of canteens, every cinema at every canteen filmed our bills night after night, and that, we thought, was the very last thing in the Art of Advertisement.
Two other things there were, which made an invariable appeal to all ranks and conditions of the Army â they were Shakespeare and the Old Testament. I have had the most enthusiastic letters from quite unexpected units about Macbeth , as if Shakespeare had done them a personal favour in writing the play. It was never possible to obtain any Shakespeare books from the canteen libraries â so great was the run on him â and we were never able to supply sufficient copies from our own store to satisfy the camps around.
The case with the Old Testament was different. I had few books and the men had none. Yet for any study of English we must read something good. No English prose writer â though we had the choicest passages culled for us by Dr Hadow in the one book at my disposal â would hold the men for more than a moment. They were all voted slow and some dead slow. At last in despair I hit on some of the Old Testament short stories. The result was a succès fou . It did not come from familiarity, for until I told them, few had any idea what book I was reading. Even then, when I explained that it was the best prose in the world â irrespective of its religious merits â they were rather pleased with themselves for having liked it. So we abandoned with one accord the eloquence of Coleridge, of De Quincy, even of Charles Lamb â whom they plainly thought a fool as well as a madman â in favour of the real stuff purveyed to us by the adventures of Joshua and the like.
Notes
1 .  In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Dieppe attracted many artists. The house which Christina calls the School was known as âBlancheâ. It belonged to Parisian artist Jacques-Ãmile Blanche (1861â1942), and was nestled beneath the cliffs on what is now Rue Alexandre Dumas, overlooking that clear green sea. Blanche invited many models and artists to his home, including Renoir, and he photographed Degas here. The house no longer exists, having been badly damaged during the Second World War, but there is a photograph of it among the YMCA Archives. Male members of staff lived in the School, while Christina and the other women were billeted elsewhere to preserve respectability.
2 .  The Chief was the Sub-Director for the Dieppe area, Henry Brooke.
3 .  âTommy cookerâ â a small portable stove used by soldiers in the trenches.
4 .  The statue in memory of 1870 by sculptor Eugène-Paul Bénet is in the Place des Martyrs in Dieppe.
5 .  â Poilus â were the French infantrymen. Although she writes with her customary sense of superiority to all other races, Christinaâs description does emphasise the international nature of the Allied presence in France.
6 .  The Womenâs Auxiliary Army Corps was a voluntary service established in January 1917 to free men up from non-combat roles such as cooks, telephonists and clerks.
7 .  Lord Northcliffe was the leading newspaper magnate of his day. As the owner of The Times and the Daily Mail , he had huge political and popular influence.
8 .  Remount Camp â the Army Remount Service was responsible for supplying horses throughout the army. This particular camp was at Luneray, about 11 miles south-west of Dieppe.
6
Work and play
T here is a wise old nursery rhyme which says, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ Possibly the Authorities thought of that when they devised our life. At any rate they made our work as diverse as they could. As I sat one morning poring over the Chief’s mess accounts, I thought to myself that I still could not answer the query of the SNO at home – ‘Whatever are they sending you to France for?’ The school was empty, for it was after 10 and the men were away at their
Two other things there were, which made an invariable appeal to all ranks and conditions of the Army â they were Shakespeare and the Old Testament. I have had the most enthusiastic letters from quite unexpected units about Macbeth , as if Shakespeare had done them a personal favour in writing the play. It was never possible to obtain any Shakespeare books from the canteen libraries â so great was the run on him â and we were never able to supply sufficient copies from our own store to satisfy the camps around.
The case with the Old Testament was different. I had few books and the men had none. Yet for any study of English we must read something good. No English prose writer â though we had the choicest passages culled for us by Dr Hadow in the one book at my disposal â would hold the men for more than a moment. They were all voted slow and some dead slow. At last in despair I hit on some of the Old Testament short stories. The result was a succès fou . It did not come from familiarity, for until I told them, few had any idea what book I was reading. Even then, when I explained that it was the best prose in the world â irrespective of its religious merits â they were rather pleased with themselves for having liked it. So we abandoned with one accord the eloquence of Coleridge, of De Quincy, even of Charles Lamb â whom they plainly thought a fool as well as a madman â in favour of the real stuff purveyed to us by the adventures of Joshua and the like.
Notes
1 .  In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Dieppe attracted many artists. The house which Christina calls the School was known as âBlancheâ. It belonged to Parisian artist Jacques-Ãmile Blanche (1861â1942), and was nestled beneath the cliffs on what is now Rue Alexandre Dumas, overlooking that clear green sea. Blanche invited many models and artists to his home, including Renoir, and he photographed Degas here. The house no longer exists, having been badly damaged during the Second World War, but there is a photograph of it among the YMCA Archives. Male members of staff lived in the School, while Christina and the other women were billeted elsewhere to preserve respectability.
2 .  The Chief was the Sub-Director for the Dieppe area, Henry Brooke.
3 .  âTommy cookerâ â a small portable stove used by soldiers in the trenches.
4 .  The statue in memory of 1870 by sculptor Eugène-Paul Bénet is in the Place des Martyrs in Dieppe.
5 .  â Poilus â were the French infantrymen. Although she writes with her customary sense of superiority to all other races, Christinaâs description does emphasise the international nature of the Allied presence in France.
6 .  The Womenâs Auxiliary Army Corps was a voluntary service established in January 1917 to free men up from non-combat roles such as cooks, telephonists and clerks.
7 .  Lord Northcliffe was the leading newspaper magnate of his day. As the owner of The Times and the Daily Mail , he had huge political and popular influence.
8 .  Remount Camp â the Army Remount Service was responsible for supplying horses throughout the army. This particular camp was at Luneray, about 11 miles south-west of Dieppe.
6
Work and play
T here is a wise old nursery rhyme which says, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ Possibly the Authorities thought of that when they devised our life. At any rate they made our work as diverse as they could. As I sat one morning poring over the Chief’s mess accounts, I thought to myself that I still could not answer the query of the SNO at home – ‘Whatever are they sending you to France for?’ The school was empty, for it was after 10 and the men were away at their
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