“I think it quite right I should go home”
December 1914 William to Gwendoline Bragg
This is the last letter we have from William on his North American lecture tour. While he is obviously finding the trip very interesting and expresses regret that Gwendoline could not come, his thoughts are very much at home. He’s keen to take the first available boat as he’s very worried that he’ll miss seeing his son Robert before he leaves for the front.
Buffalo Railway Station
My dearest Gwennie,
I write you letters from queer places. I am on my way from Toronto to Ithaca to lecture there at Cornell land? I hear there are three letters waiting me at Ithaca from you, sent on from Prudence. I got a wire from Sadler[?] yesterday saying I had better not prolong my stay. A great many places have asked me to lecture, but I think it quite right I should go home. So I am going to get a berth on some boat on Saturday next. I expect the Lusitania will be the best.
They work me very hard when I go round this way. I gave three lectures in Toronto in 24 hours. However they pay well enough. I am making quite a small pile. It is pouring wet now & not very nice travelling.
I am afraid Bob has gone, I see that so many territorials are on their way to the front. The news still seems pretty good. Dear old soul I will be with you again, & very glad to be, soon after you get this letter.
I am quite well: and everybody is most awfully kind. We should have had a glorious trip you and I if we had been able to come together. It is like a bad dream.
Dear old soul. I am quite all right getting round this way. I have two more lectures to give, Cornell & Columbia. I must post this now for fear I miss the mail, but I will write again in Ithaca on the chance that you get it before I arrive. My dearest love to you. Now I must go.
Will
Photo courtesy of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. RI MS WLB/95f/4
Notes and General Information
Another quick letter in order to send some information back before he sets out. It’s clear that he feels that it is important to get home to his family sooner rather than later. Possibly there would have been news of regiments heading out to the front but what he may not have known is that around this time Robert had left his cavalry unit and applied for a commission in the Royal Field Artillery. In the event he wasn’t sent out for another six months.
The Lusitania which Bragg mentions was one of the largest and fastest passenger ships of her day. She was sunk by a German U-boat in May 1915 with the loss of over a thousand lives. While the ship was nominally a passenger ship, she had also been carrying munitions and supplies for the war effort. However, the loss of so many lives, including 128 American’s caused outrage in the United States and probably helped convince the country to finally join the war on the Allied side in 1917. As a random aside, her sister-ship, the Mauritania, was in action by 1915 as a hospital ship, bringing the wounded home from Gallipoli.
