen.

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There was only one occasion on which I have seen him genuinely puzzled by clouded faces. Why should the clouds be there ? And then, stranger still - and this was beyond belief, he was impatient with the absurdity of it - why should some people take an extraordinary pleasure (apparently !) in rolling up the clouds and foul weather for the benefit of their friends and relatives ? The number of letters men brought to him at the Front from mothers-in-law or sisters-in-law, fathers-in-law or brothers-in-law, step-sons or step-daughters, or next door neighbours, which began 'Dear Tom, hoping this finds you as it leaves me at present and your Annie is carrying on something shocking with Mari's Jack,' and then a fine picture of Annie's indiscretions ! Geoffrey stood by the mantlepiece in the dining room - it is not four months ag - did not stand but writhed and tossed himself about at the inconceivability of it all. Finally he had come to this conclusion: these people ought not to settle near their relations, no, they ought not; go as far away as possible; so he advised them. It was a dreadful conclusion to come to. But then Geoffrey could not see why a happy world should be spoilt.

[marina]

She should have left out the tooth! I can't help laughing at the thought of a tooth in the drawer!

Marina

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Was he beginning to understand these things, to understand that there is such a thing as cross-grainedness and he had always mistaken it for queerness or unlucky rudeness ? Was he beginning to understand that there is such a thing as unstraightforwardness too, and they both are apt to go hand in hand ? Wretched, inconvenient, unsunny discovery ! In the train that very day he inveighed against a piece of 'queerness' he had met with and told me how at last he had broken out in indignation. It was such a longish story, and even now he did not quite grasp it and made an allowance here and another allowance there. He had so little taste for wrath. The fact on this occasion his indignation had apparently cleared the air was no point in its favour. He disliked the whole thing; to be in the right or be in the wrong, it was equally disagreeable. One could hardly call him merciful or peaceable, one could hardly label him with virtues at all, for everything was effortless; the result, however, was mercy and peace, and very beautiful, not to say pleasant for the rest of us other people.. Still, I like to remember him in the train, too, on the District Railway, 'generating heat', after the fashion of 'scientific gentry', as he somewhere admits, a living, moving, arguing human being, 'with all the appropriate gestures'.

All these men who have voluntarily thrown up their work, their ambitions, dislocated their life's plans, left precious things unfinished or about to be begun, risked everything that they might stand or fall with their fellows, we reckon as heroes; and our security, the security of our children, the pleasure of holidays in years to come, long walks over the country and sunsets by the sea (nephews and nieces, all of us, let us REMEMBER !), mountaineering or sketching or boating, whatever it is, Christmas gatherings, every kind of fun and laughter, we owe it to these, who stopped their fun that we might continue ours. (1)

(1) When I was writing these words I had also in mind (and why not say so ?) Frank Street, the news of whose death reached us about this time. The glory of one does not take from another, but rather do all shine the brighter. He gave up his House at Uppingham on the outbreak of war, and, aged 44, enlisted in the Public Schools Battalion. He took his commission in the Spring of 1915, transferred to the Royal Fusiliers in June 1916, and was killed in action before Ovillers on July 7. 'He died at the head of his men', wrote his Captain, 'going as hard and as straight as in the days when I can remember he played for the Varsity and for the Corinthians.

[stiletto_33853]

Geoffrey then is our hero in this family. We can always call him that. What other name shall we give him when we have honoured that name enough ? I, for one, shall not call him a saint, for if I do I spoil my own picture of him as I knew and loved and looked up to him. He may be what God calls a saint, and he may be what some other of us human beings would call a saint; but my idea of a saint is something far less constituted: he must have sorrow somewhere in his life, a character with faults and besetting sins, difficulties to overcome, pain to endure, darkness to contend with, a self to subdue. Rather I prefer the name given to him by Mr. de Zulueta, who writes now that he can 'hardly think of Geoffrey without tears', the name bestowed, so I understand, after heart-searchings and brain-wrestlings on the one side a mixture of sweet-natured impatience and sympathetic puzzledom on the other - 'Happy Barbarian'. Yes, if all men and women were created on that pattern, how good - too good - life would be, a sort of pleasure trip. Perhaps this strain, joyous, primaeval, runs through the world, a thread of gold, to show us that the world was once seen very good and that some day it shall be seen like that again; so that we may say of Geoffrey, as Cousin Charlie Boden tells us he daily of his own hero Hugh (1) 'I thank God upon every remberance of you.' It is unfair to take for granted that he had no trials, troubles, disppointments or weariness worth talking about ?

(1) Hugh Charles Wollaston Boden, Captain, Sherwood Foresters. Killed in action at Voormezeele, Flanders, on October 11, 1915, aged 19. The following are the lines which his brother officers put on his grave:-

Though but a boy in years he paid man's price

And gladly gave his all in sacrifice.

He rests, assured the cause for which he bled

Will find true hearts to follow where he led.

[liverpool annie]

You didn't tell me you'd started a new one Andy .... thank you !

What a luxury to sit and read after the dishes are done !!

The thought strikes me as I read these books .. what a culture shock for these young men it must have been ... to be pampered and loved since childhood ... then all of a sudden they are thrown in at the deep end ! with all manner of men and boys .... really made men out of them didn't it ??

Sorry I interrupted !

Annie