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I've been working on the historical note for The Larks Still Bravely Singing, and I thought I'd post it here because... well, because I love sharing things that are basically lists of books that I've enjoyed... but also in case anyone spots a glaring omission ("I know you read X, aren't you going to mention it?") and because I'm not quite sure about quoting "To Stretcher-Bearers" at the end. I think the poem rounds the historical note off nicely, but perhaps it's too much?
***
Any work of historical fiction grows out of the leafmold of a thousand books the author has read. It would be impossible to mention all those sources here, but I will try to hit at least the high points.
First place, of course, has to go to E. F. Benson’s David Blaize, a boarding school novel published in 1916 whose leads really are enormously (if chastely) in love with each other. (I also cribbed shamelessly from David Blaize for the cricket bits.) Mention also must be made of Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s School Days, the book that first popularized the boarding school story as a genre. It’s the great-grandaddy of all boarding school stories after, and still a fun read in its own right, although standards separating “boyish hijinks” from “wanton destruction of property” have certainly changed over the 160 odd years since its publication.
Boarding school novels tend to take a glowing, nostalgic view of their subject. Memoirs often present a grimmer perspective. George Orwell skewers his own boarding school experience in his essay “Such, Such Were the Joys,” although his fond memories of his school’s natural history club also provided the genesis for David and Robert’s rambles. C. S. Lewis also remembers his boarding school years bitterly in his memoir Surprised by Joy, which is the source for the anecdote about getting chucked down the coal chute, as well as David’s irritable observation that all anyone ever talked about at school was cricket and coquetry.
Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That starts with a few chapters about Graves’ time at boarding school, including an incident where Graves poleaxes his headmaster by admitting openly that he’s in love with a schoolmate. Normally this sort of thing got boys kicked out of school, but the headmaster decided the connection must be essentially moral if Graves owned up to it so openly. Then it segues into a World War I memoir, which is what the book is best known for today.
Another interesting (though lesser known) World War I memoir is Pat Beauchamp Washington’s Fanny Goes to War, whose jolly “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything” tone is a bracing contrast to Graves’ memoir. The author worked as an ambulance driver in France and Belgium with the First Aide Nursing Yeomanry (known as the Fannies, hence the title) and eventually lost her leg when a shell hit her ambulance. I drew on her experiences in writing Robert, particular her comment about the enormous relief of taking her artificial leg off each night.
For the experience of disabled veterans more generally, I drew on a fascinating advertising pamphlet, The Making of a Man, which has wonderful illustrations of the types of limbs available around the turn of the 20th century, and on Douglas C. McMurtrie’s The Disabled Soldier, a handbook published in 1919. McMurtrie’s book also contains a lengthy and sympathetic section about the treatment of shell shock. He also mentions that many of the men blinded in the war were trained as masseurs or piano tuners, and I really wanted to fit a blind masseur into this book, but there just wasn’t a good place to do it. Maybe Louie the blind masseur will find his home in a later book.
(There are also some fascinating videos on Youtube, like “Amputees Learning to Use Their Artificial Limbs (1916)” and “Amputee Veterans at Queen Mary’s Workshop (1914-1919),” the second of which shows a group of amputees playing cricket.)
Last but emphatically not least, Emily Mayhew’s Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War I is the book that precipitated me into a World War I obsession, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It follows the wounded from the battlefield all the way back to hospitals in the home front, touching in with stretcher bearers, doctors at regimental aid posts, chaplains at casualty clearing stations, and nurses on hospital trains along the way. The endnotes for each chapter include lists of poems and paintings that relate to each topic—except for one poem which Mayhew couldn’t resist including in the text itself, a poem written by a chaplain based on the patter of the stretcher-bearers as they removed the wounded from the battlefield.
To Stretcher Bearers
by Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy
Easy does it — bit o' trench 'ere,
Mind that blinkin' bit o' wire,
There's a shell 'ole on your left there,
Lift 'im up a little 'igher.
Stick it, lad, ye'll soon be there now,
Want to rest 'ere for a while?
Let 'im dahn then — gently — gently,
There ye are, lad. That's the style.
Want a drink, mate? 'Ere's my bottle,
Lift 'is 'ead up for 'im, Jack,
Put my tunic underneath 'im,
'Ow's that, chummy? That's the tack!
Guess we'd better make a start now,
Ready for another spell?
Best be goin', we won't 'urt ye,
But 'e might just start to shell.
Are ye right, mate? Off we goes then.
That's well over on the right,
Gawd Almighty, that's a near 'un!
'Old your end up good and tight,
Never mind, lad, you're for Blighty,
Mind this rotten bit o' board.
We'll soon 'ave ye tucked in bed, lad,
'Opes ye gets to my old ward.
No more war for you, my 'earty,
This'll get ye well away,
Twelve good months in dear old Blighty,
Twelve good months if you're a day,
M.O.'s got a bit o' something
What'll stop that blarsted pain.
'Ere's a rotten bit o' ground, mate,
Lift up 'igher — up again,
Wish 'e'd stop 'is blarsted shellin'
Makes it rotten for the lad.
When a feller's been and got it,
It affec's 'im twice as bad.
'Ow's it goin' now then, sonny?
'Ere's that narrow bit o' trench,
Careful, mate, there's some dead Jerries,
Lawd Almighty, what a stench!
'Ere we are now, stretcher-case, boys,
Bring him aht a cup o' tea!
Inasmuch as ye have done it
Ye have done it unto Me.
***
Any work of historical fiction grows out of the leafmold of a thousand books the author has read. It would be impossible to mention all those sources here, but I will try to hit at least the high points.
First place, of course, has to go to E. F. Benson’s David Blaize, a boarding school novel published in 1916 whose leads really are enormously (if chastely) in love with each other. (I also cribbed shamelessly from David Blaize for the cricket bits.) Mention also must be made of Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s School Days, the book that first popularized the boarding school story as a genre. It’s the great-grandaddy of all boarding school stories after, and still a fun read in its own right, although standards separating “boyish hijinks” from “wanton destruction of property” have certainly changed over the 160 odd years since its publication.
Boarding school novels tend to take a glowing, nostalgic view of their subject. Memoirs often present a grimmer perspective. George Orwell skewers his own boarding school experience in his essay “Such, Such Were the Joys,” although his fond memories of his school’s natural history club also provided the genesis for David and Robert’s rambles. C. S. Lewis also remembers his boarding school years bitterly in his memoir Surprised by Joy, which is the source for the anecdote about getting chucked down the coal chute, as well as David’s irritable observation that all anyone ever talked about at school was cricket and coquetry.
Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That starts with a few chapters about Graves’ time at boarding school, including an incident where Graves poleaxes his headmaster by admitting openly that he’s in love with a schoolmate. Normally this sort of thing got boys kicked out of school, but the headmaster decided the connection must be essentially moral if Graves owned up to it so openly. Then it segues into a World War I memoir, which is what the book is best known for today.
Another interesting (though lesser known) World War I memoir is Pat Beauchamp Washington’s Fanny Goes to War, whose jolly “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything” tone is a bracing contrast to Graves’ memoir. The author worked as an ambulance driver in France and Belgium with the First Aide Nursing Yeomanry (known as the Fannies, hence the title) and eventually lost her leg when a shell hit her ambulance. I drew on her experiences in writing Robert, particular her comment about the enormous relief of taking her artificial leg off each night.
For the experience of disabled veterans more generally, I drew on a fascinating advertising pamphlet, The Making of a Man, which has wonderful illustrations of the types of limbs available around the turn of the 20th century, and on Douglas C. McMurtrie’s The Disabled Soldier, a handbook published in 1919. McMurtrie’s book also contains a lengthy and sympathetic section about the treatment of shell shock. He also mentions that many of the men blinded in the war were trained as masseurs or piano tuners, and I really wanted to fit a blind masseur into this book, but there just wasn’t a good place to do it. Maybe Louie the blind masseur will find his home in a later book.
(There are also some fascinating videos on Youtube, like “Amputees Learning to Use Their Artificial Limbs (1916)” and “Amputee Veterans at Queen Mary’s Workshop (1914-1919),” the second of which shows a group of amputees playing cricket.)
Last but emphatically not least, Emily Mayhew’s Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War I is the book that precipitated me into a World War I obsession, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It follows the wounded from the battlefield all the way back to hospitals in the home front, touching in with stretcher bearers, doctors at regimental aid posts, chaplains at casualty clearing stations, and nurses on hospital trains along the way. The endnotes for each chapter include lists of poems and paintings that relate to each topic—except for one poem which Mayhew couldn’t resist including in the text itself, a poem written by a chaplain based on the patter of the stretcher-bearers as they removed the wounded from the battlefield.
To Stretcher Bearers
by Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy
Easy does it — bit o' trench 'ere,
Mind that blinkin' bit o' wire,
There's a shell 'ole on your left there,
Lift 'im up a little 'igher.
Stick it, lad, ye'll soon be there now,
Want to rest 'ere for a while?
Let 'im dahn then — gently — gently,
There ye are, lad. That's the style.
Want a drink, mate? 'Ere's my bottle,
Lift 'is 'ead up for 'im, Jack,
Put my tunic underneath 'im,
'Ow's that, chummy? That's the tack!
Guess we'd better make a start now,
Ready for another spell?
Best be goin', we won't 'urt ye,
But 'e might just start to shell.
Are ye right, mate? Off we goes then.
That's well over on the right,
Gawd Almighty, that's a near 'un!
'Old your end up good and tight,
Never mind, lad, you're for Blighty,
Mind this rotten bit o' board.
We'll soon 'ave ye tucked in bed, lad,
'Opes ye gets to my old ward.
No more war for you, my 'earty,
This'll get ye well away,
Twelve good months in dear old Blighty,
Twelve good months if you're a day,
M.O.'s got a bit o' something
What'll stop that blarsted pain.
'Ere's a rotten bit o' ground, mate,
Lift up 'igher — up again,
Wish 'e'd stop 'is blarsted shellin'
Makes it rotten for the lad.
When a feller's been and got it,
It affec's 'im twice as bad.
'Ow's it goin' now then, sonny?
'Ere's that narrow bit o' trench,
Careful, mate, there's some dead Jerries,
Lawd Almighty, what a stench!
'Ere we are now, stretcher-case, boys,
Bring him aht a cup o' tea!
Inasmuch as ye have done it
Ye have done it unto Me.
