Category Archives: 1916

All diary entries written in 1916.

Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul

Kipps

Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1905.

Orphaned at an early age, raised by his aunt and uncle, and apprenticed for seven years to a draper, Artie Kipps is stunned to discover upon reading a newspaper advertisement that he is the grandson of a wealthy gentleman – and the inheritor of his fortune. Thrown dramatically into the upper classes, he struggles desperately to learn the etiquette and rules of polite society. But as he soon discovers, becoming a ‘true gentleman’ is neither as easy nor as desirable as it at first appears.

Kipps was adapted for the stage in the early 1960s as Half a Sixpence; Half a Sixpence has itself been revived and updated in a new production at the Chichester Festival Theatre in July 2016.

Arthur Linfoot wrote that he “read a good bit of Kipps” on 24th September 1916, while stationed at the military hospital at Méteren in Northern France.

17 September 1916; Sunday

September 1916, , ,

Up at 7 o’clock. At 8.45 communion service. Busy all day in the ward. Went to service in the Y.M. at night and played the piano. Picked wrong tune for one hymn, and chose the new tune for Onward Christian Soldiers1 for the last hymn.

Received news of big victory by the British on the Somme.

  1. The “new tune” for Onward Christian Soldiers was probably the one most known today, composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1871 and named “St Gertrude” after the wife of his friend Ernest Clay Ker Seymer. The tune which had previously been used for Onward Christian Soldiers was a melody from the slow movement of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony in D, No. 15. Evidently “St Gertrude”, despite then being some 45 years old, was still considered new – at least by ALL. ↩

16 September 1916; Saturday

September 1916, , ,

At the ward as usual. Busy all day. A lot of patients in. Football match in the afternoon and our team won. 5 – 1.

Received news of big fresh advance1 on the Somme.

  1. There was indeed a ‘big fresh advance’ on the Somme on 15 September, assisted by tanks, which according to the prevalent view (which ALL shared) were too few and too sparsely distributed to achieve a decisive impact; in other words wasted due to premature use. The push was in the centre (the old 34th and 19th Divisions area), astride the Albert – Bapaume road, initially as far SE as Delville Wood, and by the evening of 15 September it had reached Courcelette on the Albert – Bapaume road, some 2km beyond Pozières, but still 8km short of Bapaume. ↩