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Delhi                             Jan 13/17

Dear Mother

Very many thanks for your letter last week, date 13 Dec. I have had a certain amount to do here this week- Last Sunday I went out with the Ricketts on a regular trippers’ trip, round some old tombs and forts and things, much the same as the trip we went on in Christmas week. I must say these old places are most awfully interesting even to one so un-archeological as I, but they are so redolent of the past & the magnificence of all these old oriental things, & they are now all ruins & fallen to decay. I must say it makes you think a bit when you look round and see nothing but ruins all round for miles & miles & you wonder if London & all the splendour of Modern Europe will one day be like this. I don’t see why it should’nt. I have no doubt these old Kings of 1300 and thereabouts never imagined for one moment that even in such a short time as 600 years all their palaces and cities would be ruined & deserted, a mere object in life for sightseers.

It’s awful nice meeting old friends like Rickett, & they are most awfully kind to me, & I have been round to several “pot luck” meals with them whenever I get rather bored with the mess, which is pretty often!

I dined out on Saturday with the Reids, some friends who live just down the road also very charming. He is on AHQ Staff & used to live in our mess when we first came down here, as his wife had’nt come down from Simla. Then I have played a certain amount of tennis & on Thursday played with Mrs Bingley & had lunch & tea there. She is awfully nice, and told me to remember her to you, if you should by any chance remember her at the hospital. Barbara Bingley the kid, age 14, is quite a nice kid & very pretty; she is learning to play tennis & Mrs B. thinks it’s awful nice of us to descend to her level, though I don’t think I’m much better myself. Anyhow old Bingley is a general & a coming man so there’s no harm in getting to know them as well as possible –

What about the news from Greece? Are’nt they trying, & I really think it is only sentiment for Greece’s antiquities that prevents us blowing the place out of the water with our fleet which we could no doubt do easily. Germany’s peace efforts don’t yet seem to be quite over, but the allies’ reply was splendidly definite & to the point was’nt it. I really do wonder if Austria is in such a bad way as they make out; I hope so, as if that is the case & she cannot hold out much longer she would let Germany down badly.

There was a concert here last week, in aid of officers’ widows & orphans etc, Lady Lansdowne’s fund I think. It was quite good, and one lady played the violin really beautifully, a thing I have’nt heard done for years. Also there was a girl who danced, amateur of course but really wonderful.

It’s been very warm & muggy these last few days, there is some rain about I think. The Viceroy comes back today, but his entry is private so there are to be no guards of honour etc, thank goodness. I am going out to lunch today with some people called Cruickshank, I knew her very well in Lansdowne as a Miss Ormsby, daughter of the C.O. of the 3^rd Gurkhas; I have’nt seen her since I left Lansdowne in 1914. And tonight I am dining out and going to a dance; not very keen, but I accept these invitations so as to get to know a few people.

I have seen no notice in the papers about the arrival of this week’s mail, but I expect it will be in a day or two now.

I am sorry about Rosamond having pinched her thumb, she seems to have done it pretty badly. I must write to her. Certainly the soldiers seem to appreciate the reading & writing rooms you have given them, & I trust the 20 who turned up on Christmas day were duly grateful. I have’nt tackled the plum pudding yet, but must do so soon; we are just about the right size in the mess for it I fancy.

Yes rather Mr Britling has arrived but I have’nt really had time to read it yet. I’ve got ‘the first of Divisions’ ‘the great push’ (from old Fielding, both) ‘At the War’ by Northcliffe (from the Dudmans) & ‘Mr Britling’ on hand, & I have’nt looked inside one of them for a fortnight!

I do hope Wiggy’s things have been settled amicably by now, it seems strange that it can’t be done somehow & poor Ben must feel it frightfully. I’m much relieved to hear you say she is so much better, & she certainly writes in a cheerier strain herself.

Fancy old Walcott being with Britannia, lucky he got off. Yes of course I remember him awful well. Very many thanks for offering to send me a cardigan but I’m afraid by the time I got it, it would be past cardigan time! But on reading your letter again I see you are sending along one & not waiting to hear from me. Very many thanks, & on second thoughts in these days one might go to a cold climate any day, & in any case it will come in vastly useful in the future.

No news out here: we hear & read strange tales of travelling being difficult at home, but I fancy they are exaggerated as you have not specially referred to it in any of your letters. I suppose the food question is being scientifically organised in order to prevent waste, not so much because there is any lack. Submarines seem very active again, & ships & freightage must be hard to get.

Must have breakfast now, an early bird are’nt I, but my day’s work always begins early.

Lots of love

ever your loving son

Ted

New Delhi – Ancient Ruins:

• https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attractions-g304551-Activities-c47-t2-New_Delhi_National_Capital_Territory_of_Delhi.html

Brigadier-General V.A.Ormsby 

• Page 24 – Wykehamists-who-Died-in-the-War-1914-1918-Volume-I
• http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=134176&p=1292089

The First Seven Divisions: being a detailed account of the fighting from Mons to Ypres by Lord Ernest Hamilton

• https://archive.org/details/firstseven00hamiuoft

The Great Push, an episode of The Great War by Patrick MacGill

• https://archive.org/details/greatpushepisode00macg

At The War by Lord Alfred Northcliffe

• https://archive.org/details/atthewar00nort

H.M.S. MALAYA.
c/o G.P.O.

Jan. 10

My dear Mother-

Very many thanks for your letter. The mails are much better now. I got your letter yesterday – but I did’nt have time to answer it. Having quite a good time here at present, I have been ashore once or twice – & today we were to have played hockey – but the weather is so rotten it’s not worth it.

So Ben has gone to another canteen – funny child – because about 10 days ago she wrote to me about getting her a job with this Pal of mine Nance Swan – Mrs Conway G’s niece – because she knows of several jobs in Town – so I wrote a long letter to Nance explaining everything – and to Ben too – & I heard from Nance yesterday saying she had written to Ben to meet her in Town to-day – Wednesday – & fix things up, so I hope Ben was found by letter at Vickers Canteen! I wired to her, so I am wondering what is happening.

So glad to hear Rosamond’s thumb is so much better. I have been through my ususal cold – felt rotten for 2 or 3 days – but am alright again now. I heard from Dick too – he told me all about Topher.

Well I must end now – with ever so much love to you all-

Your ever loving son

Paul

Paul was in fact enamoured of Nancy Swan and had mentioned her aunt Mrs Conway Gordon a lot in his recent letters.

Nancy’s father was Colonel Charles Arthur Swan C.M.G., M.A., J.P., and her mother was Ethel, only daughter of Colonel F.I. Conway-Gordon. Her brother was brother was Major Charles Francis Trollope Swan MC who was born in 1887 and her sister Marjorie was born in 1886.

Nancy herself was born in 1895, making Nancy 22 in 1917 to Paul’s 28.

Every year I spend Christmas and New Year with my family of 100 years ago, loading letters written by my grandfather and his siblings and tweets about them for the 12 months ahead. It’s a deep dive into their experiences during the Great War.

1916 had been a mixed year for the Berrymans: Ted and Richard were safely in India while Paul spent most of the year playing hockey and performing theatricals with the Fleet in Scotland. But at the end of May he “lost heaps of pals” when he fought in the Battle of Jutland. His letter about the battle led to me standing, a hundred years later, in front of the Navy’s new Aircraft carrier, wearing a high viz jacket while being interviewed by the BBC for their commemorative programme. In Orkney the commemorations focused equally on the parallel experiences of the Orcadian civilians and the British and German Navies. Meeting German sailors on a British Warship in the harbour at Kirkwall was a powerful statement that “that was then and this is now”.

Ivan Bennett (Wiggs)
© IWM (HU 113701)

The slaughter on the Somme puts 2016 into sharp perspective. Ivan Bennett, Benedicta Berryman’s fiancé, was killed there in June. The most meaningful part of working with the letters for me, has been discovering Ivan’s story piece by piece. We knew only two things about him when we started: that the Berrymans didn’t like him and they called him “Wiggs”.  In the last four years we have found out who he was, the tensions and tragedies in his own family and much more about the difficulties he and Benedicta faced when they became engaged. Finally, at the end of the year, I found this portrait photograph of him and I finally feel some closure on this story of star-crossed love.

Topher first went to France at the beginning of the year, and his unit fought on the Somme, but we don’t know if he and they went over the top on that first day. He continued to have a wretched time, outshone by his heroic elder brothers. We will see that Richard asked for Topher to be assigned as his groom early in 1917, which was a comfort for their mother. But our current understanding of dependency and power within a family makes me worry for clumsy, stammering Topher working for clever, impatient Richard.

Ted ended 1915 spending two nights in an open boat, before being rescued after a shipwreck in the Mediterranean. He was sailing to Egypt, and he spent 1916 there and in India where he was bored and frustrated. He was newly engaged, and his 1916 letters show a complex mix of grief, survivors’ guilt and envy because volunteers were getting action and promotions which he (a career soldier) was missing out on in India. One of the more amusing sub-plots concerns his dress sword – necessary for the glittering events surrounding the Viceroy’s residency in Delhi – but still a weapon and impossible to send through the post.

We hear almost nothing from Jim in 1916. He was not a natural soldier and did not adapt well to army life. So much so that Ted and Paul both show some irritation that he still hadn’t left British soil when the war was two and a half years’ old. He married Sheina Hellier in September 1916 though the arrangements for their wedding show Jim’s characteristic vagueness.

The Berrymans’ experiences in 1916 remind us that although the Great War was a global blood-bath, it was also mundane and even dull for many of those involved who were kept on the side-lines. The letters also show us the siblings’ different characters – Richard, charming, impatient, and lacking insight; Jim, unfocused and ill-adapted to army life; Ted, curious, thoughtful, dutiful, fully-engaged with the complexities of the international situation, and frustrated at not being involved; Paul, sporty, making the most of Naval life, but kind and courteous too; Topher, cold and unhappy, outshone by his heroic older brothers; Jane, energetic and social, opening a tobacconist shop in London and a firm favourite with her brothers’ friends. The other girls are harder to know, except for poor, grief-stricken Ben, her unhappy love affair coming to the unhappiest of conclusions.

In 2016 we have been disorientated by change and shocked by the deaths of many of those we admire, and I have often reminded myself that a hundred years ago the world was more frightening and far more deadly. We are blessed that those left us this year had acted in front of cameras and sung into microphones; that they, and we, had schooling and didn’t have to spend our lives digging the fields or sewing shirts; that the men did not drown at 18 in the Flanders mud and the women did not die at 22 of sepsis after child-birth; that none of them died of Spanish ‘Flu or tuberculosis. Whatever battles we have to fight, the world has given us much in the last 100 years.  

1917 will be a busier year for the Berrymans. We will see more romances, there’ll be another shipwreck, Ted will fight in Mesopotamia in places like Basra and Baghdad which are still in the news today, Richard and Topher will endure in the mud of France.

So as we start 2017, I wish all of us the good wishes the Berrymans wished each other 100 years ago.

Family Letters
@FamilyLetters
@BerrymanLetters

Dec 30/16

Dear Mother

Very many thanks for your letter last week, which I got sometime ago, & I’m afraid I’ve been sometime answering. However I hear the mail leaves later this week so I can – officially – catch it by posting tonight, but they seem to be so erratic that it really does’nt matter when one posts letters this end.

I have’nt done much this week. I had a very homely Christmas with a family called France; he used to be our bandmaster, but got a commission when the war began; very nice & Christmassy & I quite enjoyed myself. I have also had Frederic Villiers, the war correspondent, to dinner, since I last wrote; he was giving a war lecture here, & happened to mention the regiment in the course of it, so I thought I would ask him to dinner.

After many adventures, thanks to a hired chauffeur, who deposited us in the hedge amongst other things, we eventually managed to get here, ½ an hour late! However he was fortunately used to these little contretemps, and I think he quite enjoyed his dinner, as we were all in mess kit, and he was in a regular star-turn war correspondent lecturing kit, khaki & a loose cloak & field glasses etc, just like he is in his pictures. It was’nt a bad lecture, but like all war-correspondents he was a bit of a liar, for he described several incidents that I knew from personal experience, & his facts were’nt quite accurate. However, of course that’s part of his business, & he was very interesting to talk to.

The Somme films have been here this week too, & I went to them one night. I think they are rather too good, & recalled horrors that one has so far managed to forget; but otherwise they were splendid. I arranged a special matinée for our men one day & they thoroughly enjoyed it. Last night I dined with Ricketts (you remember him in the Hockey XI at Sandhurst I expect) and went on to a concert given by the Wiltshires next door here, quite a good show. Today the Wilts have had their sports, & I have just come back from them; quite amusing.

Your letter was chiefly about your will; and I quite agree that it is much better to face these things out & discuss them from a family point of view.

First of all let me tell you that I quite agree with the principle you are working on, that the girls should be provided for first, & if investments have fallen in value, I don’t see why the girls should suffer. I think it’s best to tabulate my reasons:-

1. The Boys are all provided for, except perhaps Topher; but the rest have all got jobs etc which at anyrate can keep them going.
2. In educating us boys – thereby enabling us to get a start in life & to fend for ourselves – a great deal of money must have been spent. This initial outlay would correspond to any income the girls will get, on whom so much money has not been spent originally. I think you follow me – provision for the girls is the same as money spent on the boys in fitting them for a career & finding that career for them – e.g. Dick’s medical fees, which must have been considerable, & my R.M.C fees ditto.
3. All girls can’t get married, & one simply must take that into consideration. A spinster with – say – £120 a year can at anyrate live by herself or with another friend and a girl with £120 a year if she gets married at least has some income to help things along.
4. If you provided more for the boys, it would mean less for the girls of course, & that would mean someone would have to give them a home, if they did’nt marry. So – to take an extreme case – if you gave the girls less each, in order to give the boys more, & if none of them married, it would mean that one of us would have to give them a home, & would therefore spend the little extra – so very little – we got, by their having less, in keeping them. So why not let them have it straight away? Don’t think I’m hard or cruel, as I know any of us would be only too delighted to keep any of our priceless sisters, besides it would be our duty, but what I say is, let the girls be provided for first, & then let the boys have anything that’s over, which, after all, is what you suggest yourself.

So if it means selling Holmwood, well I say sell it, because I do think the girls have first claim, for the reasons I have given; the boys are all well started, & it is up to us now to see we make the most of the start we have got. I’m not sure about Topher, he is the only difficulty I can see. I rather think he ought to have some capital reserved for him, so as he can start a show of his own when opportunity offers, even if it means cutting the other 4 boys down. As I say, after all we have all had a good start, & it’s our job now to watch our own interests.

Them’s my sentiments, but my dear mother please don’t think of dying yet! You have lots of years before you I hope and we can ill spare you just now. But if you frame your will on these lines, I at anyrate shall be fearfully satisfied. Must write Ben now. Lots of love & wishes for 1917 – will it see the end I wonder? –

Yr loving son

Ted

Topher was younger than the others and hadn’t established himself in a career at the start of the war but Ted’s letter may reveal a deeper concern. Topher was not as well equiped to deal with the world as his dashing and heroic brothers. His school reports reveal he was always at the bottom of the class, his one surviving letter is simple and almost child-like compared with those of his brothers, and he didn’t get a Comission. He had bad headaches as a child so he may have missed a lot of schooling, he may have had a difficulty such as dyslexia, he may just have not been very bright.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Villiers

Days of Glory; the sketch book of a veteran correspondent at the front (1920)

https://archive.org/details/daysofglorysketc00villrich

28.12.16.

Dear Mother       Many thanks for your letter & that calendar. Such a nice one. I am awaiting the iron jelloids & wool, but I now find you can get the wool here but iron jelloids are not sold in France! You could have said anything you liked about the lace, I’d liked them to have seen it & envied it. Yes they are silver with moonstones those rings, I only said platinum & pearls for a rag.

Think I can borrow Gerrard Thomas’s car when I’m at home. Must have one. I’ll look out for the Gabbs pictures.

Your dining room stunt sounds as if it was most popular. Don’t fag too much about the flag, I don’t see why you should have to pay for it.

I am hoping to see Topher any day.

Best love to all

Yr loving son

Richard.

23^rd

Dear Mother.   Thank you most awfully for that hamper, it arrived yesterday; so exciting opening it and all, but we’ve eaten nearly all already as it’s hard to get things else than bully.

I’ve heard from Topher, I am glad to hear to expect him to come soon & so he won’t have to do that awful transport job again. I’m afraid he’ll find it a great change as there won’t be half so much to do. I dunno’ whether to have him as my servant or not. He’d have to clean my boots & call me in the morning & cook my dinner! of course we could go for rides together & have some fun.

Many thanks also for the Christmas Card. Please thank Dreda for the silk handkerchief & Ruth for her card.

Best love to all

Yr loving son

Richard.