From ‘Convalescents—Some Portraits’, The Spectator, 12 June 1915:
No. 12. hardly spoke any French. He was very fat, middle-aged, and placid, his face perfectly round, and his whole form almost spherical. A farthing and a penny and two matches could be arranged to form an excellent representation of his silhouette. We discovered that he was a reservist, and a market gardener by trade. He was a most industrious creature, and could be made perfectly happy by being given little jobs to do in the garden. He haltingly explained that before the war he had had two big greenhouses; then, shaking his head sadly, “Maintenant tout cassé, Mam’selle.” Like the sad majority of our patients, be had entirely lost sight of his wife and children. He knew that the Germans occupied his native village; he hoped that his wife might have been able to take the children over the border into Holland.
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