| Description | Letter from Amelia Nyasa Laws, Valence, to her relatives, regarding cards ready to send to Rome and Edinburgh but no time to write them; unable to go to church as too many things to attend to; massaging a fracture for a new officer patient, Captain Fonsagrive; she will insist on going out tomorrow as she wants to buy a sausage for a Polish soldier at the Hôpital Général, and some dates for 'our' patients there, and to take some Roman presents to the Delattres; 'The Pole is an American by birth, whome Mlle. Breynat asked me to see because he knows no French. He was crushed in the railway accident and his eye wound was no sooner healed than he developed appendicitis followed by pneumonia, the result of a chill in the operating theatre. Sausage to breakfast is his dream, so he will have it for Xmas'; more trouble with Moret; preparations of his bed to allow him to roll violently without hurting himself; difficulty in persuading him afterwards to keep the padding in place; he has now been moved to the Hôpital Général; Dr. Mollin attributes his attacks to bleeding haemorrhoids; visit of an Englishman, over military age but a volunteer in the French army and a man of means, who is acting as chauffeur to Dr. Jacquin; he has also been motoring the wounded from the train to the hospital, having lost his nerve for driving at the front after being gassed; she is disgusted that he talks with his pipe in his mouth, but feels he has done great service; the Lycée is to close as a hospital in order to reopen as a school; Dr. Boissat, currently a patient in the annexe, overheard a conversation implying that the 201 might be asked to undertake to remain open for six months after the peace is signed, taking it to next December; the 201 is a Roman Catholic school, so it might alternatively have to reopen for classes in September; the annexe would then take the remainder of the patients; Miss Bennett has offered to install Amelia as her successor at the Hôpital Général when she leaves, where she would be masseuse proper; in the meantime she will stay in the annexe, for want of anything better; problems with preparation for the Christmas festivities at the 201 and the annexe; a group of refugee children are to be present; Amelia is responsible for all the music; Mlle. Drossain, the pastor's daughter, was to have done it, but she is 'mechanically correct with not a grain of art in her'; description of amelia's changes to her method and the result; performances planned by Chauvel and Traffey; other pieces planned. |