War Classics (27 page)

4
.  This ‘Chief’ was the area sub-director for Le Havre, Professor Medley.

5
.  ‘The Age of Wisdom’ by William Makepeace Thackeray.

6
.  ‘The Wakening’, John Attye’s
First Book of Airs
, 1622.

Weeks afterwards the poem that follows arrived for me:

La belle Marguerite at St Hilda's

You tell me of the scented hours

When memories of a gayer land

Come dancing o'er the trees and towers

That make your Oxford green and grand.

I do not blame; nay, I should laugh

If ever I could chance to meet

On a St Hilda's garden path

A Don, and with her, Marguerite.

And I should watch you as you walk

Along the sheltered river-side

You pouring out high-table talk

And shewing Magdalen's storied pride.

And she responds ‘How wise' ‘How fair!'

Then she will give a little sigh,

As if she wanted fresher air

And something that is not so ‘high'.

Then, with a swift-shot, sidelong glance

– A glance that is a shy caress –

She whispers but the one word ‘France'

And all your heart cried out with ‘Yes!'

The scene dissolves as in a dream;

A straight road, poplar-fringed and white,

Where was the brown meandering stream,

And you are racing through the night!

Your pulses quicken as you ride;

What can you answer but ‘you may',

As life holds out its arms so wide

To carry you away – away?

Marguerite is smiling through it all

– A smile that almost is a kiss!

Then suddenly – the curtains fall

And you are back again to
this
.

To Oxford and its perfect peace,

To Hilda's and her guarded ways,

To ancient love of Rome and Greece,

To donnish and to decorous ways.

'Tis evening, and, to evensong,

The Cowley bell calls through the air;

It is not that you have done wrong,

But you are hardly fit for prayer.

Is it not really more than this?

Was even
that
the true, the whole?

You'll say 'twas something not to miss

Yet – let me put it to your soul –

Might not
it
rather miss the more

Where all is reckoned up and told?

Lady – I feel I only bore,

Moreover, I am growing old.

(PS If you – by any chance,

Some other day, again should meet,

That lady friend of yours from France,

Please give my love to Marguerite.)
1

1
.  This poem sums up perfectly the tension Christina felt between the stately reserve of Oxford life and the whirlwind freedom of her six months in France – so perfectly that it leads to the suspicion that she may have written it herself. Her brother, in his notes on the manuscript, is quite sure that this is not the case. Christina apparently kept the original with her for forty-five years until her death, and Barrogill goes on to say:
‘
The poem quoted in L'Envoi is not in the author's handwriting and obviously was sent her by one of the friends she had made in France. I do not know who the writer was but I thank him for it.'

Lying back in my deck chair, I knew that Life would never again hold anything as good for me, as it had held these six months in France.

Christina took up her position at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and remained there for the rest of her university life. She expected a high standard of her students, who included not only those who had chosen to do Honours in Latin or Greek but also many who reluctantly studied Latin as a requirement of an Arts degree. Her teaching was thorough, but also tended towards the dramatic and descriptive.

She never married – despite the existence among undergraduates of a ‘Society for Marrying Miss Keith’. As she grew older she became more idiosyncratic, and one college obituary described her as ‘someone about whom legends rose’. Although comfortable in the academic environment, there is a sense that her spirit still longed for something more. Maybe it had something to do with the Caithness winds and wide horizons which had shaped her early days. She looked beyond the confines of the university, and became involved in teaching inmates in Oxford’s prison in a move which surely held echoes of her Dieppe experiences. She also continued to travel. In 1925 she embarked alone on a world cruise, and wrote a series of letters to her mother, describing the ports of call, her fellow passengers and their experiences with her customary vivid colour.

In 1942 Christina left both Oxford and the Classics behind. She returned to Caithness, and devoted herself to the subjects which had perhaps been her first love all along – Scottish history and Scottish literature. Living alone in Thurso and relying on the Pentland Hotel for her meals, she wrote newspaper articles and published
The Russet Coat
, a study of Robert Burns. The reviewers did not quite know what to make of Christina’s perceptive insights wrapped up in her unconventional style. Her history of Barrogill Castle, published when that castle came to prominence as the Castle of Mey, the Queen Mother’s new home, was deeply personal, drawing on her family knowledge. A biography of Walter Scott,
The Author of Waverley
, was completed just before her death in 1963, and was seen through publication by her brother Barrogill.

Christina’s story of her six months in France, at a time when soldier and civilian alike were beginning to shake free from the horror of war, is the story not just of a fascinating episode in history, but also of the triumph of women’s education and the move towards a society less bound by convention.

For Christina, it was simply the story of a quite remarkable time in her life.

And tomorrow, oh! tomorrow, I thought, as I laid my tired body with rapture on my bed, tomorrow I shall see where my brothers have been and all the things they’ve never told me of these weary years.

As Christina travelled across the silent, charred landscape of northern France, she passed where her brother Barrogill had lived and fought while the guns still roared and the horrors of trench warfare were all around.

Barrogill may have told her little, but his mother Katie kept many of his letters from the front.

An accomplished artist with a keen sense of humour, Barrogill passed long weary hours in the army by drawing countless caricatures of his comrades. These little books evoke a real sense of the camaraderie which helped to carry the men through their terrible experiences. Comedy is laced with tragedy, as below many of the cartoons he has added the eventual fate of his friends –
killed at Dardanelles … killed at Salonika … wounded at Dardanelles …

A sample of these pictures is reproduced here along with Barrogill’s letters.

2.10.15

Royal Pavilion Hotel, Folkestone

My dear Mother,

I have arrived here on my way to France. We got word late on Thursday evening that we were ordered off. We had no previous warning of any kind. A memo had indeed come asking for all the names of officers fit to command active service platoons but our reply had not reached Headquarters when we were ordered off. There are 21 of us in all. We expect to be sent to different regiments.

I saw Mildred in Edinburgh on Friday morning and Jul in London this morning. I had of course no time to go north.

I am just writing this prior to catching the boat across so have not time to say much.

There are several rumours afloat. One is that we are to make a new landing at Ostend. Another that no more drafts are to be sent across later this year as K wants all his men across now. What the reason of this sudden bustle is I don’t know. I only know that the Tain crowd are here too and from everywhere there are crowds of officers so it may be that the hour has struck when K and Joffre have determined to make the beginning of the end.

Personally I fear not. It seems to me that things are pretty black. What is a gain of 200 or even 600 yards or even one mile or two miles. If we have only made ’em give ground we have gained nothing in the wide world. The time will be when one or other drives a wedge through the other’s line. Then the war will be decided.

Meantime I must close. You might make up my comforter and balaclava helmet – two pairs socks one pair or two pairs woollen gloves and send them when I know my address.

You might also get Donnie to send me every week 50 Gold Flake cigarettes – as soon as I am settled.

Meantime hoping everyone is well and don’t worry too much as worry won’t help.

With love to all from DB Keith

5.10.15

12th Scottish Rifles, attached 10th Cameronians, BEF

My dear Mother,

There is nothing much to tell this time. Only yesterday I saw the fattest man in all the world. Honestly you could put five or seven men together in the space he occupied. He was simply enormous.

We hear the guns all day here but pretty far away in the distance. Other than that and the fact that this French town is full of khaki, one would not know of the existence of the war.

Things apparently are black in the Balkans. Bulgaria is in and probably now the other states will wait to see how the cat is going to jump. Greece may or may not come in. I think she probably will. Romania I think will not.

So public opinion seems to be rather against our success. The war anyway is hardly started. I do not believe the economic factor will defeat Germany. Germany is far too systematic to fail to take all due precaution against that. Some day a year or so hence
we
may awake to the fact that danger threatens us from that source. Of course so long as we retain control of the sea – with our colonies not going bankrupt through excessive pay to their soldier and bonuses and pensions and dependants – we ought to get our necessaries all right. But things are not looking too well and even on sea I fear the Germans. They have something up their sleeve. The war indeed – the more I see of it makes me more certain – will be a long one and the people to carry it to a close will be other men and other politicians.

It may be a day or two before I write again as there is nothing to report. You might arrange to send me some grouse and some other eatables now and then. Later when we have a company mess I might get some stuff sent out every day.

Love to all and hoping all is well.

From DB Keith

You’ll see George on Tuesday I expect. DBK

11.10.15

My dear Mother,

I got your welcome letter this morning. I have tried to write as often as I can but we are pretty busy with one thing or another to get settled up and unfortunately my last letter to you did not get sent off as soon as it might have.

We are in a quiet place here but every day and night you hear the big guns booming just a continuous rumbling, something like bubbles on boiling toffee some big and some small – that’s rather an absurd metaphor but it expresses what I mean – a sort of sultry series of eruptions. And at night flashes blink for a second across the sky. Aeroplanes often come buzzing around. A series of trains with unearthly shrieks of agony in lieu of whistles and proceeding at a mild walking pace tugging interminable trucks puff along across the level crossing just as one wants to cross. Occasionally motor buses – Red X or otherwise, a few French horsemen or a cyclist or two flit past. Otherwise things are as usual.

There are rumours pretty nearly always that we are being moved the next day, sometimes to the trenches, and we look with a kind of questioning wonder at the flashes across the sky, sometimes further back and we think of theatres and pleasant billets, but so far neither has eventuated, and we are still pegging away here and it’s not so bad. We had a church service today to the sound of guns. It’s all new and the experience of this war will, if I come through all right, make a tremendous difference in me. It may drive me insane or it may be the making of me.

We are starting our own company mess here and I want you to send out or rather get Munro or one of the keepers to send out
every day
a box of grouse, venison, partridge, duck, etc, anything – enough for four persons, say one [?] grouse today and partridges or duck or venison – just a small bit for four or six each day – can you manage that. Otherwise we are likely to live on bully beef. Parcels take three or four days I believe so the stuff sent should be newly killed if possible. The other fellows are getting parcels everyday but it’s shortbread cakes honey etc.

16.10.15

My dear Mother,

For the last few days we have been pretty busy and I had no opportunity to write a letter. I sent a dozen pcs to the family generally of scenes of the war etc. They will be interesting to keep. I have now lost immediate touch with George but he is still somewhere in the neighbourhood.

Life here tho’ not devoid of excitement is not particularly interesting or daring. Apart from continuous gun firing and aeroplanes hovering overhead everything is much as usual. I have not yet seen a shell burst on the ground tho’ I have seen some aeroplanes and observation balloons shelled.

The grouse and butter arrived all right and are now duly eaten, but so far there is no word of cigarettes. I have also got, as I think I told you before, my scarf and some woollen things direct from home. Nothing has been forwarded from Stobs [a training camp in the Scottish borders].

I will return the photos you sent next letter. Meantime they are packed in my kit. I had of course already seen them at Stobs.

Hope everyone is keeping quite well at home. So you are still having runs with Strachan. I really think he’s too much swollen head. He will, I expect, learn it pretty soon from the people round about. The
Courier
seems to show that the people are about fed up with those self-conscious stay at home heroes who on active service require all the comforts of first-class hotels, if possible at the expense of the state.