In the following days, Ettie and Willie stayed by Julian’s bedside willing him to get better. As Ettie fed him brioches with Devonshire clotted cream he said to her, very slowly in a weak voice, ‘The right way to eat is to swallow enormous mouthfuls of food, washed down by huge gulps of liquid.’ When she did not disagree, he was quite disappointed and, referring to their old battles, said, ‘Why don’t you argue, Mummie? I would not give up one of our ructions.’28
Julian, like his mother, had a strong Christian faith and during this time he prayed that he would be able to bear the pain. On Whit Sunday morning, 23 May, he had Communion with his family. When the doctors saw him at 9.30 a.m. they found further inflammation of the brain and said that a second operation might give him a narrow chance of recovery. He was operated on at 11 a.m.
Afterwards, he was in terrible pain and his left arm was paralysed. His parents stayed with him night and day. The next day he seemed better and asked if his doctors had thought he was dying. ‘Did they think I was going off the rocker?’ he asked Ettie, adding, ‘I thought I was; but now I’ve never been so well, and I’ve never been so happy.’29
In those final days, while his father rubbed his paralysed hand, Ettie read aloud poetry, psalms and hymns he had known since he was a child. On the Monday he clasped his mother’s hand tightly, she said, ‘That is what you do when you are asleep, and think that I am going away.’ He replied, ‘No, it is only affection.’ At times he groaned, but he reassured them that it was ‘only contentment’. Ettie wrote, ‘The thought that he was dying seemed to go and come, but he was always radiantly happy and he never saw any of the people he loved look sad. Never once through all those days did he say one word of complaint or depression.’30
On Tuesday, 25 May, he deteriorated. He talked a little, and then said to Ettie, ‘Hold my hand until I go.’ A shaft of sunlight came in through the darkened window and fell across his feet. He smiled at his mother and said ‘Phoebus Apollo’, referring to the god of the sun whose irradiating powers have not yet separated from destructiveness.31 At 2.30 p.m. he said his father’s name and snapped his fingers for a cigarette but could not smoke it. He never spoke again, and died the following afternoon. Although he could not talk, he knew his parents to the very end and, just before he died, he moved his mother’s hands to his lips. Ettie wrote, ‘At the moment that he died he opened his eyes a little, with the most radiant smile that they had ever seen on his face.’32
On 28 May Julian was buried in the soldiers’ cemetery on the hill above Boulogne, looking over the battlefields. His grave was filled with green oak leaves and wild flowers. As she stood in the wind on the hillside, Ettie refused to wear mourning, it was a symbol of her defiant stand against grief. The following day she was staying nearby in the Forest of Hardelot, trying to write to Billy, when she suddenly looked up to see him there beside her. Ettie wrote, ‘It was almost like seeing a vision […] Julian and he had been like one person, but he did not seem to have a thought that was not of faith and triumph.’33 Billy stayed with them for three hours but then had to go back to the Front. Ettie wrote that it was ‘almost impossible to let him go’.34 She never saw him again.
After Julian’s death, Billy wrote a letter to their friend Norah Lindsay which perfectly captured his brother’s complex character and helps to explain his attitude to war and death:
You know all the mysticism and idealism and that strange streak of melancholy which underlay Julian’s war-whooping, sun-bathing, fearless exterior. I love to think that he has attained that perfection and fullness of life for which he sought so untiringly. I seem to hear him cheering me on in moments of stress here with even more vivid power. There is no one whose victory over the grave can be more complete.35
Billy was inspired by Julian and wanted to live up to his example; like him, he was ready to die for his country. His fellow soldiers noted his fearlessness during attacks. He spoke of death as ‘a gateway, not a barrier, and a path I am sure to joy and freedom’.36 He wrote to the mother of a friend who had been killed, ‘Death is such a frail barrier out here, men cross it so smilingly and gallantly every day, one cannot feel it as a severing in any way. Pray that I may bear myself bravely when the burning moment breaks.’37
Two months after Julian’s death, and only a mile away from where his brother was wounded, that moment came. Billy was killed leading his platoon in a charge near Hooge on Friday, 30 July. As he led his men into the tremendous fire from machine guns he knew he faced almost certain death. He was killed instantaneously.
Ettie responded to the death of her sons in the same way she had reacted to other tragedies in her life. She turned to her Christian faith and stuck to her positive creed of ‘Ettyism’. Her courage and refusal to wallow in self-pity made her a role model for other bereaved mothers. Her friend Mary Wemyss wrote to her imagining these women as an army led by Ettie. She explained that there was ‘the double column’, the sons who fought and the mothers ‘who have to give their all and sacrifice their dearest hopes and aspirations – with open hand and hearts – without looking back – without regret’. She told her friend, ‘Darling you are leading a Brave Battalion and if I am called – I pray I may not “fall out” from the ranks – but whatever way things go this I know, we are Comrades – once and for all, comrades now and for ever.’38
The relationship between Mary and Ettie shows the importance of this camaraderie between mothers. Although they responded to the loss of their sons in different ways, they always supported each other and offered sympathy and love. Mary wrote to Ettie when Julian was wounded, ‘Of course you will know what I feel for you – as you would for me, elemental mothers – like you and me and life-long friends like you and me – don’t need much to explain!’39
Once Mary heard that Julian had died, she immediately wrote to Ettie. Perhaps because of her earlier experience of losing her 3-year-old son, Colin, she could identify with her friend. She wrote, ‘Alas there is absolutely no sorrow or pain like it and the mother’s wound is one that never really heals and with you the intimacy the love the close interdependence was so wonderful.’40 Mary’s letter expressed more pain than her bereaved friend’s reply. Ettie wrote to her in almost euphoric terms, ‘Darling, what curious words of Terror we weave about life and death, then they vanish away when reality draws very near.’ She described Julian and his comrades as like a heavenly army, ‘One could never feel fear of death again after seeing Julian die: after seeing them all out there marching so gaily across the river, with the trumpets sounding, to take up their “quick promotion” on the other side, and carry on what work may be required’.41
Recognising her friend’s need to remain the dominant partner in their relationship, Mary replied:
It seems as if you in your wonderful courage and faith were giving consolation to me! I feel I could not be so splendid – but if the supreme trial of parting with one’s own Beloveds come upon me –then I pray God I shall not falter or fail and if I stand firm – it will be you who have helped and led my footsteps.42
The strange dynamic between them continued once Ettie returned home. Mary offered to visit her at any time, day or night, but knowing Ettie’s need to appear strong, she claimed that she came to receive comfort rather than give it. Ettie replied that she wanted to tell her friend about ‘all the happiness and beauty’ of her last days with Julian and share ‘all the revelation of happiness and help now, his arms tight about one for evermore’.43 After seeing her, Mary described Ettie as ‘quite wonderfully calm, and upheld by a sense of Julian’s continued presence and love’.44 She seemed to show a remarkable immunity to grief, she still wore coloured clothes instead of mourning, refused to break down and would scarcely admit that she should be pitied at all. Mary’s daughter Cynthia Asquith wrote in her diary:
Can it last? One feels there must be a reaction to flatness and just the daily longing. The only thing is, she has got such marvellous powers of bluffing herself that she may succeed, and then, of course, her ab
normal sense of the importance of things will help. One would feel ‘What does it matter, to others, if I do break down and just give up?’ She will always feel it is of vital significance to keep her flag flying.45
At the end of July, Cynthia went to see Ettie for herself. She found her lying on a sofa in her sitting room looking ‘curiously unwound for her’, but later when they went for a walk together she seemed quite normal. She talked about Julian and also gossiped about other subjects, showing her humour and zest for life. Having spent time with her, Cynthia revised her earlier analysis, writing, ‘I loved her. She inspires one with tremendous admiration. There seems nothing strained and artificial about her marvellous courage, just a sort of alchemy which has translated tragedy to the exclusion of all gloom.’46
When Billy died, Ettie’s friends were anxious about how she would survive this second tragedy. Cynthia wondered how she could ‘face such utter desolation, such extinction of joy, glamour and hope’.47 At first, her life seemed to be ebbing away from her as all she did was cry, but then she decided to make a supreme effort to survive for her other children.48 In public, Ettie continued to put an unrelentingly positive slant on her loss. She wrote to Mary’s sister-in-law, Evelyn de Vesci, that ‘in the brave moments – which are the true moments – I feel happier now that Billy is gone too, even than when it was only Julian. Knowing that neither of them can ever be sad or lonely now.’ Her unshakeable belief in the afterlife sustained her and she liked to imagine her boys laughing together as they always did when they were alive.49
Her reaction sounds unbelievable to modern listeners but, as her biographer explains, to understand her reaction involves acknowledging the depth of her Christian faith. She was steeped in the Christian creed and firmly believed that Jesus had died and risen again, that he was her Saviour and would save her soul and bring eternal life. After her sons’ deaths, she told one friend that she had believed in the Resurrection all her life but now she knew it was true. She relied on daily prayer for her strength and even when she faced the most devastating tragedy she believed that it was her Christian duty to continue praising God.50 However, maintaining her equilibrium was not easy and it involved an extraordinary degree of self-control. Shortly after Billy’s death, she wrote to a friend, ‘What a knife edge among the mountains we walk on now – destruction on every side – eyes must never leave the hairbreadth of space just ahead.’51
Watching what was happening to her closest friend was a painful experience for Mary. Julian and Billy had grown up with her sons and she had loved them. It also constantly reminded her of what she might soon have to face. When, just months after Julian and Billy’s deaths, Mary lost her youngest son Yvo in October 1915, her eldest son Ego wrote:
I suppose the misery of people like Ettie breaks the shock. A woman with sympathy loses many sons before her own. If anything could dwarf one’s own tragedy, it is the agony of millions of others. But it doesn’t – it’s the other way about – one’s sluggish imagination is stimulated, and one merely realises for the first time other people’s miseries as well as one’s own.52
Helping each other provided a purpose for mothers who were left at home anxiously waiting for news. As soon as Ettie heard of Yvo’s death, she wanted to be with Mary at Stanway. She knew just what to say to ease the pain of her oldest friend. They cried together, Mary described ‘tears of love’ coursing down the cheeks of Ettie’s ‘grief-stricken and beautiful face and you deep in the waters of woe holding out both hands to help and save me: We save others, ourselves we cannot save – but others; the love of others saves us: and the God of Love saves us all.’53
The letters between the two women show that, although they were close friends and from a similar background, their response to their sacrifice was very different. While Ettie remained steadfast in her mantra of glory, Mary wavered between accepting the party line and questioning the assumptions of a glorious death. Shortly after Yvo’s death while trying to rush a German trench, she wrote to Ettie:
I don’t suppose it helped the military situation one scrap getting this trench – it may have been ordered for countless other reasons or for none, and they still seem to think it necessary to pit infantry against machine guns! But one must not make these sort of remarks – and they do not really affect us – you are so wonderful as regards the attitude and the aspect, the only one, we mothers must take!54
Ettie’s attitude was based in the assumption that God and England and honour were all facets of the same thing.55 Her belief in the sacredness of patriotism, the glory of battle and sacrifice was typical of many of her class and generation. The hundreds of letters of condolence written to her echoed many of her sentiments. However, as the slaughter continued, particularly after the Battle of the Somme in 1916, the idea of the futility and pity of war seemed to reflect the reality more closely.
Many of the younger generation in the Coterie ridiculed Ettie’s ethos. Raymond Asquith believed that the formulae of consolation were futile. When his closest friend lost his mother, he told him that between men of intelligence there was no room for the platitudes of Christianity nor the paradoxes of stoicism. The only advice he could give was that time took the edge off grief.56 During the war, members of the Coterie argued against the concept of a glorious death, claiming that it did not make any difference to your feelings whether your son was killed by a bullet or a bus. Even Cynthia Asquith, who admired Ettie’s ‘stubborn gospel of joy’ more than the Coterie’s cynicism, began to question the patriotic line.57 After her younger brother Yvo’s death she wrote:
Somehow with the others who have been killed, I have acutely felt the loss of them but have so swallowed the rather high-falluting platitude that it was all right for them – that they were not to be pitied, but were safe, unassailed, young, and glamorous for ever. With Yvo – I can’t bear it for him. The sheer pity and horror of it is overwhelming, and I am haunted by the feeling that he is disappointed.58
Unlike many of the British people who ‘hated the Huns’, Cynthia and Mary had a more sophisticated understanding of the conflict. Before the war they had often visited Germany and they had many German friends. They knew that the average German had gone to war with Britain through no choice of their own. They were able to distinguish between ordinary German soldiers and the criminals among the enemy who committed atrocities. Cynthia’s friend, the novelist D.H. Lawrence, captured this magnanimity in his portrayal of ‘Lady Beveridge’, who was modelled on Mary, in his novella The Ladybird. Despite what happened in the war, Lady Beveridge continued to love humanity and she refused to join the general hate. He wrote that she was not to be pitied for her sorrows because her life was now in her sorrows and in helping others cope with their grief.59
When Ego was killed in 1916, Ettie was one of the intimate circle Mary wanted at his memorial service. Afterwards, she wrote about her pleasure at seeing ‘dearest brave Ettie with the two swords in her heart’, as she was one of the few people ‘who knew and cared and understood’.60 Echoing her friend’s language, Ettie wrote about her feelings on that occasion, ‘The thought of Mary is like a sword, I would have given the soul out of my body to save her from this – one knows it too well, the long long pain, the crushing of the second blow.’ However, she added, ‘But I think her spirit is indestructible – and what held up Ego and Yvo, Julian and Billy, will hold her too.’61
Although Mary tried to remain strong for the younger generation, in her letters to her contemporaries she was candid. Unlike Ettie she explored her feelings of loss. She described ‘the shivering misery’ of waking up the first morning after receiving the news of her son’s death and having to drag herself back into a world that was forever changed. It was hard to continue with daily tasks ‘when the earth has opened and swallowed one up and avalanches have poured over one’s head, and one’s soul is wandering in a great and lonely void’.62 She admitted to feeling ‘battered and bewildered’ and often not knowing what she wanted to do.63
Although she felt
able to tell Ettie some of her true feelings, she was more open with other friends. It was as if she censored herself to protect her friend, in case the truth would shatter the carefully constructed shell Ettie had created to survive. Mary wrote to her sister-in-law, Evelyn de Vesci, ‘One’s mind is startled and paralysed and one’s soul faints so at the sense of mountains of piled up corpses/bodies – the young, the bright, the beautiful laid low.’64 Her grief affected how she saw herself. She feared that she created an oppressive atmosphere around her and was surprised anyone could bear to sit in a room with her. She wrote, ‘They would have to fly away from me – with shut eyes and closed nostrils – as from a charnel house if they felt about me – what often I feel.’65
As the loss of her boys undermined every aspect of her life, for a time Mary questioned conventional Christianity and, like many of the bereaved, she briefly dabbled in spiritualism. Many of her friends and family, including her mother and sister, Pamela, were evangelical about spiritualism and they firmly believed that communication with the dead was possible under certain conditions. However, Mary’s daughter Cynthia was very critical of mediums, who she believed exploited the grief of the vulnerable. In August 1916, a friend of Cynthia’s wrote to say that when they had been table turning at Knebworth, the name Yvo Charteris was spelt out. When a message was asked for, the sentence ‘I question duty night and day’ was given. They asked who it was for and the answer was ‘Mother’ and when asked where she was, the response came, ‘Ireland’, which was where Mary was staying. They asked if there was anything more, and ‘Kiss her’ was spelt out. Cynthia was not convinced, she wrote, ‘I don’t know why, but the whole thing is distasteful to me. It gives, I think, a sad idea of survival. To be hanging around unable, though longing, to communicate and having to use a middle-man in the form of some revolting medium – No! No! No!’66
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