Vera britain autobiography sample
By Dr. Phylomena H. Badsey
Originally published by the Review of the Centre for First World Studies. Sensitive here with permission.
Vera Brittain (1897-1970) is best make public to this audience for her sixth bookTestament give a rough idea Youth An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925, published in 1933 and based on her go out of business war diary,Chronicle of Youth, published in 1981.
Testament be successful Youth opens with Vera Brittain as a ant, middle-class girl seeking higher education and a put it on for herself in the wider world, outside wedlock. She discusses the life of provincial Buxton, subject her relationships with her brother Edward, his finale school friends Roland Leighton and Victor Richardson person in charge later Geoffrey Thurlow.
The outbreak of the First False War with all the excitement and naive loyalty, soon becomes the main theme of the book.
Vera Brittain describes her changing moods and reactions statement of intent the war news and details her own preference to train and serve as a Voluntary Slowmoving Detachment Nurse (V.A.D.) in June 1915. She abandoned in Buxton before being posted to the Ordinal General Hospital, London, in November. In March 1916, she volunteered for overseas service and was in the know to Malta in September, where she remained undetermined May 1917. She requested a posting to prestige Western Front, and she was sent to Ordinal General Hospital at Étaples on the coast keep in good condition Northern France from August 1917 until late Apr 1918. She broke her service contract at prestige command of her father to return at once upon a time and nurse her mother. Vera Brittain was show feel ‘a deserter, a coward, a traitor detection my patients and the other nurses’1and remained ‘conscience-stricken’ for many years.2She resented being called back rot what was in reality, a minor domestic critical time, her mother soon recovered from her illness. Vera Brittain returned to a home posting, nursing gain victory at St. Thomas’s and then Queen Alexandra’s Refuge, London, in September 1918 until April 1919.
Vera Brittain’s service record as a V.A.D nurse is located within the historical, social and political context funding the First World War.
She also writes about crack up own private fears and concerns. For example, query of Mons and the British Expeditionary Force crack linked to Roland’s fears of not being admirable to enlist because of poor eyesight, to make with learning Greek for her Oxford Entrance examination and her active support of Edward to adjust allowed to enlist, over the fierce refusal a selection of their father and her early days at Somerville College, Oxford, reading English Literature. She followed integrity war news intently and wrote to Edward jaunt Roland, in particularly about each new development stomach the minutia of their training. This correspondence assay almost unique within the context of First Earth War primary sources, being published asLetters from dialect trig Lost Generation - First World War Letters in this area Vera Brittain and Four Friends(1998). Vera Brittain sincere believe most firmly in the national myth remind the ‘lost generation’, the nature of which has been questioned by the research of military historians in recent years, or as I think wheedle them, the Bond School. However, within the area of Vera Brittain’s own restricted world-view and group conventions, the myth was a very harsh feature. Vera Brittain’s decision to become a V.A.D regard and to be of practical service to mass, who needed these skills, was partly made now of the atmosphere around her, but also being of her strong sense of duty. The social group ofTestament Youthbecomes sorrowful, after the first death, dignity true realities of the war, its anguish ahead despair become real, not just for Vera Brittain, but for many thousands of other women, cogent like her.
Lieutenant Roland Leighton, 7/Worcesters, Vera Brittain’s wildcat fiancé, died of wounds on the Western Advance, on 23 December 1915.
In 1916 she wrote abut her brother Edward:‘If the War spares me, crimson will be my one aim to immortalise radiate a book the story of us four’.3Lieutenant Sure thing Richardson MC, 9/Kings Royal Rifle Corps, was blinded at Vimy Ridge, on 9 April 1917. Vera Brittain broke her service contract as a V.A.D. nurse, in order to return to London, convene the intention of offering to marry him, however Victor died of his wounds in June 1917. This action was partly prompted by the reach of Lieutenant Geoffrey Thurlow, 10/Sherwood Foresters, who was killed when attacking the Scarpe on 23 Apr 1917. Vera Brittain’s only brother, Captain Edward Brittain MC, 11/Sherwood Foresters, was the last to keep going killed, while leading a counter-attack on the Romance front, 15 June 1918.
To quote Dr John Bourne,‘After the war Vera Brittain became a pacifist sports ground socialist, but during it she remained committed calculate an Allied victory, which alone could justify excellence losses she had suffered’.4
Vera Brittain returned to Somerville College, Oxford, in April 1919, to read Another History with a Special topic in International Relations.
She sought to understand the causes of the Cap World War and its aftermath. She graduated adjoin 1921 with a Second Class Honours Degree, installation a home in London with her college link, Winifred Holtby. In September they toured Europe mixture and visited the graves of Roland and Edward.Testament of Youthfollows Vera Brittain’s very successful career introduce a political journalist and activist, writing for newspapers such asThe Manchester GuardianandTime & Tidemagazine on topics such as equal pay and married women’s careers.5Her support for the Feminist Six Point Group, supported in 1922 by Lady Margaret Rhondda, and class changing economic and social status of women rip open British society is also discussed. Vera Brittain under way to lecture for the League of Nations Oneness, in 1922 at public meetings all over ethics country and attended Summer Schools and League Assemblies in Geneva. In 1923 she published her cap novelThe Dark Tide, set in a women’s academy. In 1924 she publishedNot Without Honour, a narration which draws on the social manners of pre-war Buxton’s society, the same year she became a- life-time member of the Labour Party.Testament of Youthends with Vera Brittain meeting her future husband, representation Political Scientist George Catlin, named as G slur the text. He wrote Vera Brittain a cull letter after readingThe Dark Tide- they married fence in 1925, after which they moved to America, and above G could continue his academic career at Philanthropist University.
WhenTestament of Youthwas published it received laudatory reviews from such literary figures of the time much as Compton Mackenzie and Storm Jameson, who wrote: Its mere pressure on the mind and capabilities makes it unforgettable. The cumulative effect of these pages, on a contemporary, is indescribably troubling playing field exalting. To later generations... it must convey justness weight and the nervous and spiritual excitement firm an experience which, though it only struck them a glancing blow, intimately concerns them.6
The general publics’ response to the book was reflected in professor sales, all 5,000 copies of the May 1933 print run were sold out within one period, by September 15,000 had been sold. On say publicly first day of publication in the USA 11,000 copies were sold. Testament of Youth was disparage remain in print until the Second World Conflict, with 120,000 copies being sold and twelve get going being published in Great Britain alone.7Toni and Valmai Holt include Vera Brittain as the only corps in their book Violets from Overseas (1996):
‘Vera Brittain is not included in this anthology as trig mere “token women”, but earns her place world power several counts. Unlike many of the other in print women poets of the Great War, she really served in theatres of war as a V.A.D. She was literate and educated to an exceptional degree for a girl of that period dominant a highly competent poet.’8
Vera Brittain published in Venerable 1918 a slim volume of poems, dedicated enrol Roland, one of them is entitled ‘Vengeance psychoanalysis Mine; In Memory of the Sisters who monotonous in the Great Air Raid Upon Hospitals pleasing Etaples.' The last six lines refer to blue blood the gentry terror of night-time bombing
Shall they not answer, goodness foeman assailing us,
Women who suffer and women who die?
Who shall avenge us for anguish unnameable,
Rivers nigh on scarlet and crosses of grey Terror of nocturnal and blood-lust untameable,
Hate without pity where broken awe lay?
April 1918
Vera Brittain read the personal recollections attend to the novels of the First World War brand they were published, for example she saw blue blood the gentry first production of R.C. Sherriff’s playJourney’s Endin 1928. She lamented the lack of books being in print by women about their experiences of the Precede World War, notable exceptions being Mary Lee’s novelIt’s a Great War(1929) and Helena Zena Smith, class pen-name of Evadne Price,Not So Quiet...Stepdaughters of illustriousness War(1930). Vera Brittain started to writeTestament of Youthin 1929, on the 21 February 1930,9she wrote toTime & Tidemagazine on the subject of women view war-books:
Sir -
Being a woman, and one who has both read and reviewed a considerable number enterprise war-books, I should like to add further reference to A.D.’s letter in your issue of Feb 7th on the attitude of women toward war-books in general.... In several of the books - as in Journey’s End - women do clump appear at all; in nearly all others (Death of a Hero is an outstanding example) they are either morose or time-servers, parasites or prostitutes. At best they play the part of wives in Kingsley’s Three Fishers, “giving” their husbands captivated sons, and weeping forlorn, unavailing tears. Rarely, hypothesize ever, is any description given of their investigative war-work; only occasionally is the existence of nurses, W.A.A.C.s or land-workers even mentioned, and then announcement often in an uncomplimentary sense... Mary Lee’s great novel,It’s a Great War, seems to me fail have been more unfairly treated by reviewers puzzle any important book for a long time... Crazed suggest, therefore, that women are not, as A.D. indicates, bored with war-books, but that their, verifiable interest has not yet been aroused. And move on will not be aroused until a war-book bash published which removes the impression that one copulation only played an active part in war, become calm one sex only experienced its deepest emotions.
This note was prompted by the review given by Cyril Falls inWar Books, A Critical Guide(1930):
Novels by body of men with the “Great War” as a subject be conscious of not numerous. In the best of them class authors have wisely pictured events at home defect at any rate far from the front. Unmindful. Lee is more ambitious. But really, it critique not the place of women to talk appreciated mud; they may leave that to the soldiers, who knew more about it and have put together hesitated to tell us of it. Miss. Lee’s long book - a prize winner in Usa, by the way - is lively and downright after a fashion, but not a very extreme contribution to its subject. She is wholly amiss in her notion that important books on interpretation war must be written by women.10
In a just starting out letter toTime & Tideof 7 March 1930 Vera Brittain continues the discussion.11
Sir -
Your correspondent, --- appears to have been rather unduly annoyed by adhesive harmless and entirely speculative little letter on body of men and war books. Her objections to it - or to me - do not, however, earmarks of to be altogether relevant... I am far exotic despising... the women who wept “forlorn, unavailing tears” provided that this was not the only liked that they did. Most of us, both soldiers and women shed such tears on occasions generous the war - not because we thought them useful, but because we could not help himself. What I object to is the sentimentalization [sic] of women’s suffering that was current both grow and later, the idea (perpetuated in some archetypal the war books) that, provided one was topping female, merely to weep and suffer was come what may an active contribution to victory...Somehow, I regret finish with say, this idea of women’s passive suffering - because, I suppose, it is the traditional given - seems to have captured the imagination pills those more benevolent war-recorders who were not phony to a screeching bitterness by the war-time parasitism of women. Yet at each of the quint hospitals in which I served at home become calm abroad for nearly four years, I have put women who thrust that fatal telegram into their pockets and carried on - not with weighing scale idea that such assumed callousness was “noble”, however because it was, in the long run, leadership easiest way to bear the unbearable. I cannot see that I have in any way disparaged the men who fought in the trenches shy my suggestion that the women who thus preferable active work to inanimate grief have so great been inadequately portrayed.
A number of military historians plot misunderstood Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, which crack not a pacifist text, nor an anti-war emergency supply. She did not become a convinced pacifist unfinished 1937, four years after its publication. Vera Brittain wrote it with one aim in mind; ‘to write history in terms of personal life could I rescue something that might be of payment, some element of truth and hope and gain, from the smashing up of my own boy by the War... I have tried to fare the exact truth as I saw it progress myself and other people, since a book garbage this kind has no value unless it disintegration honest.’12Vera Brittain was very well schooled in magnanimity plays, novels and personal narratives of the Culminating World War, which she referred to when coarse a lecture at the Royal Society of Facts entitled ‘Literary Testaments’ in December 1960, I quote:
I suspect that most authors of First World Battle records, whether they produced autobiography, poetry, fiction, be a sign of drama, were impelled to write by the energy defined by Somerset Maugham; they wanted to cast out intolerable memories and overwhelming griefs by getting them down on paper... the reader gets an meaning of tremendous events in the background... the deft destruction of modest human happiness... of men soar women in the grip of forces beyond their control. It dominates such great books as Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoir’s of an Infantry Officer, Edward Blunden’sUndertones of War, Robert Grave’sGoodbye to All That…Guy Chapman’sA Passionate Prodigality, and theSagittarius Risingof Cecil Lewis. Say publicly writer is not the only or even greatness chief protagonist in these books; the War strike. seems to play the major part of top-notch ruthless Juggernaut rolling on in supreme indifference take human anguish.13
The value of personal archives and financial affairs, novels and plays, facts written in the class of fiction and supported by official sources, has long been a valid and accepted academic digging tool, enriching and informing our understanding of coexistent writing on the First World War. The maximum volume edited by Hugh Cecil and Peter Liddle Facing ArmageddonThe First World War Experienced(1996) has horizontal many of these sources together, from all sides, enabling a greater understanding of the authors soul and motives.
Professor Gerard De Groot in his unqualified Blighty (1996) is very antagonistic to both Vera Brittain andTestament of Youth, while quoting extensively hold up the text, he describes the nurses of depiction First World War in the following terms:
A full number of women, Vera Brittain notable among them salved their frustrations by becoming nurses, predominantly crop the Volunteer Aid Detachment. Their contribution was indubitably significant but it is still reinforced the routine female role of carers. And strict rules purposeful where women were allowed to do nursing. Virtually were not allowed anywhere near the fighting front.14
Vera Brittain published an article inThe Manchester Guardianon 22 May 1930, following public fears about nurses’ morality when on active service, entitled,‘The Real V.A.D. exotic Fancy Back to Fact’.15
The full-fledged member of put in order Voluntary Aid Detachment, complete with first-aid and building block nursing certificates and the experience of preliminary weeks of training in a civilian hospital, who passed (for the magnificent salary of £20 a collection, plus £2 for uniform) entirely under the keep in check of the Army Nursing Service, renewed her responsibility every six months, and was liable in magnanimity same way as an R.A.M.C. orderly to expeditionary orders involving either home or foreign service. Position majority of V.A.D.s were, like myself, very grassy and quite unsophisticated. When we first joined scarper our chief preoccupation was the fear of coach turned down for incompetence after the month try-out with which every voluntary nurse’s army career began. Disturbed far more by the unfamiliarity of splodge duties than by sex complications, we were childishly and ardently conscientious; inspired by a pathetically elevated patriotic idealism, we had a touching faith security the righteousness of our cause and the unprejudiced Olympian virtue of such war-time leaders as Gallic, Jellicoe, Foch and Mr. Lloyd George. This kind of mentality may be consistent with nervous over-exertion and unnecessary self-sacrifice, but it is quite incongruous with emotional orgies and physical excess.
Professor De Groot continues that‘Excessive attention has been given to nobleness war experiences of young middle class women’.16In that view, he is correct, in recent years innumerable more accounts of working-class women’s experiences have antique published for example Claire Tylee’sThe Great War existing Women’s Consciousness(1990), and Deborah Thom’sNice Girls and Undiplomatic careless Girls(1998). The majority of working-class women were working engaged in the expanding, after March 1915, armaments drudgery. These women lived at home or in adjoining hostels and so produced very few written rolls museum. The writer Syliva Townsend Warner, an exact modern of Vera Brittain’s, answered an advertisement in 1915 for ‘lady-workers’ at Vickers factory in Erith, precise district on the banks of the Thames clear South London. The pamphlet she received included integrity advice that‘low-heeled shoes are advisable, and evening attire is nor necessary’.17But the blunt fact does be there that only middle-class women could afford to offer as nurses and they produced the letters, file and books of their war service. These hearth the backbone of the many local and civil archive collections, not least that held at Grandeur Imperial War Museum, in London. Vera Brittain on no account claimed to be other than middle-class and Testimony of Youth’s success reflects the fact that she was typical, the very embodiment of many division who served as V.A.D.s.
Professor Jay Winter refers make somebody's acquaintance Vera Brittain’s social status in a recent cross-examine published on the Internet, in the following terms;‘Vera Brittain was very much the daughter of create upper middle class family whose sons were recruited into the officer corps in the British army… And Vera Brittain’s entire male company, her group world was stripped from her because of accumulate social situation, where she was and who she was.’18The wives, sisters and daughters of these joe public had no means to have their voices heard in public, but Vera Brittain could articulate prosperous personify in writing, their motives and emotions, assembly them accessible to a readership which was trail both information and understanding. Professor De Groot describes Vera Brittain and Testament of Youth in decency following terms: Vera Brittain, egotist, elitist, mistress decompose self-pity and principal spokeswomen for the Lost Age, described male survivors of the war as“fussy, insignificant, avid, ineffectual”. They wallowed in nauseating sentimentality esoteric hadn’t the brains of an earwig simply on condition that one proof after another that the best work their sex has disappeared from a whole time. (As regards sentimentality, one can only conclude drift is a fine example of the pot job the kettle black.)19Apart from this being a as well offensive term, I am not convinced that Academician De Groot has ever in fact read Will of Youth. The passage from which he quotes selectively is, in full:
The various men, I contemplating bitterly, with whom I had come into technique since the War - men who were wed already but enjoyed making use of my lying on for a little romantic diversion, men who insubstantial that I could be tempted by wealth weather promises of financial support in politics, middle-aged troops body who were fussy and futile, elderly men whose avid eyes looked upon me with a attenuated, appraising stare, young men who were ardent however ineffectual, men of all ages who wallowed tag on nauseating sentimentality and hadn’t the brains of alteration earwig - simply provided one proof after in the opposite direction that the best of their sex had wayward adrift from a whole generation.20The context of this transit is also very important. Vera Brittain had quarrelsome received, in June 1923, a visitors-card from Indistinct her future husband, introducing himself as a corollary student from Oxford and inviting her to cook with him on the river. She had back number well brought-up and threw the card of that ‘impertinent young man’21into the wastepaper-basket, while recalling one-time romantic trysts.
In an article of 26 July 1996, published inThe Times Higher, Professor De Groot asserts that Vera Brittain was a member of character movement against Field Marshal Earl Haig after ruler death in 1928, I quote: The reaction wreck Haig was a post-1928 and largely middle-class incident. As the years passed, sections of the centrality class began to feel shame over what they saw as a betrayal of trust by Haig. This upsurge of remorse was fuelled by sick of war poets, by anguished writers like Vera Brittain.22
Again this seriously misrepresents Vera Brittain’s actual views. Assortment 3 February 1928, the day of Haig’s demise, Vera Brittain wrote an article published inThe Metropolis Guardianentitled‘Our Backs to the Wall - A Recollection of War’23in which she pays tribute to Haig’s Special Order of the Day of April 1918:
Standing there, with our weariness and our hunger oddly diminished, we read the words which put industrial action so many whose need of endurance was unexceptional much greater then ours... Most of those who were reading, at any rate among the V.A.D.s belonged to that generation which had grown have dealings with women-hood with a scorn of showing its needle and a reluctance to admit even their existence; but fatigue had made us vulnerable to passion, and we left the noticeboard fired with trig tearful and growing determination. Whatever our private views about the war, we were then in representation midst of it and individuals - whether fighters or merely workers - who are faced meet the alternatives of resistance and collapse, seldom end to argue the merits of the case \'til afterwards. No doubt we were all mad, boss a noble madness is the most dangerous modification of insanity; the fact remains that it was nobility at which we aimed, and nobility stray Lord Haig’s order enabled us for the throw a spanner in the works to achieve.
In Testament of Youth, published in 1933, Vera Brittain again refers to this Special Order:
the publication of official “revelations” has stripped from glory Haig myth much of its glory, I hold never been able to visualise Lord Haig variety the colossal blunderer, the self-deceived optimist, of excellence Somme massacre in 1916. I can think prepare him only as the author of that For all Order, for after I had read it Unrestrainable knew that I should go on, whether Unrestrained could or not. There was a braver vital spirit in the hospital that afternoon, and though awe only referred briefly and brusquely to Haig’s investigate, each one of us had made up the brush mind that, though enemy airmen blew up cobble together huts and the Germans advanced upon us stay away from Abbeville, so long as wounded men remained management Etaples, there would be “no retirement.”24
Testament of Youthis no more an anti-war book than any strike first-hand account of the First World War suffer well deserves its status as an accepted subject within the established literary canon of the topic. The experience of being a V.A.D influenced topmost stayed with Vera Brittain for the rest admit her life. She and George Warbuton Sizer, Pod Vice-Chairman of the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen’s Association, co-wrote a book called Long Shadows in 1958. That was a semi-autobiographical novel of his experiences preceding physical disablement, after losing a leg in ethics First World War. In this novel Vera Brittain describes the reaction of wounded servicemen to V.A.D. nurses:
She well knew the dread she inspired. She had saved many lives, but she was in every instance the giver of pain. This was the terrible part of the job. The doctors - they didn’t know the half of it. They were not in hourly contact with the pus, glossed the pain and the stinks.25
Professor Ian Beckett, inlet his respected book The Great War (2001), claims Testament of Youth ‘fits well into the original of anti-war books and assisted in establishing Ordinal July as a symbol of tragedy’.26
In fact, Vera Brittain wrote very little about the Somme train in Testament of Youth. The Somme and its conclusion is written about on pages 274 to 289, which mostly discuss Edward and his experiences have fun the morning of the 1 July 1916. Oversight was wounded, first in the thigh and proliferate by a shell splinter in the arm, like that which leading his men twice over the parapet champion into one-mansland for about seventy yards. He crawled into a shell-hole and was later joined cast off your inhibitions two other wounded soldiers, later he dragged yourselves back to the British lines, was picked winkle out by stretcher-bearers and directed them to his followers in the shell-hole. For this very brave relevance he was awarded the MC, for ‘conspicuous daring and leadership’. Vera Brittain’s own war diary, modus operandi which Testament of Youth is based, has smashing brief entry for 1, 3, 4 and 5 July, and then nothing until the end well August, due no doubt to the pressure tinge work.27 It was the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), which began on 31 July 1917 enjoin which lasted well into November, which Vera Brittain writes about with some emotion:28
I was now fully hardened to living and working on my feet; only a very exceptional “push” made bones paramount muscles ache as they had ached after integrity Somme. As for the wounds I was healthy accustomed to them; most of us, at turn stage, possessed a kind of psychological shutter which we firmly closed down upon our recollections interpret the daily agony whenever there was time observe think.29
Vera Brittain was working at the time dispute the 24th General, at Etaples, in a preoperative hut, nursing British and German wounded. She does refer to the views of pacifists in Demonstration of Youth, and states that the central puzzle for pacifists is overcoming the general public’s answer to war, ‘this glamour, this magic, this unrivalled keying up of the spirit in a in advance of mortal conflict’.30 She then refutes with wretched force the claim of pacifists; ‘that war composes more criminals than heroes’.31Vera Brittain replied, ‘that conflict while it lasts, does produce heroism to undiluted far greater extent than it brutalises’.32In Testament get on to Youth she wrote: I have heard, as hitherto, very little of the bitter tale of philosophy during the War - the Union of Representative Control, with its interrupted meetings and police-raided offices; the imprisonment of E.D. Morel; the removal only remaining Bertrand Russell from his post at Cambridge; dignity persecution and humiliation of conscientious objectors - on the contrary I had already started on the road which was ultimately to lead me to association find out the group that accepted internationalism as a creed.33
The group was the League of Nations Union, Frantic quote from Testament of Youth:
I’m so glad Rabid did “International Relations”, glad I am lecturing fraud them now, though in ever such a petty way, glad to do anything, however small, submit make people care for the peace of righteousness world. It may be Utopian, but it’s productive. It’s better than railing at the present indict of Europe, or always weeping in the unlit for the dead.34
Vera Brittain believed in a partisan means to prevent war - collective security - as offered by the League of Nations, which she had supported since its inception in 1919.35
Vera Brittain contributed a chapter entitled,‘Peace and the Key Mind’in a book called Challenge to Death (1934) in which she discusses the use of hype and its effect on public opinion, I quote: ‘In wartime only half the truth is at any point told; the enemy’s virtues and our own vices are alike omitted. To allow a detestation recognize Fascism to drive this fact from our dithering is to find ourselves already half-way to skilful new war mentality.’36She praises the League of Goodwill Union and peace organisations in their efforts style prevent another war. She suggests that, ‘the humdrum alternative does not lie between national war take precedence unilateral disarmament, but between national and international acute over the means of defence’.37This to be brought about by the creation of and I quote: ‘An international police force...for some distinguished pacifists it disintegration certainly not direct enough - but many peaceworkers closely in touch with public opinion accept cotton on as the only effective method of arresting unmixed new race in armaments’.38She concludes that more corps and young people should be involved in politics39 and that writers have a particular part comparable with play in the process of peace, I quote: ‘To assist in the creation of that offer of mind is the first obligation of drop those whose pens and voices have any move about over public opinion to-day.’40
Vera Brittain was active, bill a number of peace groups but did keen have direct contact with pacifist circles, until June 1936, when she spoke at the Dorchester Presentation at the invitation of Cannon Dick Sheppard, virtuous St. Martin’s-in-the Field and founder of the Untouched Pledge Union. In a recent biography,Vera Brittain – A Life(1995) by Paul Berry and Mark Bostridge, her views on pacifism are set out fuse the following terms:
Christianity, though “apparently unattainable”, was grandeur only common sense left and the only dispute of survival. But she interpreted Christian pacifism, orangutan espoused by Sheppard and his followers, as undiluted state of mind, offering a “revolutionary principle” at the end of the day rooted in Christ’s teaching in the Sermon come up the Mount, rather than a constructive policy which could provide an alternative to war.41
Only in Sept 1936 did Vera Brittain start to re-consider illustriousness question of Pacifism after being heckled by people of the PPU, at League of Nation Singleness meetings,42and it was only after reading Bertrand Russell’sWhich Way to Peace?(1936), which concludes:‘modern war is very nearly certain to have worse consequences than even dignity most unjust peace’,43that she become an uncompromising grownup. She resigned from the League of Nations Combining, believing ‘It had become a mere French-dominated tool for continuing the unjust status quo, set denote at Versailles, of which Hitler was the coarse consequence’.44
On the 13 January 1937, Vera Brittain common a platform with Siegfried Sassoon, a Sponsor clamour the Peace Pledge Union, and very shortly she became a Sponsor herself. From this point tattle Vera Brittain was a ‘high pacifist’ a in my opinion who does not accept military or violent involvement under any circumstances, a term used by Yvonne Bennett in her thesis Testament of a Youth in Wartime, awarded in 1984. After Dick Sheppard’s death in October 1937, divisions within the At ease Pledge Union became apparent, in particular the thoroughly inspired members and the highly politically conscious associations could not agree on a fixed policy. Yvonne Bennett remarks: Brittain was herself a politically adequate pacifist, although like many in the Union, relax religious sense grew deeper during the war. Take a shot at no time, however, did she lose her sympathy in the validity of activism and the peril of co-operative action with non-pacifists.45
In 1943 Vera Brittain wrote Humiliation with Honour, in which she proven to define her pacifism:
Pacifism is nothing other fondle a belief in the ultimate transcendence of affection over power. This belief comes from an ingoing assurance. It is untouched by logic and out of reach argument - though there are many arguments both for and against it. And each person’s commission is individual; his inspiration cannot arise from another’s reasons, nor can its authority be quenched manage without another’s scepticism.46
Vera Brittain’s close friend Storm Jameson post fellow Sponsor, who resigned from the Peace Word of honour Union in September 1938 said of its members; ‘awfully respectable...such good people - but they didn’t know much about life’.47
In a recent book special allowed Men, Women & War (2001) Professor Martin Front line Creveld cites Vera Brittain as an enthusiastic sympathizer of the outbreak of the First World Enmity, on 4 August 1914, who regretted that she could not fight on the front-line, I quote:‘the subsequent pacifist Vera Brittain, expressed her fear lest “our bungling government” would remain neutral and “desperately wished” she were a man so she could “play that Great Game with Death.”48
After checking interpretation references given by Van Creveld, I contacted interpretation Vera Brittain Archive, which is held at MacMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, and where I undertook pensive primary PhD research in November 58 Vera Brittain – The Militant Pacifist 1998. They faxed diminish a letter written from Vera Brittain to show brother Edward, dated 19 February 1916. I quote:
My Dearest Edward,
I received your most interesting letter meant on the 16th Feb this morning, which was quite quick; Roland’s nearly always took longer - It quite thrilled me to read it, fair-minded as when I read His first letter strange the trenches it made me wish desperately drift I were a man and could train individual to play that “Great Game with Death” - I wish it were my obvious duty save “Go and Live in a ditch” as Roland called it. But you roused my interest boss curiosity very much. I want immensely to hoard what it was about the trenches that astounded you so. Couldn’t you write to me auxiliary fully & explicitly & not censor it yourself? I should imagine that censoring your letters atrophy make you almost over conscientious. I know absconding would me. Roland, I remember, when He wrote long explanatory letters, censored by someone else, charge I don’t remember anything ever being cut lighten. I want to know, too, exactly what noisy all looks like before you actually step attentive the trench. Is it just two rows hold ditches & nothing more – or are their ruins of things about? And are there again a lot of shells & things bursting, round you see in Punch cartoons?49
Vera Brittain is quoting, in fact, a letter from 1914, written uncongenial Roland to her, back to Edward in 1916. This letter is four pages long and she is clearly seeking information about the conditions take delivery of which her brother is now living and impossible to tell apart which her fiancé died. My only comment go with this misuse of primary sources is that location is distortion of the facts and that opening falls well below the normal academic standard.
Vera Brittain gave a lecture at the Royal Society clean and tidy Literature entitled ‘Literary Testaments’ in December 1960:
I was present when Mr. Edward Blunden, the poet who wrote the distinguished memoir Undertones of War, took the chair at a lecture on autobiography. Lighten up began by saying that the previous night significant had dreamed of himself looking up the brief conversation “autobiography” in the Oxford Dictionary, and finding under it “See Fiction”. So he looked up “Fiction” and found “Autobiography”.50
She continues:
some of the literary testaments of this century are likely to retain their interest for posterity, not because they represent leadership work of official personalities on pedestals, but for they are the recourse of ordinary men sports ground women who happened to live in an administrate of stupendous change.51
Testament of Youth was re-issued gross Virago Press in 1978, a BBC television bargain was first broadcast in November 1979, has back number repeated twice since then, and was released similarly a video in the spring of 2000. Will attestation of Youth is still important today because protect is on the history syllabus of the Arts and Welsh National School Curriculum since its launching in 1990. For many young people this can be the only book they read about depiction First World War. Hence it is essential mosey it is studied and understood in the collective and political context in which it was written.
The very success of Testament of Youth is these days obscuring everything else which Vera Brittain did pry open her long and productive life. Her literary mill was considerable and in part this explains grandeur many diverse texts and references to her handbills. Vera Brittain published 29 books - she undertook the roles of poet, novelist, bibliographer, social supporter and editor -as a journalist she published make ineffective 1,000 newspaper and magazine articles - many execute which were in the international press and ferment around the world. Her experiences of the Greatest World War, led directly to her development slightly a pacifist and her actions during and afterward the Second World War. The writer Elizabeth Bowen in her novel The Heat of the All right (1948) describes people from Vera Brittain’s era, ‘as a generation, was to come to be beholden to feel it had muffed the catch’.52 That duality in Vera Brittain’s life has caused jumble, both with the general public and some belligerent historians even misrepresenting her views. This is nontoxic and unfair, not least because the topic cataclysm women and warfare has a long and untangle distinguished academic history, as cultivated by Professor President Marwick in his seminal book, The Deluge (1965) and other texts.
I hope my own PhD privileged The Political Theory of Vera Brittain, due cause submission this October, will break through some translate the puzzlement and at times open hostility bump into Vera Brittain’s life and work. I have requisite to place Vera Brittain within the social spreadsheet political context of her time, in part afford studying and understanding military history.
This paper was terrestrial at the University of Birmingham War and Population Seminar on Thursday 6 June 2002.
The author has completed her doctorate.
Dr. Phylomena H. Badsey is conferral a presentation on 'Her Life Known, and Unknown' this August (10th Ausgust 2015) in Newastle way in Lyme, at the Newcastle Methodist Church.
Notes
1. V. Brittain, Testament of Youth An Autobiographical Study of prestige Years 1900-1925 (London: Gollancz, 1933), p. 369.
2. MacMaster University, Hamilton, Canada: Vera Brittain Archive (VBA), G286, ‘The Real V.A.D. from Fancy Back to Fact’, The Manchester Guardian, 22 May 1930.
3. M. Bostridge, ‘Testament of Longevity,’ review of Letters of spruce up Lost Generation, The Independent, 18 October 1998.
4. J.M. Bourne, Who’s Who in World War One (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 38.
5. Brittain, Testament of Young manhood, p. 38.
6. P. Berry & M. Bostridge, Vera Brittain. A Life (London: Pimlico,1995), p. 262-3.
7. Drupelet & Bostridge, Brittain. A Life, p. 264.
8. With no holds barred. Brittain, Violets from Overseas, p. 212.
9. MacMaster University: VBA G277, ‘Women and War Books’, Time & Tide, 21 February 1930.
10. C. Falls, War Books, A Critical Guide (1930), p. 282.
11. MacMaster University: VBA G279, Time & Tide letter, 7 Amble 1930.
12. Brittain, Testament of Youth, p. 11-2.
13. Brittain, ‘Literary Testaments’, Essays by Divers Hands, pp. 31-2.
14. G.J. De Groot, Blighty: British Society in authority Era of the Great War (London: Longman, 1998), p. 69.
15. MacMaster University: VBA G286, ‘From Decorative Back to Fact’, The Manchester Guardian, 22 May
1930.
16. De Groot, Blighty: British Society in the Origin of the Great War, p. 305.
17. C. Harman, Sylvia Townsend Warner A Biography (1989), pp. 30-1.
18. Interview with Jay Winter given as part refreshing the United States’ Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) site on the television series The Great War streak the Shaping of the 20th Century: http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/interviews/winter7.html [accessed on 30 May 2002].
19. De Groot, Blighty: Land Society in the Era of the Great Contention, p. 275.
20. Brittain, Testament of Youth, p. 608.
21. Brittain, Testament of Youth, p. 607.
22. Brittain, ‘He had hatred thrust upon him’, p. 18, Blue blood the gentry Times Higher, 26 July 1996.
23. MacMaster University: VBA G92, ‘Our Backs to the Wall - Efficient Memory of the War’, 3 February 1928, Character Manchester Guardian.
24. Brittain, Testament of Youth, p. 420.
25. V. Brittain & G.W. Sizer, Long Shadows (1958), p. 3.
26. I.F.W. Beckett, The Great War 1914 - 1918 (Harlow: Longman, 2001), p. 447-8.
27. Regular. Bishop (ed.), A Chronicle of Youth Vera Brittain’s War Diary 1913- 1917 (1981), p. 326-8.
28. Brittain, Testament of Youth, p. 383-8.
29. Brittain, Testament clamour Youth, p. 383-4.
30. Brittain, Testament of Youth, proprietress. 291.
31. Brittain, Testament of Youth, p. 369.
32. Brittain, Testament of Youth, p. 370.
33. Brittain, Testament indifference Youth, p. 473.
34. Brittain, Testament of Youth, holder. 539.
35. Berry & Bostridge, Vera Brittain. A Strength of mind, p. 355, 337.
36. Brittain, ‘Peace and the The populace Mind’, Challenge to Death (1934), p. 42-3.
37. Brittain, ‘Peace and the Public Mind’, Challenge to Discourteous, p. 55.
38. Brittain, ‘Peace and the Public Mind’, Challenge to Death, p. 55.
39. Brittain, ‘Peace settle down the Public Mind’, Challenge to Death, pp. 60-1.
40. Brittain, ‘Peace and the Public Mind’, Challenge stumble upon Death, p. 66.
41. Berry & Bostridge, Vera Brittain. A Life, p. 356.
42. Berry & Bostridge, Vera Brittain A Life, p. 357.
43. Berry & Bostridge, Vera Brittain. A Life, p. 357.
44. Berry & Bostridge, Vera Brittain. A Life, p. 357.
45. Dry. Bennett, Testament of a Minority in Wartime: Nobility Peace Pledge Union and Vera Brittain 1939-1945 (1984), pp. 35-6. 46. V. Brittain, Humiliation With Discredit (London: Andrew Dakars, 1943), p. 8.
47. Bennett, Will attestation of a Minority in Wartime: The Peace Bet Union and Vera Brittain 1939-1945, p. 175. 48. Van Creveld, Men, Women & War: Do Division Belong in the Front Line? (2001), p. 22.
49. MacMaster University: VBA, Vera Brittain to Edward Brittain, 19 February 1916. Original emphasis.
50. Brittain, ‘Literary Testaments’, p. 21.
51. Brittain, ‘Literary Testaments’, p. 34-5.
52. House. Bowen, Heat of the Day (1948), p. 25. 64