Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3817/Blanche's Letters
The War Spirit
Dearest Daphne,―There was a big party of us at the Clackmannan's Scotch place, Blairbinkie, when all these fearful things began to happen―and now where are we all? The Flummery boys and ever so many more of the party are at the front with their regiments. The Duke of Clackmannan is at the head of the the Clackmannan Yeomanry. Norty's gone off to help take care of the East coast, and it's lucky to have him helping to protect it and keep watching, for if there's anybody who could see things coming sooner than anybody else it's Norty!
Stella, Beryl, Babs and your Blanche are all back in Town, and when we're not taking lessons in nursing we're sewing at flannel. I make Yvonne do my hair quite, quite plainly, and I'm giving my jewels to the country. I've already given my dear collar of pearls. I gave that first because I love it best of all my jewels, because it can never be replaced, and because pearls suit me better than any other stone.
All our first fingers are covered with pricks and look immensely horrid, but we glory in it and won't even put and cold cream on them! As I said yesterday afternoon, when we were all sewing away at flannel, if any woman, I don't care who, offered me her hand and I saw that the first finger was smooth I'd refuse to take it! Beryl must needs weigh in with, "But, my dear Blanche, she wouldn't offer you her left hand! It's the left forefinger that gets punished in needlework." "The principle is the same," I answered coldly. "And besides, some people are left-handed." Beryl has decent qualities, I know, and one doesn't want to find fault with anyone just now, but she was always like that―and her hemming, dearest!
Babs is wild to go to the front, but I say she’d be only a nuisance until she knows more about nursing. Someone told me the other day, à propos of untrained women going to the front and hindering instead of helping, that during the last war a poor dear in one of the hospitals had his hair parted fifty times in an hour by fifty different people, and nearly got brain-fever.
There was a man in the party at Blairbinkie who, before we were at war, talked fervidly of what he should do for his country if trouble came. I had not liked Hector Swankington the least little but before that, but when he said that, in the event of war, he would raise a troop at his own expense, call it "Swankington's Horse" and lead it himself "wherever the fighting was hottest," I thought I'd not done him justice. So I listened to him and approved and encouraged the plan. And then the storm burst and we all scattered. The other morning I met him in the Park when I was taking my early walk. He asked if I would dine with him some evening at the "Iridescent," and I said it was not a time for dining at restaurants. "No," he agreed, "it certainly isn't now all the French cooks are gone; and what an idiotic idea this is about reducing the number of courses at dinner! Silly rot, I call it!"
I ignored this and asked, "What about 'Swankington's Horse'?"
"Oh! that’s all off," he said huffily. "I wrote to the authorities about raising the troop, asked what State recognition I should get, and enclosed a drawing of the hat I meant to wear as leader—a ripping scheme, turned up at one side and with a bunch of feathers. All the answer I got was a few brief words of acknowledgment and a request to set about it at once and report myself somewhere or other. Not a word of the State recognition I was to receive, and the drawing of the hat returned with 'Not approved' scrawled across it. So I've chucked the whole business. And now don't let us talk of that any more!"
I gave him my freezing look (you've never seen my freezing look, dearest—it's terrible!) and I said with a little calm deadly manner that I very, very seldom use, "I've no wish to talk to you of that—or of anything else—ever again." And I left him.
The party at Blairbinkie that scattered almost as soon as it assembled was by way of being a farewell to the old place, for the Clackmannans had virtually sold it to a Mr. Spragg, of Pittsburg. He was going to have the old castle taken across in bits and set up again in Pennsylvania; and he was taking all the family portraits, the mausoleum, the old trees in the park and the stags at a valuation, as well as the village itself with all its cottages and people, in order that the castle might have its proper setting out there. There were two more things he wanted included in the bargain—a village idiot and a family ghost ("hereditary spectre," he called it).
Ah, my dear! all this belongs to the happy old days of a hundred years ago, when we were all three or four weeks younger. The man from Pittsburg, so far from being able to buy Blairbinkie, hardly knows where to look for his next meal, and as for shipping castles and trees and mausoleums and village idiots and family ghosts across the Atlantic he only wishes he could get himself across, even if he had to work his passage!
Josiah is at the uttermost ends of the earth. He went in June, about rubber-mines or oil-concessions, I'm not sure which. I had a cable from him the other day from a place that began with "Boo" and ended with "atty"—I forget what came between. He told me not to be anxious, that he'd get back when and how he could. My answer was, "Not anxious. Wherever you are you'd better stay there, or you may get taken prisoner by those creatures, and then I'd never forgive you!"
Talking of prisoners reminds me of a rumour about the Bullyon-Boundermeres. They were cruising somewhere in their new big steam-yacht when war broke out, and now there 's a report that the enemy have taken the yacht and turned it into a cruiser; that the Bullyon-Boundermere people are prisoners on board, and that they're making her wash dishes and forcing him to work as a stoker or a bulkhead or some fearful thing of that kind! This is not official, my dear, but I give it you for what it's worth.
I called a little meeting here yesterday about a scheme of mine. Beryl and Babs and your Blanche and several more of us are really crack shots, and I want to form us into a band of rifle-women and ask the Powers that be to let us guard some important place—a bridge or a bank or a powder magazine. We should wear a distinctive uniform, and we wouldn't let anyone come near! Babs said she hoped the uniform would be smart and becoming, but I soon shut her up. "This is not a time to think of cut or colour," I told her. "Myself, I shouldn't care how my uniform was cut—even if the shoulder seams were at the elbows. And as for colour I'd wear grass-green, though it's a colour in which I look a mere fiend, if it would help my country!" And Beryl and Babs cried and kissed me.
Ever thine, Blanche.