| Title: | Agnes Shakespeare (Nesta), Alberta to "My darling Mother". |
|---|---|
| ID | 2420 |
| Collection | Irish Emigration Database |
| File | Shakespeare, Agnes/24 |
| Year | 1897 |
| Sender | Shakespeare, Agnes |
| Sender Gender | female |
| Sender Occupation | unknown |
| Sender Religion | unknown |
| Origin | Alberta, Canada |
| Destination | Ireland |
| Recipient | unknown |
| Recipient Gender | female |
| Relationship | daughter-mother |
| Source | D3590/M/4/1-16: Deposited by Godfrey Higginson Skrine Esq. |
| Archive | The Public Record Office, Northern Ireland |
| Doc. No. | 9909229 |
| Date | 03/07/1897 |
| Partial Date | |
| Doc. Type | EMG |
| Log | Document added by LT, 21:09:99. |
| Word Count | 1125 |
| Genre | |
| Note | |
| Transcript | High River, Alberta. July 3, 1897 My darling Mother. I am thinking of you all day long, and Lou Lou and May at home. Though by this time I hope and trust that you have had certain news of how he is getting on, still my own state of uncertainty makes me feel as if you were uncertain too. You will want to know how I heard the news about our darling boy. It was Mrs. Bedingfeld who received - very late, on account of the floods - a paper from Manitoba, with a long telegram about the trouble on the Indian frontier, and when she saw the name Lieut. Higginson 1st [Sihks?] she gave the papers with a note to Frank Bedingfeldd, for Walter. He met him, as he expected, at a place where a sale was to be held, and so Walter got the news first. There were two men whom he had to bring back to lunch with us, and it wasn't till the afternoon that he took me out for a walk by ourselves, and then he told me. Archie was my first thought and you were my second. It must have been such a shock to you, poor Mother! Oh. how I do hope this Colonel is at Rockport. I can't help thinking he would have gone to you once when he heard the news. It would have been so like him. And then he would have known exactly how to procure information for you. I have a strong idea - and may it prove a true one is my hope through all these days - that if anyone is wounded on active service, his relations can write to War Office, asking for news of him. And of course it is so easy for them with the wire at their command, to find out and let you know. What a mercy it is that he is in a place where communication is easy and not as happened only last year to those two young officers, Fowler and Edwards, first shut up in the mountains, and then actually prisoners, and one of them wounded too. And yet you see they both came home quite safe to their friends. What thanks we must give to God, who protected the life of our dearest boy, when two of his brother-officers lost theirs, in that gallant retreat. And what a splendid order they must have maintained I think to have lost only one sixth of their numbers, though they were only 300 against such odds. When the full accounts arrive, I am certain they will say it was a retreat finer than many a victory: for every one knows the retreating fight is the very hardest of all, and everyone knows too how the Sikhs can be depended on. The officers who held the garrison at Chitral said over and over again that they never could have done it, but for the Sikhs. How thankful I am that he had Sikhs round him! But I do wish I knew what sort of place this [Dettakhele?] is in the place they fell back on; for I believe our boy must be there still. Walter keeps telling me that wounds heal so quickly, and that most likely under three weeks. Archie will be invalided home, and on his way back to us, and we rejoicing at the honours he has won, and every other soldier envying him. You will see him - but I will not. Ah, indeed Mother, you have not the worst of it, though you must have suffered so much at the first news, I know. But there you are in the old home, you are still the centre of all our lives, and when the boys get leave home, you are the one they go to, and you see them first and longest. I wrote a letter to Archie - not the day I got the news, but the next morning. Walter said he would go straight to High River and back. There might possibly be a mail. He had a six o'clock breakfast, and while he was eating it, I wrote my letter; and he said I had better send it to Rockport. So I did. He got back late that night, but with no letters. However in three days more we heard that our mail had arrived at the [symbol - bar-U]. Walter simply couldn't go, but Mr. [Waldy?] immediately said he would. He is a very kind man. It was a scorching hot thundery day, and he had a twenty-three mile ride. He never stayed for any lunch, but came straight back with the mail, and a great bunch of these splendid secret lilies which he had gathered on the hills. I call them soldier-lilies now (they grow up perfectly straight) - for the very first letter of my mail was one from darling Archie himself, in answer to my last. And he said he was hoping for 3 months leave in July, and how Billie had just written to him - "hardly legible from excitement" about his departure to Natal. The he said how his own British regiment would be in the thick of it too. Isn't it strange now to think how they were all disappointed and his chance came , and he distinguished himself before any of them? But there was a postscript to the letter dated May 14th saying a wire had just come from the D.A.A.G. Punjab frontier force to his colonel, saying no leave was to be given to officers of regiments in Tochi Valley and those absent were to be recalled. So that looks to me as if they expected some trouble. But the telegram in the Manitoba paper (date June 14th) spoke as if the whole thing were a surprise. Which of course in one sense it must have been. But still I know the [Wazinis?] have never been trusted from the beginning. Well Mother dear, you know more about it all by this time. I am expecting the Weekly Times of June 18th possibly tomorrow, and if get it, I know I shall have a letter from home too. Tell May that your letter and hers - both for our wedding day - came together with Archie's, and I was ever so much cheered up by them. I can imagine the sketch of Sea Pinks exactly, colouring and all, from her little sketch. Walter is so good and thoughtful, trying to do all he can to divert my thoughts, at the same time that he is entangled - mentally and bodily, in a new barbed-wire fence himself. Very best love to you all there. I don't know just when this can go. Your loving daughter Nesta. |
