Letters from the Little Blue Room: An Intimate Portrait of World War I

A 'lost' women's classic from World War I - Discovered in the rare books room of the British Library, last seen in 1917!

A Scottish woman sends funny, moving, compassionate and rousing letters to her younger brother, set to fight with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the trenches of WWI.

Dunfermline, her hometown and the base for the Scottish regiment The Black Watch, morphs into an active home front. Letter by letter we watch the war unfolding. Her brother trains with his cavalry regiment on England’s Salisbury Plain and moves to frontline duty in France. Shocked by the war and those who inflame it, the sister’s letters are frank and also encouraging. Others are vanishing. She needs her brother, her young Canadian, to survive.

Complete with an introduction, a closing biography, and original photographs of the author and the period, focusing on people, Canada at war, and wartime Dunfermline.

"Daisy Thomson Gigg creates a voice as alive and open, fresh and engaged as when she sat at the little round table, beneath the red-shaded lamp more than a century ago, writing to her Boy, determined to keep his spirits up and remind him of home. Her Scottish identity resonates in every sentence, her political idealism, compassion and love shine out even on her darkest days. Hers represents a new and unique voice and an important addition to the canon of literature of the First World War." – Angela K. Smith, author of Women's Writing of the First World War

To Valcartier Concentration Camp, Quebec

October 10^th, 1914

So Big Brother is a soldier bold and used to war's alarms? While I was trying to describe the great war drama as seen from the reserved seats, you were one of the actors on the stage! While I pictured you in immaculate white pants and silk shirt, lolling on the beach at Delta and practising for the boat-race, you were in khaki, route-marching, and raking stables, and practising musketry! Eh, what? Fate, I guess you got the laugh on me this time!

Teddy let slip, when we told him, that he has known all along you joined up on the day war broke out – and he hadn't been able to screw his courage sufficiently to the sticking place to tell us.

Sid was home for the weekend when your letter came. She's awfully proud you're mounted; and to several people whom she met I heard her mention that her brother was with a mounted corps – quite nonchalantly, you know, as if soldier-brothers were no object with her! "Mounted Rifles" does sound dashing, I admit; it's as good, nearly, as the Some-place Rough-Riders or the Other-place Buccaneers. And you'll have spurs – and clink-clank all over the place as you ride à la Stonewall Jackson riding ahead!

They seem indeed to "do you well" out there. I don't see the soldiers here with spray-baths after a route-march, or electric light for nights. And that is what I'd call real, hall-marked patriotism on the part of that firm who supply, every morning, the whole lot of you with the most wholesome of bread and the best butter – gratis. How we work our patriotism here is to cut down our employees' wages and give £50 to the National Relief Fund.

Mother is taking your joining quite well. I was talking with her and reminding her of what she used to tell us as a sort of joke about her life abroad – that, however poor an opinion you may have of your country yourself, or how little you may appreciate it while living in it, it's different when you're away in another country; and that there is no keener Patriot, no one more sensitive about his country's honour, than the homesick exile. Dear, was that it? Was it–

"England, with all the life faults I love thee still,
My country!"[1]

(William Cowper, how dare you? You mean, of course, "Britain, –" etc.)

It's funny to see how civilian suits for men are going out; actually the smartest of them look "last season". Now, khaki is the only wear. (Although, 'tween you and me, it's about the worst colour they could have got – that's where soldiers have the advantage. The nicest-looking man is made to look ordinary – his niceness quite neutralised – in khaki; whereas the most ordinary man can be made to look nice and "fetching" in the sailor's navy-blue.) It's funnier to see two or three whilom "nuts" that are still in civis ('civis', dear Boy, are what you "get into" when you're home on leave). I'm rather sorry for them, wandering about alone and girl-less. It's such a change for them, poor chaps, who were the catches of several seasons before. To have held that important and desirable position in their native town, then, by a sudden fluke of fortune, or misfortune, to find themselves among the despised and rejected – they with their good positions, and their lovely clothes, and their lily-white hands! Turned down for almost any old thing, or young thing, in ill-fitting khaki! And conversely, to see the sudden rise to female favour and social recognition of many hitherto quite impossible ineligibles – well, shure an' it's a topsy-turvy old world, so it is!

Shall I tell you something? S'pose you'll smile. I've started a sock! It was this way. Often I've seen soldiers coming in from a long route-march, limping badly, and I never thought why. The other day I saw a boy come in from a march to the billet up the street a few yards from us. He could scarcely walk. That evening I was down in the garden and happened to look over the wall. And there, sitting on the steps of the back entrance to the billet, was the little soldier of the limp, darning a sock, – no, drawing together a set of big holes, his barefoot in front of him! And in the shop the other day I saw "Socks for Soldiers – 1/1½ for 3 pairs." So that night Mother and Sid and I started socks, we thought it was about time. Besides, when one has a big brother of one's own route-marching, it makes a difference. Perhaps, too, I haven't understood the spirit back of all this knitting. I hadn't thought it might be a safety-valve for the women who must stay at home and see their men go out. Anyway, we are knitting, with what ultimate success I cannot guess! For in these days of lace stockings and cashmere socks, I'm afraid knitting was becoming a lost art.

Later: – Got your letter this minute. Coming home to England in some weeks! Oh, Boy, it's wonderful. You to be in the country – so near home – half-a-day's journey away only! I wonder if this mail will get you before you leave Valcartier?[2] I'll risk it.

Your most excited,

Pauline

[1] From Cowper's The Task, Book II: The Time-Piece

[2] Valcartier, Quebec, was the main training ground for the first Canadian Contingent. Hastily set up, and initially planned to handle the 25,000 recruits requested by Britain, volunteers from across Canada brought that figure to 35,000.