familyletters.co.uk

20.12.16.

Dear Mother     Many thanks for your letter & that pack of cards. Most useful as the ones I had off last year’s Xmas tree are very dirty. I want Lesley & Roberts to have the leather buttons, never mind about the tabs.

So glad the keys arrived at last. I managed to wake them up at Marseilles. I suppose Eric Robyns has got a Military X by now. Fancy having 20 soldiers to tea, what a business. Get the photographs in the camera developed for me. Do you want any more money?

The new Government seem to be going to do things alright.

Best love to all

Yr loving son

Richard.

Captain Eric George Hugh Robyns

Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regt) (no MC)

Dec 16/16

Dear Mother

No mail in yet, & it won’t be in till 3 or 4 days yet I hear, which will make us a whole fortnight without one. We have been very strenuous these last 4 days. We had 4 days bivouacing & battle fighting, all day & all night. A whole brigade of 4 regiments is out in training about 4 miles from here & we had to take out 500 men to do enemy to them, so you can imagine we had lots to do. However it was a very pleasant outing, but as I say very strenuous. Our first two camps were in a ripping place, by the banks of a canal, just where it leaves the Juna river, & the canal man has built a bungalow there and has made the place awfully pretty and homelike. I took some photographs there which I hope to send along next week. I enclose some herewith, not very good but I think the films were duds.

Life is still very ordinary here, & next week a great many people are off on Xmas leave. I can’t get away as the C.O. is going, & I have to stay behind; but I don’t mind very much. I am acting as 2nd in command now, being the next senior left in the rgt: to the C.O but I am still doing adjutant as well. My time as adjutant is up next March, so I may as well carry on till then. I met Col Boileau on these manoeuvres & he was extremely pleasant, as usual. Also Alec Dallas Smith whom I had’nt met since Sandhurst days; you remember him & his brother Teddy I expect at Camberley.

And also I have met one of the Metcalfes from Cordwalles, the youngest Aubrey by name. I knew he was out here but had never met him before. He is in the Indian Civil & is asst private sec: to the Viceroy & rather a nut in his way. I had seen him lots of times at the Club & he had seen me, but we never recognised each other till we were introduced. The last time I saw him was singing a duet with him at Cordwalles, & Mrs Mason drew me with my coat tails flying! You remember that picture I expect in Mr Hunt’s dining room. He asked after Dick & Jim, & we had a great Cordwalles buck.

And the coat has arrived all safe & sound, yesterday; thanks ever so much, it is most welcome, also the scarf, I am so glad to have them both. What about the new Cabinet & the peace proposals! Just in time to reject them, heaven knows what that old Juggins Asquith would have done. But the Cabinet seems a good strong one & things should go well now.

Love to all

Yr loving son

Ted

Probable canal from Juna (Yamuna)

http://india-wris.nrsc.gov.in/wrpinfo/index.php?title=Agra_Canal_JI03261

Photo of Col Boileau with dead tiger

http://www.beetlesandhuxley.com/gallery/19th-century/col-boileau-and-tiger-1880s.html

Cpt. Alexander Charles Dallas-Smith, 2^nd Gurkha Rifles – died March 1942 after capture by Japanese

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/937859/DALLAS-SMITH,%20ALEXANDER%20CHARLES

http://www.twgpp.org/information.php?id=1663550

http://lib.militaryarchive.co.uk/library/WWII/library/Wellington-Roll-of-Honour-1939-1945/files/assets/basic-html/page119.html

Sir Herbert Aubrey Francis Metcalfe, 1883-1943

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

German peace offer, 5/12/16

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=985

Official communications and speeches relating to peace proposals 1916-1917 (1917)

https://archive.org/details/officialcommunic00carn

Lloyd George’s memo (link on right)

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/first_world_war/stalemate_change.htm

Dear Mother    Just got 2 letters from you. My second address had nothing to do with the XX (which is right, & X seems to have worked alright on one of your letters). The second time I left out the Div, which one is supposed not to put in.

Have you mixed Topher’s & my feast up. ‘Cos we are’nt together yet! I’ve no idea if he will be transferred over or not. I shall probably be alone for Christmas, & if he’s near I’ll try & get him allowed over & he can mess with me.

I am so glad the men like the dining room. I’ve written to Jane to buy me a saddle, that bit I wrote about is’nt there after all I think. But there may be another, very rusty when I saw it last, it’s a curb & snaffle combined, please get that out somehow if it’s there, but you say nothing about my things or keys. Have they come yet. I’ve written to Marseilles about them to see if they ever started.

I’ve just remembered! What flowers grow between now & March or April? I’d like to plant some around my hospital & make the place look nice. Don’t sunflowers grow nowadays. I’d like the place to look nice later on. Also I wondered if any of these working parties of lovely ladies would like to make a red cross flag for me. Any size, bigger the better. You might send along seeds or bulbs or whatever it is grows during the next few months. No desperate hurry. You know the woollie has’nt arrived yet.

I do hope Lloyd George will put things a bit.

The rather nice parcel has’nt come yet. I expect parcels this time of year take ages.

Best love to all

Yr loving son

Richard

In one of the boxes you’ll find a tunic with dark leather buttons on, & two little brass buttons on the black tabs. Please take them out & send them to Lesley & Roberts, 16 George Street Hanover Sq.

A letter from Pitney that went to India just came.

Curb, Snaffle & Spur – 1894 book on training cavalry horses

https://archive.org/details/curbsnafflespurm00ande

http://www.lesleyandroberts.com/

14.12.16

Dear Mother. Many thanks for your letter with the pencils, somehow or other I could have told anywhere they had been sharpened by you, I shall be so sorry when I have to resharpen them. You will get a letter from me saying I had found out that the keys had never started, mind you put plenty of address about a parcel & name & address inside in case of accidents as I saw that the address on the sock chicken & woollie one had nearly got rubbed out.

Paul sent me two papers today. I heard from Karachi that June is very well & well looked after by a nice girl I knew there. Don’t forget about that lace, I know if the girls see it they’ll want it, and it’s for Cicely!

There are two rather valuable platinum & pearl rings about somewhere, I would like you to give them to the two girls who you think have behaved best during the past year!

Best love to all,

Yr loving son     Richard.

If no decision can be come to about the rings, tell Dreda, No-teeth to have one, & Dreda herself the other, for the trouble of giving it to No-teeth.

If you could get a real dough-cake sometime, have it put in a good box & sent out. Pay all postage on anything out of that £5. It’s a shame to make you pay.

Gertrude would have sharpened the pencils by hand, shaving slices of wood and graphite off with a razor-sharp pen-knife rather than by turning the ends in a pencil sharpener, which is how Richard would have recognised that she was the person who sharpened them.

12^th.

Dear Mother   Many thanks for the parcel with woollie chicken socks & sweets. I’ve taken off my present woollie & put on yours, much nicer, it does not take up much room. I’m awful glad of the sox, those other 2 pairs you sent me are most useful. Always worn with the field boots & spurs.

I hear from Cox my keys were never sent! However they should be on their way now & I hope you’ll be able to open the boxes & get boots, buttons etc. Should you not get ’em almost as soon as this, write to Cox & ask them if they have received them. Lesley Roberts may want those buttons soon. One of those keys does for 2 boxes, that little tiny tin suitcase & one of the others. The brass one opens the red & black tin box, the big new one, the big new box. I hope everything arrived as per the list I sent you.

Will you have that fishing reel cleaned & oiled a bit; also the box-spurs. Has my evening dress etc returned, no good coming home if it has’nt. I do hope everything will be all right in the boxes & not gone bad or anything.

I am going over today to see if I can hear any news of Topher’s arrival.

Snow yesterday. Sawful.

Best love to all yr loving son

Richard

There’s some lace in one of those boxes. Keep care of it & don’t let anyone bag it. It’s for a girl I know.

Most important I keep forgetting to ask. Please send me a 2/- tin of Iron Jelloids No 2a. I cannot get ’em in France. Also a packet of “Thermogen” wool.

http://www.oldshopstuff.com/Shop/tabid/1248/ItemID/10251/Listing/Old-Tin-for-Iron-Jelloids-No2/Default.aspx

http://www.historyworld.co.uk/advert.php?id=346

1921 cartoon in Daily Mirror mentioning Thermogen wool

http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/WH5746/zoom

XX Deccan Horse
B.E.F.
France

2.12.16

My dear Mother. I wish you would’nt please give me such shocks. “Read this first” you said & it promptly began all about your will, I imagined the second letter was all going to be about some awful illness you had got! What fools Cox in Marseilles are. The keys were delivered to them I believe, anyhow I’ve written to all concerned & I hope they will turn up. And when they do I think I’ll have those field boots sent out. Would you mind packing them up securely & sending them. I may as well use them.

It was good about the 2 Zeps coming down. Where did Topher say he was, I have’nt heard from him lately, but he must be resting again now. They don’t seem to be able to decide about Jim. I expect he’ll like Hong Kong only the first 10 days of the voyage are rotten, they are quite safe when once past Port Said.

The “Gold Watch” is some use after all, but fancy having all those Tommies traipsing in & out, & how it will stink of smoke.

Ted sounds very swagger in his new Tent, I wrote to him yesterday.

So sorry you’ve had such a cold, I do hope it’s better by now.

You’d better send me a Xmas pudding as everybody seems to get odd things & I must put up a show, but you need’nt bother about sending anything else.

Freezing like blazes & so dull & cheerless.

The Countess’ daughter seems awfully bucked with the music. Trés charmante & elegante or something. I saw her for a sec yesterday.

Best love to all

Yr loving son

Richard

Of course I quite agree with you that the girls should first & foremost be provided for.

Then about Holmwood. I think that would be simplest to put Holmwood together with everything else, & divide up as you suggest. I don’t fancy I should ever live at Holmwood, much as I should like to, & taking everything into consideration it would be best to put Holmwood in with the other things, & me in with the other boys.

My idea has always been that provided all the girls don’t marry, the unmarried ones will live together somewhere, or at anyrate have a small house, with as much of the nice furniture that you’ve got in it. Then we unmarried boys will always look on that place more or less as a home, i.e. if we are working abroad. I’d hate that furniture to be lost.

Of course I quite agree with you that the girls should first & foremost be provided for.

Then about Holmwood. I think that it would be simplest, to put Holmwood together with everything else & divide up as you suggest. I don’t fancy I should ever live at Holmwood, much as I should like to. I am afraid all the girls won’t get married, & surely one or two of them will make a home somewhere together, & we unmarried boys will more or less look on that as a home, i.e. if we are all abroad. Anyhow Holmwood would be too big for them

The section starting “Then about Holmwood” is duplicated in the transcript from the IWM, Their transcriptions are excellent which suggests that Richard had drafted this section of his letter and lost his place when copying it. I can check the original next time I go to the IWM.