From ‘Convalescents—Some Portraits’, The Spectator, 12 June 1915:
No. 12. hardly spoke any French. He was very fat, middle-aged, and placid, his face perfectly round, and his whole form almost spherical. A farthing and a penny and two matches could be arranged to form an excellent representation of his silhouette. We discovered that he was a reservist, and a market gardener by trade. He was a most industrious creature, and could be made perfectly happy by being given little jobs to do in the garden. He haltingly explained that before the war he had had two big greenhouses; then, shaking his head sadly, “Maintenant tout cassé, Mam’selle.” Like the sad majority of our patients, be had entirely lost sight of his wife and children. He knew that the Germans occupied his native village; he hoped that his wife might have been able to take the children over the border into Holland. He could send them no money, and did not know how much they might have been able to save out of the ruins of their once prosperous little business.
He and poor Léon B—(who was trying to find out his sweetheart) used to be indefatigable in writing to every possible Consul in Holland, and to the Mayors of frontier villages who might conceivably give them information. They were forced for want of better to follow the most elusive clues. The letters had to be most carefully written in case they should fall into the hands of the Germane. As B— explained, if the Germans knew a woman to be the wife of a soldier, her position became worse than ever. They used to spend hours in writing, the tears running down their cheeks. There were most ingenious ways of getting letters or messages through into villages which were in the hands of the enemy, but as these methods are, no doubt, still in use the less said about them the better.
Alas! Léon B— never could trace his sweetheart, though be believed that she had probably got over the Dutch frontier, but one day No. 12 had the great happiness of hearing from his wife. I shall never forget the change that came over his round, placid face and his patient eyes when he opened his letter. “Mam’selle! Mam’selle! c’est ma femme!” But an even greater happiness awaited him.—” Whiles like a doe I go to find my fawn.”—A week later she found her way to him. How she got here Heaven knows, for the Home is in a country house far from any village. Come she did, however, from Holland, speaking not a word of either French or English and knowing nothing but the postal address. She was a comely, plump, black-eyed woman. They used to walk about the garden hand in hand, rather silent. She could only stay a few days, as she had left the children in Holland.
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