R.M.S.P. Arcadian From the Great War Primary Document Archive The Arcadian was used in the first Canadian Troop convoy in 1914. She was torpedoed and sunk in Mediterranean 15 April 1917 by German submarine UC74 with a loss of 75.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Strange Courtship
Year: 1912

Sie Bower was a member of the family with whom we had been friendly in Suffolk. Her brother Robert was the Master of the Newmarket and Thurloe Hounds who was “quite the best dancer there” at my first public ball at the Atheneum in Bury St. Edmunds in January 1908. Sie used to visit us frequently at Grey Rigg. She had something of a reputation as a fortune-teller and used to read our hands. On each occasion, I solemnly recorded her prognostications in my diary and it is interesting to see how often she was right.

1908. August 10th—Sie Bower left. She told my hand yesterday. My character I knew without being told but she says I shall be in a motor smash in about 2 years. Marry (a soldier p'raps) in about 3. Go out to India in about 6 and have 3 babies. We will see if she knows. 

Two years later she read my hand again:

1910. September 25th—Sie tells us all our fortunes. Mine is not a nice one ... I am still to have a bad accident which she told me of 2 years ago. I shall go on being a mollusc as I have always been for two more years and then wake up and be a person.

Sie was staying with my mother when my first letter arrived from the Arcadian. “Olave will mention in her letter the man she is going to marry,” she said.

I did not, fortunately, suffer the motor smash but everything else she foretold came true-my marrying “the Boy Scout man” who was a soldier, my going to India, the number of my children—but most of all her prediction about “waking up and being a person”. I had been withdrawing more and more into myself this last year. I remember arriving at a friend's house for tennis and seeing a number of cars and carriages outside. I was filled with panic. “It's going to be a big party — I can't face it,” I said to myself- and went home.

In such a state of diffidence, I probably should not have minded if the Arcadian trip had fallen through. It very nearly did. The Baker sisters (one of whom had been a bridesmaid at Auriol's wedding) had booked for the cruise and urged us to join them. When my father applied for tickets, however, the passenger list was already closed. We only obtained berths at the last moment when two people had to cancel their booking.

We drove from Grey Rigg to Southampton to join the ship. It was bitterly cold. Passengers were stamping about on the quayside waiting for a tender to take them out to the Arcadian which, on account of a dock strike, was anchored out in deep water. A raw fog added to the gloom of the winter morning.

A little group of the still novel Boy Scouts were drawn up to await the arrival of the boat train from London. With their bare knees and rolled up shirt-sleeves, they should have been blue with cold in such conditions but they were bubbling over with excitement. As the train drew in, they sprang smartly to attention.

“There's B.-P.,” someone said and I watched, amused and interested, as the hero of Mafeking inspected the Scout Guard of Honour. Two days later I was introduced to him:

1912. January 5th . . . supremely happy sitting lazily loafing on deck all day. Make friends with Daisy Goodwin-daughter of Albert Goodwin the painter. Also Lieut.-General Sir Robert Baden-Powell “The Boy Scout” who is so nice. He talks so nicely about Mafeking and all his interesting experiences and is so modest and sweet ... Ripping day.

There had been no difficulty over that first conversation. The General seemed to recognise me.

“You live in London.” he said.

“No,” I replied. “In Dorset.”

He looked puzzled. He had obviously been so certain that he knew me.

“But you have a spaniel,” he insisted. “A brown and white spaniel.” It was my turn to be surprised.

“Yes,” I said.

“And you have been in London? Near Knightsbridge Barracks?” “Indeed, yes—two years ago.”

That satisfied him. He told me how he used to try to read people's character from their manner of walking—he had included a passage on this subject in Scouting for Boys. At the very time, during the winter of 1909-1910, when our family were at Rutland Gate, he was at his mother's house at 32, Prince's Gate. I would walk daily with Doogy II in Hyde Park and he, hurrying one morning from his home to the Barracks, had noticed what he chose to call my “quick, determined gait” indicative of “honesty of purpose and common sense as well as a spirit of adventure!”

It was an amazing coincidence that we should meet in this way. It was an even more amazing coincidence that we should have the same birthday—22nd February.

That evening we were both at the Captain's Table for dinner. My father and B.-P. soon discovered a mutual interest in painting and talked eagerly together of water-colour techniques. They were almost of an age-B.-P. was only three years younger than my father—yet already to me he was not just another parent—contemporary. How can I describe the instant recognition the one by the other of the perfect, the only complement in love? It was indeed a “marriage of true minds”, a meeting with the compleat partner such as is granted to only a privileged few. Ours was a rare love, a rare happiness. I thank God daily for the wonderful way in which His Divine Hand led us both to come together.

I still cannot imagine what it was about me that attracted him. He was famous, talented, experienced. I was such an ordinary person, not at all clever, with no experience of life whatsoever. Yet within five days I was writing:

Have B.-P. to myself all day-till 11 p.m.—much intelligent conversation on religion etc.—sitting aft watching the phosphorous balls of light whilst other people dance ...

Do sports—and win potato race—in intervals between sitting with B.-P. on the top deck-Yes, I'm up against it!

. . . Up before dawn again just to see him and kiss him.

It was necessary to be circumspect. Shipboard romances are notorious and it would not have done for a distinguished General of fifty-five and the founder of Scouting which in five years had exploded into a world-wide Movement, to be caught flirting with a girl of twenty-three. That is how other people might have viewed our relationship. I do not think anyone ever realised how deep and passionate was our love for each other-not even after we were married.

Many, many years before, when he was serving in West Africa, B.-P. used to chaff his officers about their excitement when letters arrived from their wives in England.

“Just you wait,” one of them warned him. “You'll get it badly one of these days.” Now that day had come. We were helplessly, deliciously, ecstatically in love with one another—yet no one must know.

Hence the stolen kisses before dawn. Hence the secret little notes that were “posted” in a cleat of one of the lifeboats. Hence the elaborate subterfuge of his going forward on the ship after dinner and my going aft, and meeting secretly at a pre-arranged point on the boat-deck. I had to endure the attentions of a Major D. who was returning to a colonial appointment in Bogota. He looked like a sheep and was quite keen on me I had to dance with him politely but noted in my diary: “. . . the beloved Scout is always there. He gives me a photo album and sketches ... I adore him.”

The long, hot, lazy days passed all too quickly. We cruised along the coast of Venezuela, past the string of small islands that fringe the coast: Santa Margarita, Curacao. Flying fishes kept pace with the ship as it moved through the dark-blue glassy sea. We called at Porto Colombia and Colon. Everywhere there were excited Boy Scouts to meet him. We went to watch the Panama Canal being constructed. I did comment in my diary on the building work at the Gathun Lock but for the most part I viewed all the new sights through a haze of love. Even my first sight of the Pacific at Panama rates no more than a passing reference.

Our time together was rapidly coming to an end. B.-P. had come on the cruise for a rest before embarking on an arduous tour of the States. He was continuing on the Arcadian as far as New York, then returning to England from the west coast of the States via Japan, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. He would be away until August. Father and I were to disembark from the Arcadian to spend two or three weeks in Jamaica, returning to England in the Tagus in the second week of February.

Fortunately for us, the weather for the long trip from Colon to Kingston, Jamaica was stormy. We could count on being alone on deck.

January 23rd. Tuesday-Sail at 2-out to sea and she pitches like anything but oh! I'm so happy all day with him-He sketches away and I talk and we laugh together-even when we try to be serious the imp of mirth sets in. We feel and think alike about everything ... Perfect bliss.

He gave me a Scout “Thanks Badge” in the form of a swastika with the Scout fleur-de-lys superimposed. The right-handed broken cross or swastika (so-called from the Sanskrit word for “well-being” was an ancient sign of good fortune that had appeared in many civilisations even as far back as the Bronze Age. Later, when the Nazis adopted the left-handed broken cross as their symbol and it became synonymous with evil and oppression, the Scout Movement abandoned the use of the swastika as a Thanks Badge, but in 1912 it was still a symbol of good. I was touched that he should give me this token of thanks and I wore it on a fine gold chain around my neck-but underneath my dress!

Even if he could have produced a ring in mid-ocean, we felt it was not right at that moment to become engaged. We did speak—half jokingly, half in earnest—of asking Captain Custance of the Arcadian to marry us, for we were wildly in love and dreading the separation that lay ahead. But we both knew in our hearts that it was not the right thing to do. There were too many people who might be hurt by a hasty marriage. So we had to be content with an “understanding” that some day, somehow, despite the difference in our ages, despite his comparative poverty and my wealth, despite his loyalty to his mother and what I knew would be the opposition of my parents, we would come together.

On January 26th, the Arcadian was to sail from Kingston for New York, taking my beloved Robin with her. The night before, my father and I moved our luggage from the ship up to the Myrtle Bank Hotel where we were to stay. After dinner, I strolled down towards the harbour. By “chance”, B.-P. strolled up from the harbour. We sat down together on a little bridge—a “dangletoes”, he called it. I cried and cried. I just could not bear the thought of being parted from him for so long. Next morning, I hurried down to the harbour to see him before the ship sailed. Unbeknown to me, he had hurried up to Myrtle Bank with the same purpose. We missed each other by minutes so that when he did eventually find me at the ship, there was no time left to talk and, anyway, there were people around. So all we could do was shake hands and say “Good-bye.”

I had no one with whom I could share my feelings. My father, with his usual aloofness, had noticed nothing and, in any case, Robin and I had agreed to keep our “understanding” a secret until he had finished his world tour and could consider ways and means of making our marriage possible. Meantime, he filled my thoughts by day and my dreams by night. I went through the motions of taking an interest in Jamaica but my mind was with Robin in the Arcadian. I found the “funny little social circle” of Jamaica constricting—meeting the same limited group of people at every house we visited-but to drive home at night after a tennis party “along the dark bumpy road lit by fireflies” would bring thoughts of my darling crowding into my mind. “Ah Robin-you are always there.”

Within ten days, a bundle of letters had arrived from him, posted from New York. He must have sat down in his cabin the moment he went on board.

R.M.S.P. Arcadian
26 Jan.

It is much worse than I had expected, to be on board and no b.e. to be found. It is exactly the feeling I had when my two mates had been killed in Matabeleland-one kept looking round expecting to see them as usual at the camp fire-whereas, they were dead. I rouse up from my work -(for I am working all I know) look around and the stitches suddenly tighten as I remember there is no little friend on board ...

Like all his letters on this tour, it was signed not with my name for him, Robin, but with a little sketch of a robin. Oh, those enchanting little drawings!

“No letters from you yet . . . and the robin's mouth is turned down at the corners, its tail droops.

“A bundle of your letters awaited me . . . a perky robin with its tail up.“Please send some more. . . a hungry robin with its beak open.

“I must show you my scrapbooks of this trip ... an eager robin with a big book under each wing.”

In this first letter from the Arcadian, as in many of his later ones, Robin addresses me as “b.e.”. This, very unromantically, stands for “bulgy-eyes” for he said he loved the way the surrounds of my eyes bulged when I laughed. The reference to “stitches” alludes to one of those private codes that all lovers have—in this case that his heart was “stitched tightly” to mine so that when he felt a great upsurge of love in his heart, it made the stitches pull tighter.

On February 9th, my father and I boarded the Tagus for our return voyage to England. Imagine my surprise and delight to be greeted by gifts and-more important-a bundle of letters written aboard the Arcadian as Robin steamed northwards from Jamaica to New York. On arriving there, he had sought out the Tagus (having ascertained that that was our return vessel) and had bribed the steward to ensure that the letters were delivered-and privately-to me.

. . . The more I think of it, the more marvellous it seems—I mean the coincidences which happened with us-our birthday for instance; and the band playing Faust music, and then our time (at Myrtle Bank; my having seen you walking with your dog; and then all the little points which we have in common.

Just wonderful.

Please don't marry Major D. right away, will you? ...

He tried to comfort what he knew would be my distress at our long separation

Do you remember my story about my poor little dog “Taffie” who died because I was away for a week-He would not eat, and moped, and died. Well-I've come to sympathise more than ever with him during the past few days -I have not wanted any food and I am much lighter (and, I've no doubt, much healthier) in consequence ...

I do wish I had not to write you scrappy notes but could tell you direct what I want to say. I expect you will be starting very soon ... to go Eastward to meet me. Yes, you may imagine that we are going away from each other. Not a bit of it. I'm on my way to come and see you, going Westward, via America and Australia, and you are going Eastward-so we are bound to meet in time! ...

He wrote playful, tender letters, addressing me as “little mouse” because, as he said, a mouse is “a little beast that keeps gnawing”.

It's 5.15 a.m. of our last day at sea. I've just been on deck and had to return below because there is a gale blowing with rain and splendid lightning-and it is all from behind us so it is shoving us along with quite a warm wind. It is impossible to believe that tomorrow we shall be in ice and snow at New York. It feels just as warm as the Tropics ...

I am trying to make up for laziness on the voyage by extra work at the end of it-but you keep putting your oar in and interrupting me; one moment it is that radius of your eyebrow where it says ... (and here followed a sketch of my eyebrow!) ... ; the next you want to show me again your swagger pink satin shoes ... but you mustn't do it. Run away and play. I'm fearfully busy and have not time to sit down and write to little girls-so I just send this letter to say so.

All the same I hope you will not think evil of me if I become a rather bad correspondent after this as I shall be overdone with work these next 6 weeks ...

I think one of the most distracting things that you give me to keep me off my work is the last I saw of you and b.e. ; but they were not “little bulgeys” then, they were B.E., big Brown Eyes suddenly melting as we shook hands with, “Well-Goodbye”, in a most casual way ...

As the Arcadian steamed further north and the weather became cooler, the cold light of reason enters his letters:

Last Day on board. 30 Jan.

. . . you agreed with me that it was hopeless to talk or think sensibly while on board this ship-and I have not been able to do so yet...

But although so woolly and blind, yet I see the “difficulties” looming very large: especially on my part and that is as regards money-even if my age were forgiven.

People cannot live on less than 1200 to 1500 and that is pretty low-but I don't see where it is to come from in my case.

Do you see any hope? Post a line at Colon.

How I wish we could talk instead of writing. As you say, pen and paper is a rotten medium (though I must say you get over the difficulty marvellously well for your letters are just you talking).

I am awfully sorry that the voyage is over-It brought me the happiest time I ever had—not only the 7th heaven which I might have hoped for, but I got the 8th! ...

I did “post a line” at Colon (for the Tagus made the same calls in reverse as the Arcadian). Once again I viewed the Panama Canal, Porto Colombia, Cartagena through a rosy glow of happiness. At no time in my life has my diary recorded so vividly the colour of the various places I have seen on my travels. We visited the Pearl Island of Santa Margarita, called at Port of Spain: “Out at sea. Hot and happy-and I drift and dream in the sun and Robin is in them all-such jolly dreams of where we shall live an d what we shall do - together.”

I had a telegram from him on our birthday, February 22nd, but then had to possess my soul in patience until I reached England before I could receive any further word from him. “1912. March 3. Sunday. Cold ... wet ... so I think of and write to Robin. It is just awful to think I shan't see him till August. . .”

We arrived back in England on March 6th but I had to wait until April 1st for Robin's first letters from America to reach me.

The Waldorf Astoria. New York.
9 Feb.

b.e.

You keep turning up in such funny places. Why do you do it?

In the middle of watching a steel ingot being cast at Carnegie's works in Pittsburgh-there you were enjoying the wonderful glare, bang, rattle and roar just as much as I was.

When I was in the middle of a speech at a luncheon yesterday who should I find sitting beside me, wedged in between me and a Jewish judge, but b.e.!

When I was reviewing Boy Scouts, when I was stamping about the platform waiting for the night express with the thermometer at 1S° below zero, when I was taking tea in a dear little house overlooking the great frozen lake at Detroit, when I was—oh well—I'd just like to know when or where b.e. didn't turn up ...

We always had a wonderful affinity for each other. At the very time that he was writing that letter, I was confiding to my diary:

He is never out of mind-unconsciously I feel him always with me and it is heavenly-and yet just too awful to have to wait so long for his return. If I feel like this now what will it be like in August! My eyes see only your eyes Robin-my ears only hear your voice.

Our “understanding” was supposed to be a secret but if my diary for these months is anything to go by, everyone who met me must have realised I was in love. Day after day, I poured out my heart in ecstasy and as each batch of letters arrived, I was inspired to even further transports. April l0th is a typical entry:

He is perfect—he is all that is sweet and kind and nice and noble and clever and artistic and sporting and simple and unaffected—I call it quite marvellous to be so unspoilt after all the adulation and gush he must have had. Ten most delicious letters from him at last.

In one of those letters he wrote:

Nearing San Francisco, 5th March. Oh! Why aren't you here at this moment! Running through the Sierra Nevada ... The line keeps twisting and turning among the mountain spurs and precipices, through splendid fir forests, all in deep, clotted fresh snow ...

Oh! In the few minutes that I have been writing we have run out of the snow into quite a different world ...

Oh! Fruit trees all in blossom!! For goodness' sake come and look! Isn't it good? There's a house-just the spot-such a view and a dog scampering about the lawn, a trout-looking stream below and a quaint little dovecote made like a little house on its pole ...

Nine days later a further batch of letters arrived. I was thrilled to receive them “but they aren't nearly as nice as the last”, I noted with concern. What had gone wrong? Was our “great love” all in my imagination? I could not believe I was mistaken. We had only known each other for three weeks before we had to separate but they had been such wonderful weeks. Surely he was not having second thoughts already. I waited in agonising uncertainty until his next letter arrived. I read it with mounting dismay.

I cannot quote the letter for in my distress I tore it up, but I can still remember as if it were yesterday what it said. His mother had written (he informed me) to tell him that his brother, Frank (who up to that time had been Mrs. Powell's principal supporter) had fallen ill and was unable to make so generous an allowance as hitherto. Would Robin please increase his allowance to his mother and to his sister Agnes. “I am old and I am poor; I have nothing to give you,” he wrote to me in despair. “By the time I have paid my mother's allowance, I shall scarcely be able to keep a dog. If only my dream could have come true!” He went on to offer me my freedom. It would not be fair to expect me to live in penury.

The poor darling-it was typical of him to think of my happiness first. I dashed off a reply by the first post. Of course he was not to worry, I assured him. I had enough for both of us. We would manage somehow. Our dream must come true.

Then I had to wait -a long, long wait while my letter chased him round the world and his reply came slowly back by sea.

May 4th. Would I could go to sleep till August the l0th.

May 7th—He has his work and lots to distract him ... and here am I sitting waiting ...

May 12th—Thundery-a do nothing sort of day ... I.C.A.A. seems tedious.

May 18th—13 weeks today Robin lands. It seems further off than ever now-and he is literally so. Read his Aids to Scouting and Matabele Campaign and can't believe—don't in fact—that the Robin I know is that wonderful man who knows and has done so much. He is now becoming very dream-like but oh! so lovable.

June 4th—. . . he is really coming me-wards now.

June 13th—Drive into Bournemouth and send off my photo to fetch Robin home from Durban. It is the oddest of feelings-this being in love with a memory of a man!

June 15th—It is so funny not knowing if we are going to marry each other or not-for me it is “Robin or no man”.

There is much more in the same vein and much in deep despair; then at last on July 21st: “Oh Joy again! All is well and what a glorious world it is and how happy I am! A dear stitchy letter and at last he has written to Dad.”

My secret—if it still was a secret—was out at last. I could discuss Robin freely with my family and friends. The relief was exquisite. Now that he was beyond the “half-way” mark of his world tour, his letters arrived with increasing frequency—humorous letters, tender letters, descriptive letters, lover's letters.

What a glorious mail! (he wrote from Melbourne) I'm just like a camel when he's having a drink out of his water bag. Don't you know how his inside hangs out of his mouth and he gurgles and drinks the water down his long neck-well, poetical though the simile maybe, that's what I feel like-stitches bulging with pleasure!

Ten days later he wrote from Government House, Adelaide:

(the tour) ... is all an enjoyable adventure, but through it all I keep looking on to something that you could not guess in a month of Sundays. It is so silly and so petty and childish that I know you'll despise me for it—whisper—
I want go to Peter Pan and the Tate Gallery with someone.

Govt. House Adelaide. 24 June.

Oh--- .. .-..!

Why do I say that? Well because, as I was driving out in the motor yesterday with Lady Bosanquet, my hostess, she suddenly said “There's Olive”- I jumped out of my half asleep attitude and yelled “WHERE? Then she pointed to a silly olive tree. And when I had gradually got back my equilibrium (i.e. my previous semi-comatose condition) I kept humming to myself “Sweet olive oil—sweet Olave—sweet oil” and now I'm boiled if it hasn't coiled itself to simple “OIL”—Fancy being called Oil!

During the long voyage from Australia to South Africa, he must have written to me several times each day-sometimes thinking on paper, sometimes reminiscing, sometimes breaking into nonsense verses

On board the S.S. Themistocles
9th July 1912.

... my neighbour at table ... partly broke off as she looked at me—I was staring hard to my front, far far away from what she was saying—I was looking across the saloon at two of the round ports which were, as a pair, close together with a beading above them which made them look like eyes with a brow-and a clever brow at that-over them! ...

... Oh another coincidence! You don't mean to say that YOU ever played by the Round Pond? That was MY playground. Oh I can show you where Red Indians lived and hunted. The Texas plains are within sight of it, where I've drawn an unerring bead on the wary bison (London sheep). The grizzly who lived under the chestnut trees towards the Albert Memorial-but why go on? if you never played there you never met them: if you did play there well of course you know all about it. Are you by any chance Wendy? ...

When are you coming to Town, Miss Soames,
When are you coming to Town?

When am I likely to get your complicity
In giving my mother the happy felicity
Of welcoming you to our home-domesticity?
(You'll find matters ordered in sober simplicity).

When are you coming to Town,
O When are you coming to Town?

Come in and look at my quaint curiosities,
Relics of wars and of savage ferocities,
Beautiful caskets and awful monstrosities
(Some of them really are simply atrocities!)
When are you coming to Town,
O When are you coming to Town ...

and so on for verse after verse.

On August 14th I received a letter which told me that the photograph I had sent to Africa “to fetch Robin home” had indeed arrived.

Durban Club.
Natal.
19th July 1912.

Oh! I can't write what I feel at this moment-but I can't go to bed without writing a line to catch this mail.

When we arrived today I scarcely dared hope, and when a bundle of nearly 9o letters was handed and one after another failed to show the familiar writing I was beginning to despair. But then there came in the registered packet! I pretended entire indifference before my “staff”! But at a convenient moment I clutched it and rushed to my room and tore it open.

It is a beautiful photo.

Thank you a thousand times, b.e. Oh, I can't tell you what I thought. I think you would have been glad you sent it if you could have overheard what I said to myself and the questions I asked. Could this really be b.e.? And could she really be sending it to me?

But she has sent it and in such form as my dear old Aunt went for when choosing some biscuits to send to me in S. Africa-she ordered a kind “that would wear well in the pocket”.

I have kept this in my pocket ever since I got it so that I can take a nibble at it every now and then. Oh I must cable and thank you otherwise you won't know for weeks how pleased and grateful I am.

And the letter is signed with a positively euphoric robin drawing!

Eager though he was now to return home, Robin loved his stay in South Africa. It had meant so much to him throughout his career.

Durban Club. Natal.
20 July 1912

I have enjoyed coming back to this old place Durban. I have known it for so many years and the old inhabitants of it know me so well, that it is like getting home after being in so many new and strange places.

And it is beautiful. This morning I got an early morning walk along the shore of the lagoon-under palm trees along the esplanade -with their tops brilliant in the rising sun and stems in violet shadow. The lagoon reflecting the pale blue overhead light and hazing off into grey mist-and Indian natives going to market in gorgeous red draperies with yellow fruit on their heads. Just glorious. Luncheon in an open air cafe facing the ocean while the surf comes roaring in ...

How the artist in him showed in his letters!

Johannesburg. 26 July.

. . . up on the top of Spion Kop amongst the silent graves looking across the immense panorama of sunny veldt and flat-topped ridges fading into violet distance. Peace seemed scarcely the word for the solitude and dumbness of it.

Such a contrast to what those scarred old rocks had seen and heard.

Then yesterday we travelled up to the border of Natal circling round Majuba with its great sphinx-like bulk pretending that nothing harsher than a baboon's cry had ever been heard there-and our train plunged away from it into the tunnel of Laings Nek under the graves of the two big fights on the pass-into the Transvaal, where at every station, in the glaring jolly sun, were Boy Scouts and men of my Police to greet me.

It was good-and you think I enjoyed it—especially as we journeyed all day without the slightest suspicion of what was about to happen to us.

Well it's a thing I can't describe. But the train ran into Johannesburg station and I stepped out to find a dense mass of people all over the station and on the roofs and trees. Mayor—Defence officers covered with uniform and medals. Police by hundreds. 300 Boy Scouts. 54 Mafeking garrison. Deputation of 200 ex-Constabulary men—Bands—ladies—cheers.

For nearly an hour I was going round shaking hands, lumpy in the throat as could be (mind you I had left Ladysmith at 4 a.m.). Then there was a sudden heave-and just the sensation of aeroplaning. I was being carried above the heads of the crowd-such a row you never heard.

I had had it once before after the war and I remembered how a kind man held my pockets shut to prevent valuables falling out that's all that occurred to my numbed brain so I clutched my pocket tight myself so that my valuable little possession should not be lost...

I received this letter on August 17th. Only a week to wait now:

“My heart beats time to these passing seconds-passing quickly at last. . .”  Surely he would come straight to me at Lilliput when he landed at Southampton on August 24th.

But he didn't!

CONTENTS

		Window on My Heart: The Autobiography of Lady Baden-Powell, G.B.E. as told to Mary Drewery, 1973.  Introduction and Contents. Reproduced by permission of Hodder and Stoughton Limited.
		Baden-Powell Family History. A series of links starting with the research of Robin Baden Clay, a grandson of Baden-Powell. These links are focused on the genealogy of the Powell family. The author is extremely grateful to Mr. Clay for sharing the results of his labors with the Scouting community. Links are provided to pages for three of B-P's brothers: Baden, Warington and Sir George Baden-Powell, to members of his extended family, and to the genealogy of the Smyth and Warington families.
		Robert Baden-Powell, Founder of the World Scout Movement, Chief Scout of the World. A Home Page for the Founder. Links Relating to Baden-Powell on the Pine Tree Web and elsewhere.

The Pine Tree Web Home Page: A Collection of the Author's Links

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Please write to: Lewis P. Orans

Copyright © Lewis P. Orans, 2004
Last Modified: 11:20 AM on April 25, 2004