Dear George
I haven't found anything about Brett-Smith, but Kipling had his own ideas on reading matter for the wounded. In a letter to Rupert Grayson [October ? 1915] (Pinney, Letters Vol.4, pp.342-3) he describes the process of creating scrapbooks, the original idea being credited to Elsie. "You take a mass of magazines . . . anything with fairly vulgar pictures and fairly vulgar jokes. You cut out the pictures, from ads of motor bikes to beutiful females without clothes . . . and you mix in the vulgar jokes in the proportion of about 3 to 5."
The Times of 4 December 1915 described how The Queen at the War Library "also examined closely several of the 'Rudyard Kipling Scrapbooks,' specially made for patients too weak to hold or read a book."
I wonder if the Librarians made a very careful selection available!
Yours, David
________________________________
From: George Simmers <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sunday, 11 October, 2009 6:23:26
Subject: Jane Austen and Shell-Shock
In a letter to the Times Literary Supplement (3 February 1984), Fr Martin Jarrett-Kerr reported that during the First World War the Oxford don H.F. Brett-Smith was employed by military hospitals to advise on reading matter for the war wounded. 'His job was to grade novels and poetry according to the "Fever-Chart". For the severely shell-shocked he selected Jane Austen'.
Considering the effectiveness of Jane Austen in palliating Humberstall's psychological damage in 'The Janeites', I'm wondering whether Kipling might have known of Brett-Smith's advisory work. Any ideas?
George Simmers
-- George Simmers's research blog is at
http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com
