Dear Brother, I send these few lines to you hoping to find you well as it leaves me at present, thank God for it ...How many times have I glibly written here "more about that another time" only to subsequently forget? But not this time. As I mentioned not so long ago, "I grew up in a house where old letters positively poured from bureaus and creaky desk drawers. Letters from beaus, from business partners, and from battlefields, notably, one from Isandlwana ...". This is the story of that letter.
Or rather of those letters, because the Isandlwana letter is the last of a bundle of letters. All begin with the words 'Dear Brother' and were written by Private John Hall, 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot, to his brother, Henry Hall. The first is dated January 1877, the last January 1879, all were sent from South Africa to Westbury, Wiltshire, and if you know your history you know how this story ends.
Henry Hall, my great-great-grandfather. In his later years, too frail to live alone, he was taken in by his granddaughter, my maternal grandmother Eva*, and her family. He doted on 'the baby', my mother, who remembers the way his whiskers prickled when he kissed her, and that he smelt of pipe tobacco and peppermints. When he died he bequeathed his writing box to the little girl he had adored and the letters from his brother were discovered inside it.
John Hall, my great-great-great uncle, who took the Queen's shilling, went to be a soldier, and never came home.
Dear Brother ... It is the middle of summer here now and we do wear white linen clothes here and white helmets, it is so very hot ... we can get so many oranges and grapes and peaches and all kinds of fruit as you can carry away for a penny ... Dear brother, the regiment might be coming home this time next year ... they do think that they will embark November next if all things keep square ... tell Mother and Father that I am getting on very well ... and I do hope to see them again soon ... I still remain your ever loving and affectionate brother, 633 Pte John Hall. (Cape Town, January 1877)
As a biographer I often work with old letters. Really old letters, carefully preserved by conservators and archivists. Such letters, more than any transcript of a text or an email can ever be, are valuable historical artefacts. And so are the letters I'm copying from this evening, although these have not been so well cared for and are becoming difficult to decipher**. But think of the journey they have had, travelling over 11,000 miles to reach my great-great grandfather, and over 135 years to reach me. I never cease to be astounded by that.
John Hall, in company with the rest of his battalion, had landed at Cape Town in January 1875. By late 1877 they were stationed in King William's Town, fighting in the last of the 'Kaffir Wars', known today as the Xhosa Wars. One year on and they were in Pietermaritzburg, Natal, on the eve of the Anglo-Zulu War. And on January 22nd 1879, while encamped at Isandlwana, they were attacked by 20,000 Zulu warriors. Outnumbered 10 to 1 the British troops simply didn't stand a chance***, they were annihilated!
Dear Brother ... I have been away from the regiment on the war trail ... the Kaffirs broke out and we was sent to the front to help ... the mounted police and volunteers has had several engagements and we escorted their ammunition and food to them and it was horrible to see such a lot of blacks lying about the field dead. There was two brothers that belonged to the mounted police that was killed by the side of one another and one of them was a chum of mine ... the regiment do think about coming home as soon as it is all over and I have some assegais and spears that they use at war and I will try and bring them home to you ... we burnt about two thousand firearms today that we took away from the Kaffir's ... A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all, 633 Pte John Hall. (King William's Town "or elsewhere", November 1877)
Dear Brother ... I am very sorry I did not write to you before, I could not get any paper ... I expect we shall be coming home soon now and I shall be very glad of it ... I hope that your wife is getting on alright and your little son ... I have put up with a lot of hardships since I been out here travelling about the country ... there is no place like dear old England and I don't care how quick I come back again, ... I send my kindest love to all of you and I still remain your dear brother, 633 Pte John Hall. (King William's Town, September 1878)And from his last letter home, a hurried scrawl on a scrap of paper that somehow, incredibly, reached Henry ... long after John was dead.
We are to ransack through Zulu Land and scour the country though I hope that there won't be much fighting but I am afraid there will ... Love to you, Louisa and the little nephew, your dear brother, 633 Pte John Hall. (Pietermaritzburg, January 1879)
* If you follow the link you will find a photograph of Henry ... third down, on the right. ** My mother cannot bear to part with them so five years or so ago we delivered transcripts to the Regimental Museum in Brecon to ensure that at least the text survives. The originals will pass to the museum on my mother's death. *** More detail of the battle may be found here. The document is of particular interest as Private 633 John Hall was a member of E. Company 1/24 Regiment, under the command of Lieutenant Charles Cavaye. Hall, Jno. 633, appears here in the long list of those who died on that day. He was awarded The South Africa Medal posthumously.
Oh Annie, I feel quite choked reading this post. I am so pleased your family is holding o to these so important relics and also that you've managed to present the transcripts so the words of that young man can take their rightful place in regimental history.
ReplyDeleteLovely post, thankyou. Lx.
What an amazing piece of history these letters are and what a sad story too.
ReplyDeleteThat's why we should never forget the sacrifice of people like your uncle.
Vivienne x
Dearest Annie,
ReplyDeleteI have no words.
And then I say, what a gift.
So overwhelming. Such a treasure.
I do love old letters. I have a few from my great grandfather but they are pretty normal compared to this. The only full group are from an elderly cousin who went gold mining in Australia. He wrote regularly to my great grandfather every month or so for the last few years of his life. I'm just sad I don't have the other end of the correspondence as well.
ReplyDeleteviv in nz
My grandmother has a trunk full of silt from the past; letters, photos, souvenirs of other lives. There is a letter from my great grand uncle, Talton Turner, that tells of a long journey by horseback from Scio, Oregon to Portland "What a town!" The photo shows a wiry, sun baked man with a white colonel's mustache and beard sitting stiffly on a Victorian settee wearing his best suit. There is an envelope of creased and yellowing papers written in uneven script; all songs Talton wrote on his saddle worn journeys.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother has never let me take them for photocopy, nor given me time to transcribe them myself. When she's gone they will disappear into ether, I know this. It is a legacy I wish I could pass on, a history of the land too.
Thank you for sharing these wonderful letters, what a treasure!
And what treasure you describe! Would your grandmother let you photograph them? I find that can work quite well as a means of recording the text of a letter. But how sad that she won't pass the trunk and it's contents on to to you.
Deletethat is just amazing ..... and so sad .... I can feel the homesickness and futility of war even though he has only hinted at it
ReplyDeleteWhat beautiful, careful penmanship; what a testament of brotherly love and esteem; what a loss for your great-great-grandfather; what a precious family heritage. And what a miraculous journey indeed for those frail bits of paper. Thank you so much for sharing them with us.
ReplyDeleteHow special to have these letters, they are snapshots of time. It was almost like he knew what was about to happen, so sad, Ada :)
ReplyDeleteThis post is a lovely elegy to your great-great-great uncle. The poignancy of handling letters written so far away and in such circumstances is huge but so special. And the world seen through the eyes of ordinary soldiers writing home is always so immediate and so different from the text of the history book or newspaper report. What a lovely family treasure- thank you so much for sharing it, Annie. E x
ReplyDeleteSo very interesting. My Dutch husband has been to South Africa twice. He has the set of the movies about the Zulu wars and loves watching them, over and over. That is where your ancestor was. I also have an old letter from a slave that was freed after the Civil War in America and shipped to Liberia. She begged her old master to bring her back home because the chiggers were eating all the way down to her bones. I see why you enjoy reading the old letters. People don't communicate today like they did in letters. Thanks. xo Jenny
ReplyDeleteAmazing and how wonderful to have the actual letters which left your great, great, great uncle's hand all those years ago. E-mails and text messages will never stand the test of time like that nor have the same "feel" as I mentioned in my own post about letters recently.
ReplyDeleteYou did, you did! I was trying to remember who that was :D
DeleteFor all that we have the immediacy and frequency of communication through email, text, Twitter, what will we leave as testament for our descendants? Fascinating post. I have one letter of enormous importance to our family which I read again and again to glean for clues.
ReplyDeleteWe have similar letters written from various family members. I love everything about them, the careful handwriting, the sentiment, and the respectful signing off. Glimpses of another age, all the more precious because they are about our own ancestors, living lives so very different from our own. Forget the old vases and fish knives. Give me photographs and letters any day.
ReplyDeleteJust awesome.
ReplyDeleteWe covered all those wars in history at school - and it always seemed so dry and dull to me back then. I was far more interested in European history than that of my own country! But now, well, it's lovely to see the personal side to it all and to realise how war impacts the lives of real people. Much the same as visiting the war museums in Normandy and understanding more fully the sacrifices of all those brave men.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing that. It was fascinating to me. I also love old letters and postcards and journals.I wish that schools would include more of this sort of thing in their curriculum than just the dry dusty facts.
What a wonderful post, it has left me a little tearful and thoughtful. I wonder will emails have the power to evoke such emotion in years to come?
ReplyDeleteWhat an amazing story... and even more amazing to have it documented like that! Our Victorian house was built in 1873, just as your story was unfolding. We often think of the Victorians who lived here, in our rural 'idyll' as coming from a 'better time'! It's so easy to ignore the very difficult parts of our history. You mention being a biographer - inspired by being surrounded by personal histories no doubt!
ReplyDeleteOld letters are always evocative and touching, but ones that came from soldiers particularly so - and somehow, for me, the beauty of the handwriting, the care with which the words are written in John's letters are just so poignant.
ReplyDeleteYou have a wonderful biographer's style, Annie, drawing the reader in, explaining, providing the extra detail. Do tell, whose biographer are you? I'd love to know.
Axxxx
Hi Annie, they're not published yet, still unfinished in fact, although there are a couple of shorter pieces out there, but I'm writing, separately but in tandem, the lives of the 18thC entomologist and co-founder of the Linnean Society, Thomas Marsham (ignore the entry for him in the ONDB, it's largely wrong), and of the 18thC electrical experimenter, William Henly (not to be confused with the 19thC electrical cable manufacturer, William Henley). Theirs are turning out to be stories with more improbable twists and turns than your average soap opera plot, and mostly this stuff was previously unknown. It's fascinating fun, but time consuming, and it probably ought to feature more on the blog! You can read about my route to becoming a biographer in the post 2013 Sketchbook Project :: Bugs*
Deleteanother wonderful post Annie - what a treat to have so many treasures. Cleggy and I wrote to each other for two years when we were apart - I wish I'd made my letters more eloquent and articulate - but know they are a good representation of who we were then (and still are!)
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I lived in an age where writing was the main form of communication...fee x
Goosebumps ... that's what you given me reading this. As someone who loves typography I also found the photos beautiful. I shall show this post to my boys too as history has so much more meaning when you hear it from a personal viewpoint. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely fascinating as always Annie. Thanks for taking the time to share with us all. I adore history and always strive to get a sense of time whenever we visit a place. I have a real problem with the sanitising of and virtual experience that museums and sites of interest think they need to give us nowadays. The dumbing down implies that we've all lost our imaginations. Reading those letters takes you back through time.
ReplyDeleteI've told mum I want to go through dad's family letters and pictures too. There are some interesting tales there, but rarely was the past discussed. Dad's, mum committed suicide when she was staying at his cottage by drowning herself in the stream at the bottom of the garden. He never told me this and rarely spoke of her. I think the past became tidied away. Somehow it makes it all the more fascinating to dig about.
Thank you so much for the links for itchy dogs, I'll definately be checking it out as the poor boy is going demented with it all.
Lisa X
I love old letters and papers, their smell alone can simply conjure up images of days gone by! What an amazing piece of history for you and your family to still have hold of, thank you so much for sharing!
ReplyDeleteVictoria xx
What an amazing story. I have some old letters from my Grandparents, and a few lovely autograph books from my husbands side of the family they are priceless.
ReplyDeleteHugs,
Meredith
Thanks for sharing these. I shall imagine your great great uncle singing Welsh songs as in that old film. I love old letters, old photos. Tell us more about being a biographer, please.
ReplyDeleteWhat remarkable treasures! How lucky you and your family are.
ReplyDeleteSuch treasures Annie, I am beyond words. Thank you so much for sharing.
ReplyDeleteWonderful post. I just love the handwriting - looks like becoming a lost art which is such a shame I think.
ReplyDeleteI so enjoyed your post today. I think family history is so important. I can remember a time when I did not feel that way but as I've gotten older I appreciate the fact that my Mom does genealogy. I can remember both my Grandmothers and the happy times spent with them. My Grandmother Broyles showed me how to crochet when I was small and my Mom reinforced that in my teens. I still crochet today. I inherited RA from my Grandmother Broyles which I wish she hadn't given me but I understand now what she went through and how hard it must have been 50 years ago to deal with. Your blog today touched me. These are wonderful treasures and I am so glad they will be preserved for future generations.
ReplyDeleteSharon
What an emotional but beautiful post. Thank you for sharing your family history, and with such elegant and calming photo's too.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the kind comment that you left on my post. I hope you are enjoying your weekend so far,
Louise xx
I just had to come back and add another comment. I have been reading your archives to catch myself up on your blog. I must say you are an amazing person. I too have RA, high blood pressure, a wonky thyroid, a cholesterol problem, etc. I have had high BP for a while but the diagnosis of RA really floored me. My grandmother was bedridden with RA and this was the first image that popped into my mind. The doctor assured me that many advances have been made over the last 50 years but still when I am having trouble walking or working with my hands, I see her sitting on her bed unable to walk, unable to use her hands for the simplest tasks. I have had several days lately of fatigue and pain but I muddle through to the next "feeling good" stage. You will be in my thoughts. Love, Sharon
ReplyDeleteBeautiful Copperplate. I learnt Calligraphy quite a few years ago and dabbled in Copperplate, such elegant writing. No time to do it these days as it is quite time consuming for me (a perfectionist) Lovely family history to look back upon.
ReplyDeletexx Sandi
Dearest Annie
ReplyDeleteI cannot tell you how much my heart skipped a bat whilst reading this post. I have associations with Pietermartizburg having studied for my 4 year degree there and worked there for a year and a half afterwards. King Williams town is such an annual childhood memory of mine having visited my Uncle and aunt and cousins there every year as we travelled down to the Cape for our summer holidays and my Dad originally having come from East London on the coast. I still have family there now. As for Isandlawana well, all I can say is that it has to be the hottest place on earth...dry dry dry and you can see the heat rising from the earth. My association is very little with this place, I volunteered on an archeological dig out there ad we swam naked in the dam each ay to cool our bodies down. I was 20 t the time and it was fab only having the World BBC as company outside of the small group I was in. I also bought a very treasured piece of hand dyed and printed fabric from the women who live and trade there and made it into a dress which I wore a lot and hope that Alice might want to wear one day.
These letters, your history is so beautiful and heart felt. Thank you, thank you for sharing them, the paper, the words, the writing. It has touched me with pangs of home sickness xox Penelope
Oops sone typos there, I meant "beat" and not "bat" ;o)
DeleteWhat a treasure to have those letters! The timing of your post was strange, in that my husband just received in the post yesterday a bundle of letters his uncle had sent to relatives while he was flying with Bomber Command. The recipient's daughter had decided they were of more interest to my husband than they were to her. His uncle was killed while piloting his Halifax Bomber on a mission over Belgium.
ReplyDeleteOh Annie, the power of the handwritten letter. I so understand your mother's attachment. Makes me think of letters I received over the years and should have kept.
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely post - when I read 'Isandlwana' I almost felt cold... so sad, and so lovely to have these surviving.
ReplyDeleteMy brother has a wallet of my grandfather's, containing all the tiny sepia snapshots he took on the Western Front (like all our family, he was photography mad), the Dispatches he was mentioned in, even cuttings from his local papers reporting his medal/s - but best of all, a handwritten transcript of a signal, taken down in his handwriting. It's the message telling everyone to stop firing at 11 a.m.
I hadn't thought of a regimental museum... We obviously want to keep the originals, but they'd be a great addition to an archive. I must borrow the wallet from my bro.
This is all history that was never taught on my side of the pond...and sadly so. It sounds like a fascinating story (albeit written by a very good story teller!!!). Thanks for sharing some of your family---and those beautiful letters....what ever happend to penmanship????? The writing is frame-able!!!
ReplyDeleteSo fascinating, Annie! What a treasure trove those letters are, and wonderful that they will eventually be preserved in a museum for future historians to use in their research. Wonderful (though very sad) story too.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy your week....hope you have had the sunshine we had here today :)
Helen x
Two things struck me when I read this. The first - your are truly holding a piece of history in your hands here, when you think of how far those letters have come, both in miles and years. The second - people had such incredibly beautiful hand writing! Such neat, uniformly cursive script. I think it is a dying art. My grandmother had the most beautiful handwriting (she still does although it is shaky now and she only writes the odd thing) and i fear it puts my handwriting to shame! Another fabulous post Annie, thank you. x
ReplyDeleteIt seems like such a different world, but in reality it's not that very long ago at all really.
ReplyDeleteI love that these kind of things are preserved - it's the romantic in me -though I know it wasn't romantic for the folks that lived it, back in the day. I do wonder sometimes though when watching these 'turn back the clock' programmes which things will be relished and looked back on fondly from our day and age.
Nina xxx
If only our history lessons had included things like this.
ReplyDeleteItems treasured by one generation can become valueless years down the line when nobody remembers the writer or recipient so that when clearing out an aged relative's belongings it's easy to sort through letters, read them and then discard them, which I imagine has been the case with thousands of letters such as these. Thanks for sharing them.
Annie, I'm pea-green!!! How wonderful to have such letters.
ReplyDeleteI'm so touched with your Family's letters...I was crying...reading these words from one soul to other.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Natasha
I just happened to stumble upon your blog today, and I feel it was fate. I have always been a history enthusiast, and the letters between your family members truly touched me. Thank you for sharing, and I am so happy to have "found you".
ReplyDeleteJennifer (Buckhannon, West Virginia, US)
Hello Annie....I came over to your blog at the weekend but wanted to read this post in a quieter moment when I could give it the time it deserves..Your letters are such treasures...both very moving and fascinating too. I often think that there is something about a hand written letter that makes you feel so close to the writer no matter how long ago it was written. There really is nothing to compare with it. I'm not surprised your mum cannot bear to part with them..
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing and hope you have a lovely week,
Susan x
Such a beautifully-written, poignant and historically fascinating post, Annie. There is something about the immediacy and personal contact of handwritten letters which we will only truly appreciate when we've all stopped writing them. I look forward to seeing your biographies in print one day.
ReplyDeleteHow fascinating. It is strange when something reaches out over the decades and touches you like this.
ReplyDeleteAnnie, this is just so beautifully conveyed it has brought a lump to my throat. In transcribing the letters written to your great-great grandfather by his brother, Private John Hall, his fateful story has become alive and immediate, echoing down the years and generations. Such sacrifices made. Isandlwana - the very name makes one shiver.
ReplyDeleteOur family too have such a treasured box of letters and momentos but as you say, more of that another time!
As one who loves history, biography and even obituaries, this post has been a privilege to read. Thank you.
Jeanne
x
Annie,
ReplyDeleteI don't know how I missed this post. I love researching my family history and think it is wonderful how you have such personal documents that I have been preserved and kept safe within your family. The story like in my families is so sad but feels even more so for knowing more about the man who wrote it and his feelings and wishes and life.
Sarah x
I feel quite touched..
ReplyDeleteI picked up a letter in charity shop that begins "Dear Brother.." and feel ambivalent about owning it. Better in safe hands than not I suppose.
Aren't these the most precious heirlooms Annie. I wonder what we will leave 100 or more years from now? As has been said by others emails, tweets, blog posts etc just don't have the same resonance as these beautifully penned letters and who among us regularly writes proper letters anymore. I've been encouraging Amy to write a journal of her summer - mainly for her future self to reminisce over and I shall be even more encouraging after reading this post x
ReplyDeleteMy husband loved military history, particularly this period in time, when I read the post I thought to myself I must make Mik read this, he would find it fascinating, then I realised silly me. Mik passed away nearly six years ago and I still haven't parted with his military history books, somewhere I have a book that he borrowed from a library in england about 21 years ago about the zulu wars (we have lived in Australia for 20 years), I will find it and read it again now it will be made all the more 'real' after reading those wonderful letters. I wonder if all the letters we sent to the UK about our life living in the rainforests of north queensland in a half built house will be read by our descendants in a hundred years.
ReplyDeleteJan
(PS: the library in the UK had an amnesty around 15 years ago and we got a relative to go in and explain that the book had accidently got packed with our belongings, we were lucky and they had already cancelled the book so we got to keep it).
Letters are such a window onto individuals lives aren't they. I only copied some of the contents of the letters John Hall wrote; he was often preoccupied with asking for news of various folk from home, and was desperate to be sent a 'likeness' of his brother's wife, my great-great-grandmother, who he had never met as the relationship had begun after he left the UK. Some of those very personal bits are what my family value most, and I'm sure your family will cherish the letters they have describing your lives in an exotic far away place.
DeleteEnjoy your reading x
Oh my that was heart wrenching knowing what was ahead. I didn't know you were a biographer...one of my favorite genres to read. To me true life is so much more interesting than anything anyone could ever make up.
ReplyDeleteWhat fascinates me too is the beautiful handwriting of that era. What happened to us? Why don't we write like that anymore? I know my Mother was ambidextrous and wrote beautiful script. In those days, in the States anyway, they were taught The Palmer Method of handwriting. I think they need to reinstate it as I can barely decipher most of my adult children's handwriting or most people's. Anyway, I digress, but thank you for sharing such a wonderful part of your family and world history with us as sad as it was.