SATURDAY 28th OCTOBER 1939

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POST OFFICE
TELEGRAM

264 3.35 KENNINGTON LAMBETH LONDON B 19

THE REV & MRS I STEWART VICARAGE LYMINSTER RD LYMINSTER WEST SUSSEX

ARRIVED BILLET STOP QUITE SATISFACTORY STOP TRAINING COMMAND LOCATED STOP ALL WELL STOP FOR SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL TOMORROW STOP LETTER FOLLOWS LOVE SAMANTHA

In c/o Mrs Cox
No. 8, Walcot Mansions
136, Kennington Road
London, S.E.11

29th October 1939

Dear Aunt Amy and Uncle Michael,

Greetings from Lambeth! I took the earliest train up yesterday – it was absolutely packed, mostly with men in uniform. One of them tried to put his hand on my knee, but I sat up very straight and gave him my best glare and said, 'I beg your pardon!' very loudly and he made no further attempts at being forward. Nor did anybody else.

All Littlehampton-to-London trains go to Victoria Station, and it turns out that that's some distance from Lambeth, which is on the other side of the River Thames. It seems that London is far larger than I had realised! A gentleman at the information desk gave me a Greater London Bus Map and showed me how to read it and told me that I could get here on the no. 12, but when he saw my suitcase he asked whether I wouldn't be better off in a cab. And there was a porter behind the desk who said quite right, so I did that. Of course I won't make a habit of it! (There is actually an Underground station quite near to here, on the Northern Line, but it's closed until they can put floodgates in the part of the tunnel that passes beneath the river in case of an air raid. I'm quite near to Pater Thamesis!)

From the outside my billet looks quite like what one would call a mansion block, but I rather suspect that a real mansion block would have larger flats and a porter and perhaps a lift. (The flat is on the first floor so it isn't really very far to climb.) This is probably best described as 'modest accommodations', as there are only the sitting room, kitchen and two bedrooms and they are all quite small. There is also a bath and W.C. I took Uncle Michael's advice and had a glance 'round – all perfectly clean, and my landlady, Mrs Cox, has a wireless set. She takes the Daily Express (which will take some getting used to, I think) and a weekly called the Norwood News. I am sleeping in her son's room, which is very small indeed – there's only space for the bed and a wardrobe. He's in the Navy – I'm not sure of what we'll do when he comes home on leave but I suppose that we'll manage somehow, and in any event she says that it's not likely to be for some time as he's only recently gone to sea.

Of course I don't know how long I shall be here – I promised Dad and Mother that if an opportunity arose for me to serve on the South Coast, then I would volunteer for that. (I also promised them that I would write to them as soon as I arrived, and I haven't yet, so I shall have to make this a short letter. I did send them a telegram yesterday.) At any rate there's a small garden in front of the block and a call box on the pavement just beyond and a pillar box over the road, so it's all quite convenient. They are building a public shelter next to the pillar box and a workman told me that it ought to be ready within a fortnight, so I really do think that all will be well.

Mrs Cox told me that Mr Charlie Chaplin lived in this block of flats as a child. She seems a jolly decent sort. Lunch is part of my rental only on Sundays but she gave me some yesterday anyway: pilchards, runner beans and pears. All of it came out of tins, but then we've learnt from our evacuees that that's how a good many people live in London. After lunch she gave me a list of the retailers she trades with and sent me to register with them for when food rationing begins in January. Still such a horrid thought, but I almost didn't mind because there were so many people about. (Although no children – they've all been evacuated, to somewhere in East Sussex, I gather.) It was so very exciting to walk about and not see anyone whom I knew, nor be recognised by anyone, and to find that no-one behaved as though it were at all peculiar to see someone that they didn't know! I can't even begin to describe how extraordinary that felt! I suppose that one might tire of it after a time, but it was such a thrilling change from Lyminster! Of course it's much the same in Red Rice, isn't it? Do you ever wish to be amongst people whom you don't know, who simply go about their business and let you go about yours?

Most of the people whom I saw looked as though they were trying their best not to be nervous. Everyone had a gas-mask, and I had mine of course, but I thought that I'd see people glancing at the sky every few minutes, and I didn't. I wasn't sure of whether one ought to say 'Good afternoon' to strangers whom one passes in the street. Then several people said it to me so of course I said it back to them, but no-one stopped to chat.

I would say that this isn't a well-to-do neighborhood but it is quite pleasant. There is a museum called the Imperial War Museum at one end of the Kennington Road, which sounds very interesting, and at the other end is a Regal Cinema – much larger and more modern than any I've seen at home! I was quite tempted, but it was a lovely bright day and I decided to go on with my walk. I also went to see the building where I shall do my training – the old Royal Doulton factory, as it turns out! I suppose that they've moved to Staffs for the duration. The building has all sorts of fantastical ornaments and looks rather like a fortified castle. I can't wait to go inside, but tomorrow I'm going to the M.T.T.C.'s General Headquarters, which is in Bayswater. (I've discovered from the Bus map that I can go there on the no. 12 as well!) Here in Lambeth I also found a supply shop where I purchased a haversack (which I shall need as M.T.T.C. members are not allowed to carry handbags with uniform) as well as this letter paper and ink. There are also several pubs and a café where I had a quite tip-top cup of tea with biscuits. The front of it was completely covered in sandbags, as a lot of buildings here are, and there was signboard advertising 'Sandbags on toast'!

Mrs Cox was quite interested to hear about our family and told me that the parish here are 'so high up the candle they're almost in the flame', but that the next parish 'like to pretend they're Methodists'. That's a bit of a problem, and the nice weather held today, so this morning I went to Matins at Southwark Cathedral, which is very beautiful, and there was even a choir of sorts – half a dozen older gentlemen, who did jolly well, I thought. But it was a half-hour's walk each way, which would be less pleasant in the rain, and I'd have to get up awfully early to go to Communion, so I shall have to look about and find a church a bit closer by.

I really must close this now and write to Mother and Dad! I shall write to you again as soon as I can. Thank you again for all of your help in getting me here!

Love,

Sam

There is another woman in khaki in the bus queue, of the sort whom people are apt to describe, if they find her agreeable, as 'a big, jolly girl'. She wears a forage cap and the stripes of an A.T.S. sergeant. She boards the number 12 just ahead of Sam and, turning about as she looks for a seat, sees her, begins to come to attention, then looks confounded as she takes in Sam's Women's Legion insignia. Unmistakably disgruntled, she goes upstairs.

Sam is too excited by what the day may bring to be troubled by this for very long. The bus follows a different route than the cab had done on Saturday, making its way through northern Lambeth and then crossing Westminster Bridge and stopping over the road from the Houses of Parliament, where at least a dozen people disembark. Sam is surprised to see no sandbags here.

The bus travels north along Whitehall, then along the south side of Trafalgar Square. The streets of the West End are filled with people, all carrying gas-masks and going about their business with the same faintly tense air of determined calm as those Sam saw in Lambeth on Saturday.

It occurs to her that she must be making a spectacle of herself, gawping at the sights of London in this way, but no-one on the bus appears to take the slightest notice of her. No-one speaks to anyone else, either; Sam concludes that this must be how things are done in London and thinks that it's rather a pity, but makes a mental note to remember it.

Here is Piccadilly Circus – the fountain in the center is boarded up, the hoardings covered with posters exhorting Britons to pursue service, resolve and morale. Shops in Regent Street and Oxford Street aren't sandbagged, but their great display windows are largely covered with black-painted boards, each one with opening just large enough to exhibit a single object.

Suddenly the bus is in Cumberland Gate. Hyde Park, Sam thinks with a start, this is Hyde Park!

She is taken aback by her own excitement. How silly. It isn't as though I've never been in London until now. I've even been in Hyde Park before.

But I live here now, she reminds herself. At least for a little while.

The bus is passing Marble Arch on the right, but something far more interesting seems to be happening to the bus's left, where a crowd has gathered: Speakers' Corner.

And then the bus turns left into Bayswater Road, and Sam begins to keep an eye out for her stop. 'Just past Porchester Terrace, then make your way back a bit,' the conductor had told her. The journey now seems very much slower; but here it is her stop at last. Sam alights and walks for a short distance along footpath next to the park – which must be Kensington Gardens, this far West, she thinks – and then comes to a zebra crossing and goes over the road.

She finds Leinster Terrace. I want Leinster Gardens, though, she thinks. Unsure, she turns left into the elegant lane and decides that she will have to ask someone for directions.

A nurse pushing a pram emerges from a vast house on the corner.

'Oh – pardon me, Nurse, I'm so sorry to bother you – I'm looking for Leinster Gardens. Am I... in the right place?'

'Near enough, dearie – straight on and you'll come to it,' the nurse replies, and wheels the pram in the direction of the park.

Sam continues walking. Sure enough, the street changes to Leinster Gardens, widening a bit as it does so.

There are fewer people out and about in this neighbourhood than in Westminster or Piccadilly, and nearly all of them are women. People live here, rather than coming to work here, Sam concludes.

And here it is – no. 33, Leinster Gardens. Sam stops for moment, puzzled. Whatever she might have expected the Mechanised Transport Training Corps General Headquarters to look like, it surely isn't this: nothing more than a terraced house amidst many others, albeit a tall and very handsome one, with a stucco façade, a small but quite elaborate columned porch, and a scrap of garden in front of a separate entrance to the basement.

In the vestibule Sam sees that the house has been cut up into flats: there are five letterboxes. A sign affixed to the wall – elegantly lettered, but nevertheless simply a piece of pasteboard – directs her to the second floor.

The door to the second-floor flat is ajar. Three women who must be in their 30s at least stand together in the center of the room, examining and discussing some document. A younger woman sits at a desk near a closed door, speaking on the telephone and taking notes. Everyone is in uniform. At first no one takes any notice of Sam as she stands in the doorway. She doesn't see Mrs Peake.

Then the closed door opens and Mrs Peake emerges, preceded by a tall, somewhat stout woman with bobbed and marcelled grey hair. Her tunic's shoulder boards are encrusted with braid. Sam decides that this must be Mrs Cooke. She looks like a grandmother, if one's grandmother were formidable and a bit frightening.

'Good morning,' Sam says. Everyone except the girl talking on the telephone looks in her direction.

'Ah!' Mrs Peake exclaims.

Sam stands at attention, turns towards the presumed Mrs Cooke and salutes, trying to remember how she has seen servicemen do this.

'Driver Samantha Stewart, ma'am, reporting for duty.'

FINIS

Author's notes:
Walcot Mansions is a real-life apartment building and Charlie Chaplin really did live there as an adolescent, from about 1901 until 1908. It is known today as Walcot Gardens; surprisingly, it has no blue plaque.

Sam was probably wise to keep walking: the Norwood News for October 27th, 1939, indicates that Women in the Wind and Magnificent Outcast – both Hollywood films of negligible current reputation – were playing at the Regal Kennington on the 28th.

The building where Sam's training is to take place is the sole remaining part of Royal Doulton's London pottery, a magnificent Victorian pile of brick and terra cotta at the corner of Lambeth High Street and Black Prince Road. (I have found conflicting information about whether the company continued production in London during the war.) Known today as Southbank House, it provides office space.

The description of the sandbagged café is based on a photograph I've seen, as is the lack of sandbags at the Houses of Parliament and in the West End's main shopping streets.

Is there any document so difficult to read as an urban bus map? I've done some research, but I'm guessing as to the bus that Sam would have taken between Lambeth and Bayswater. (The no. 148 follows part of the same route today.)