Dear Jelly: Family letters from the First World War

This small paperback tells the story of a family’s experience of the First World War through the letters sent home by William and Robert Semple, both officers serving at the front in France.  ‘Jelly’  is the nickname of Eileen, one of the young sisters who were the recipients of the touching, teasing and bravely humorous letters from their brothers.  The use of Eileen’s nickname, unsurprising given her love of the pudding, helps makes the family seem real to young readers. There will be many books written about the First World War in this centenary year but this one will, I think, be particularly helpful to children at the older end of the primary school. The war and the politics surrounding it are extremely complicated and would be a challenge to explain in a traditional children’s information book.  So Sarah Ridley’s approach is helpful in showing us events at a  personal and therefore manageable level.  She has been meticulous in her research, not only in tracking down the letters but also in contextualising them by providing information about the different stages and conditions of the war.  And what good letters they are!  William and Robert show genuine interest in their sisters’ lives – reminding them to practise the piano and taking an interest in the school play.  Here’s an example of William’s sense of humour: in a letter to Eileen he writes that she must be looking forward to the new term at school, adding ‘je ne pense pas’ – just to check, he goes on to say, that she ‘knows her French’.  Writing and receiving letters helped keep the brothers cheerful during their ordeal – coping as they were with the extreme dangers of the fighting, the muddy trenches and sometimes with sheer boredom. There was some respite: Robert writes in March 1916 ‘at present we are billeted on a farm.some distance from the firing line, having a rest’. He adds a jolly cartoon of the two new mules in his section which ‘are both very old and fat’.

In June 1916 the family received the devastating news of William’s death which came during a raid.  Mabel and Eileen were deeply saddened, their mother heartbroken. Robert, too, was to die just six days before the end of the war at a hospital in Rouen in Northern France of wounds,  and from the ‘Spanish flu’ raging over Europe.

Sarah Ridley includes some closing pages about the Semple family’s life after the war and about the resting places of the two brothers. Mabel and Eileen come across as kindly and warm and so it is a surprise to read that they were not pleased or helpful when their mother, Lady Ethel, took two little children into the household after the war for compassionate reasons.  It is her inclusion of this kind of detail which makes Sarah Ridley’s books so interesting.

Some children will cope well with reading the book on their own and will find technical matters  clearly explained. For example in July 1916 Robert writes about a new type of weapon:  ‘a trench mortar is a small gun which fires a larger bomb from our trenches…’  And, of course, the book could also be read to the whole class.  The teacher might perhaps paraphrase the information contextualising the letters before reading them.  I find that children often like to read out loud, too, particularly if they are helped to prepare in advance. There are lots of things for readers and class to reflect on. For example the children could be asked if they can tell that the letters are from the sons of a fairly affluent family, and also if there are there some expressions and forms of address that identify the letters with the conventions of the time.