Endell Street by Wendy Moore

Author:Wendy Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

APPROACHING WINTER FINALLY brought the suicidal Somme assaults to an end on 18 November. By that point more than 130,000 British soldiers had been killed and another 300,000 wounded, many of them permanently disabled, with scarcely any strategic gain in ground to show for the mass slaughter. The four-and-a-half-month offensive had been the longest and most destructive battle in British history with losses which were almost unconscionable. Although the Germans had been weakened by having to fight on two fronts, the Somme offensive had largely failed in its objectives. As British forces counted the cost in France, it was clear the men were utterly demoralized, artillery was virtually worn out and whole battalions had been all but annihilated. With the morass of mud now turning to ice, further fighting was impossible. The year was about to end as it had begun, in total stalemate with victory as far away as ever. Taking stock back home, British civilians had been temporarily cheered by freeing the skies of the terror-inspiring Zeppelins. But now they faced a long dark winter of increasing food shortages, restrictions on movement and curtailment of pleasure.

At Endell Street staff were drained and dejected but at least – although the wounded still arrived sporadically – there was a chance to rest, or to become ill themselves. After the strenuous months treating the Somme wounded, Eleanor Bourne succumbed to German measles (rubella). She went to convalesce in Cornwall in November, staying with a friend in a quiet hotel overlooking the sea in the fishing port of Fowey. The chill of Eleanor’s first English winter had seeped into her ‘Australian bones’ and the wild Cornish cliffs made her homesick for the headlands near Sydney Harbour. Yet the escape was bliss. She enjoyed long walks by the sea where hydrangeas still bloomed and boat trips up the river with her friend. On one excursion they discovered Menabilly, the abandoned country house in an isolated cove which would later provide inspiration for Daphne du Maurier’s novels. On another day they hired a driver to take them to Tintagel where Eleanor was captivated by the romance of the ruined castle of Arthurian legends.

Beatrice Harraden found solace in a Cornish November too. She took a break on the Lizard Peninsula to ‘collect my senses’, although the holiday failed to have the desired effect since soon after returning to Endell Street she fell sick with ‘flue’ and was ill for several weeks. Despite her long hours running the library, Harraden had completed her latest novel, The Guiding Thread, which had been published in September – much to the chagrin of Octavia Wilberforce, Elizabeth Robins’s companion, who was incensed it had beaten Robins’s novel-in-progress, Camilla, to the press. Robins had risked her health to make the Endell Street library a success in the early months, despite being ‘a neutral’, Octavia fumed, yet all the while ‘that deceitful, double-dyed insincere snake was just getting along merrily with a novel and giving only her spare time to the service

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.