Interview with Mollie Caunt, Michael Bassett and Professor David Stocker about the Freiburg Letters
Title
Interview with Mollie Caunt, Michael Bassett and Professor David Stocker about the Freiburg Letters
Description
Talk with Mollie Caunt, Michael Bassett and Professor David Stocker about the origin and publication of the Freiburg letters.
Dorothy May was a British woman living in Germany during the war. Her husband was conscripted into the Germany Army. After the war she returned to England and resumed her teaching career.
This interview is also available in video format.
PMayD2301 is of Mollie Caunt, PMayD2302 is of Michael Bassett, and PMayD2303 is of Professor David Stocker.
Dorothy May was a British woman living in Germany during the war. Her husband was conscripted into the Germany Army. After the war she returned to England and resumed her teaching career.
This interview is also available in video format.
PMayD2301 is of Mollie Caunt, PMayD2302 is of Michael Bassett, and PMayD2303 is of Professor David Stocker.
Creator
Date
2023-10-30
Temporal Coverage
Spatial Coverage
Coverage
Language
Type
Format
00:48:28 Audio Recording
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
AMayD231030, PMayD2301, PMayD2302, PMayD2303
Transcription
HH: It’s the 30th of October and we’re sitting on the Riseholme Campus of the University of Lincoln. My name is Heather Hughes of the University of Lincoln and it’s my pleasure to introduce Mrs Mollie Caunt, Mr Michael Bassett and Professor David Stocker who are going to talk about the role that each of them have played in the preservation and publication of the remarkable wartime letters of Dorothy May. Mollie, if we can begin with you and your background and how you came to be involved with Dorothy May.
MC: Right. I was born in, born in Lincoln and lived in Lincoln for the majority of my life apart from ten years in Sleaford. I’ll start with sort of my connection, my first connection with, with Dorothy May and that is she was a first cousin of mine. Her mother was one of my dad’s sisters and my dad was the only boy in a family of nine girls and so that my maiden name was Peadons so there’s not many Peadons about because that’s how it was. I lived in Lincoln. I didn’t know but a lot of difference in our ages between Dorothy May and myself. I think it’s getting on for twenty years so I didn’t know really much about her at all. I lived in Bracebridge which at the end one or two of my dad’s sisters lived in that area and I went to school in Lincoln. I was one of the, I was the youngest in a family of eight children. There was quite a gap between me and my sister. She was, yes, she would be seven I think when I was born. The others, there was only about eighteen months difference in, in their ages. Now, I’m just the only one of the eight siblings left. As I say we lived in Bracebridge and one of the things I do remember being told, not remembering because I wasn’t old enough was where we lived in Bracebridge which is, you know the house no longer exists. It was where the last, where the trams used to go by and the last trams. So I lived in that part of Lincoln, the bottom part of Lincoln all my life. I went to school. I went to the Secondary School. I trained as a social worker and again all the people that Dorothy May, the aunties of Dorothy May had contact with when she, I knew we’d get there eventually. But when she, when she came back to Lincoln eventually she did spend a lot of time with Aunt Polly and Aunt Amy and they ran a, together with Uncle George I think his name was they ran a, I suppose this day would be like a modern delicatessen except that they they lived in a terraced house and at the back they had outhouses and they did all their cooking, all their pork pies and everything else down there. And then they sold and they sold things like scraps. You know, batter that’s really crisp and everybody enjoys eating, or we did and so I did have not a lot to do with them but certainly I didn’t know Dorothy May as I say at that time. And then I think opposite them there was another auntie. One of my dad’s sisters. Where do I go from there?
MB: Dorothy’s father was a butcher was he not?
MC: Well, that I wouldn’t know.
MB: Yes, he was.
MC: No, you see I didn’t know anything about him. About them at all. I mean I’ve learned more about them since you’ve been doing the book than, than before. I think I probably met, when Dorothy came back to, to England and then her mother died and she came to live in Market Rasen. That’s when she used to come to Aunt Polly and Aunt Amy and, but again I can’t remember really seeing her. I think the first [pause] the first time, no. I’m just trying [pause] I can’t think. At some stage she she wrote to me and asked if I would be her executor and I think the reason she, well I know the reason was because as I say there’s a big age gap because my mum was forty five when I was born. So it was sort of a very old, you know old family and by the time Dorothy May contacted me I was the youngest really, almost going to be the last. The last one so although I knew a little about her that’s when she said would I be her executor and that’s how I got. And a friend and I did, we went and I was trying to think of the name of the village. She was in Somerset by this time.
MB: Chard.
HH: Chard.
MC: No. No. No.
MB: No.
HH: Not Chard.
MC: No. It was Chard but not when I went to stay.
MB: No.
MC: Stay in her cottage for the first time. It was a thatched cottage and I just, I just can’t think. I was trying to think of it this morning and I couldn’t think of it and my friend and I, Dorothy invited us to go and stay in her cottage while she did one of her many trips because she did used to go travelling a lot. So we stayed there but I don’t even think we saw her then because she was gone, you know. And then, then the really one time I can really remember seeing her was when my husband and I when we got married. That was in 1990. We went to Plymouth for our honeymoon and on the way back I suggested that perhaps we went to see Dorothy and at that time she was living in because she was Old Chard and Chard I think and, but before that it was something beginning with W that I can’t really remember. So we went to see her and I do remember her offering us a cup of tea and we never did get the cup of tea and I think she was beginning at that stage to you know not, not be quite as sharp. But that just might be nerves and whatever. So we never saw her. I never saw her again until we were you know contacted about being executor. Is there anything, any gaps you might like me to say a bit about?
HH: So, can we just take that a little further Mollie because you were the one were you as the executor who then took possession of the letters?
MC: Mine. Yes.
HH: And you —
MC: I’ve explained the —
HH: And did you, did you know what they were?
MC: No.
HH: What, had you been told what was there?
MC: I’ll explain that to you.
HH: Okay.
MC: Yes, when we went. When we went, my husband as the others, the last time I ever did a long journey, drove actually did the driving because I drove down to Truro would it be? Yeah. Wouldn’t it. Yeah. But he came with me. We stayed in a, well so we went the day before the funeral. That’s right. I went down the day before the funeral. Obviously to see what was in the bungalow. So we booked into a hotel so we went across and that was Chard. I think it was Old Chard. I’d have to look that, I know there’s the two so that she made sort of three moves in, so in the time that I knew her. When we got to the house the very kind neighbour came across and invited us in for a cup of tea and said, ‘You know when you go go and look in the bureau.’ And it was a bureau, you know with the lid that came down. ‘And you’ll find something.’ I can’t remember how she described it but she said, ‘You’ll find something of interest there.’ And it was the, I think it first of all it was the letters and there was also the —
MB: Guest book. The guest book.
MC: Yes, I know. I was going to say.
MB: Sorry. Sorry.
MC: Just trying to, yes and the guest book and so I took them out and you know obviously had a look and then I went into the bedroom which was absolutely scattered with photographs and all sorts of things. Yeah. All over the bed so almost because by this time you know as I say she’d died and she had I think she’d gone into a home and she had, she was wandering around at night et cetera, you know. So I left them at I think we must have gone back the next day and I looked around and then there was loads of music in a, in a sideboard. But not knowing, you know knowing so little about her I mean you know hindsight’s a wonderful thing isn’t it? You know. I feel as though I let so much go but obviously I was aware of the significance of the book. The memoirs and the guest book and of course the letters were all in English but the guest book was more varied than that. And there was one or two pieces of pottery that I thought quite possibly came from her own parents that were quite old et cetera. So I took a took, took some things but I took very little really and even the photographs I don’t, I didn’t take many at all because I didn’t even know he was an actor or just didn’t know anything about her. I did find out that she was a member of the WI which I am and was then and there was one or two programmes. And she did have the relationship with this neighbour who was very kind. So that’s, that was my real connection with her and obviously then when I did look at the, you know eventually looked through the papers I realised the significance and that’s when you know I thought of Michael because I knew that he was learning German. So, so unfortunately at the funeral it was very sad and one thing I do remember when we opened the bungalow door there was an envelope on the floor and I think, I don’t know whether it was a lady that used to do some cleaning for her but had put a sympathy card in which I thought was rather nice. I mean she didn’t know the significance at all. And really there was no one at the funeral. I was only thinking about it you know since I’ve been coming, was coming here and I really felt that I ought to contact him because we have got or did have sisters but my dad’s sisters three or four of them had gone to Keighley. Why they went? I’ve never found out why they went there but I think one of them in fact married a mill owner and they were and I know that, as far as I can recall I didn’t contact them because I wasn’t having any contact with them and I regret that, you know, now because the only people that were there was me really. And to be absolutely honest I was only there because being executor rather than a real you know connection with her. So then of course when I came back to Lincoln. I suppose that was one of those perhaps I, oh I haven’t said how I knew Michael. I knew Michael through his wife Myra. We were in the Girl Guides together about fourteen or fifteen or something like that and we always got on very well together and then of course Michael came along to do his National Service and we all used to, on a Sunday evening we used to take this [unclear] on a Sunday evening we went to the, Myra and I went to the same chapel together and you used to come down didn’t you? And we went to some friends on a Sunday evening after chapel to have a sing and you know just to keep us all together. And that’s how we you know got together really. And so then I knew Michael from then and we got on, we had a lot of laughs together didn’t we? I’ve got a photograph of Michael and I walking in the sea. Was it Mablethorpe?
MB: Skegness.
MC: Skegness with, you know, having a paddle. So we go back a very long way and then eventually I was bridesmaid to them and that’s our connection. And apart from when you came to live, where was it? Leeds? Leicester, was it? Where was it we lost contact?
MB: Lincoln. From Lincoln to Leicester to Sheffield.
MC: Yes, well I lost contact with you a bit then.
MB: Yeah.
MC: Until you came back to Lincoln and then we kept in, Myra actually made our wedding cake for us so yeah. That.
HH: Wonderful. Wonderful.
MB: Yeah.
HH: Well, Mollie you played such an important role in rescuing and looking after those letters and without without that act we wouldn’t all be sitting here today talking about what happened next. So Michael I think this is your entrée to the story.
MB: True. Mollie came to me and she brought the guest book first of all. It’s a German guest book. Black leather bound with gold lettering under, “Gast,” and it was autographed inside from the date Dorothy and Paul were married in, in Freiburg. She had met Paul apparently we don’t know it’s a mystery because within two days of her arriving in Freiburg she married Paul. We don’t know where they met. We suspect he may have been in London at some time and have some connection there. And Molly said, ‘Yeah, have a look at this book. See what you can make of it.’ Some of it was in English which was fun to read because one lady writes and says, “I’d give anything for a new hat but you can’t get hats for love nor money.” [laughs] Sort of thing. Lovely little memories like that. A lot in German which I set about trying to translate as much as I could. Some of the script is rather difficult and looking at that, sort of playing about with it then Mollie came and she said, ‘There’s a bunch of letters.’ I said, ‘Would you let me see them please? She said yes and brought them. I started to wade through them. They were in a raffia, red and white raffia folder with a linen cover inside and at the back there was a tiny little photograph which was Dorothy May’s photograph and she’d written on the back, “This is a photograph of my passport. I’m not always as miserable as this.” [laughs] which, and it’s still there and it’s preserved in that folder of course which is its home. I started to go through the letters and read them and got my little old steam typewriter out, worked busily away at nights and much to Myra’s annoyance at times while I am, because you’re clacking away on that typewriter but what have you.
HH: How long ago was this Michael?
MB: Twenty three years ago. No. Twenty years ago. 2003. And I gradually got I thought this paper needs preserving. It’s no good just leaving, leafing through this and handling and handling it it’s getting so fragile. So I started to make a typescript, poor typist that I am but I managed and going through it eventually I came across a chapter or a letter where Dorothy had heard of an English lady living in Freiburg and she said, ‘I will go and see her.’ And okay she went. The lady wasn’t there. The nurse or assistant opened the door and said, ‘I’m sorry she’s gone to Switzerland.’ And Dorothy wrote very sharply, “Fancy going to Switzerland in the middle of the war.” This sort of idiom, and leaving two sons, you know. Why ever did she do that? That was the end of it and then I was given a book in a little German group we were running which printed in Freiburg called, “Let’s Face It,” by a lady called Dorothy Elchlepp and it turned out that Dorothy Elchlepp was an English Dorothy and I wondered if the two of them knew one another. So I wrote to the publishers. I said who I was and what I was about. Could they forward the letter on to Frau Elchlepp and say what was happening? Six months went by. I had no reply. We were shopping in Newark and I saw a book, “Rough Guide to Germany,” for a pound. Myra said to me, ‘What on earth do you want that for?’ I said, ‘Freiburg’s a dead duck. I’ve heard nothing. I want to read about Germany.’ So I bought it. Read about it. The next morning there was a letter on the mat from Herr Dietrich Elchlepp who said, “The publishers have passed your letter on. Unfortunately, my mother died two years ago but yes they probably knew one another. I’m coming to England. I’d like to see the letters that you have.” And he came. Mollie, you came too did you not to meet him and his wife and when he saw the papers he said that these must be published. And so it went on from there with an awful lot of detail, research, excitements and things along the way which eventually took me to stay in Denzlingen where Dietrich Elchlepp and his wife lived and they were able to take me around and go to the Archives, show me the flat where Dorothy and Paul had lived and so on and it just went on from there with all sorts of coincidences and little excitements along the way. What more can I say about that?
HH: So you transcribed the letters. You did all of this research and then how does David come into the story?
MB: Well, David used would come to me on Tuesday afternoons. We had a recorder session playing the recorder and piano and coping with the music having a very enjoyable time and he knew that I was handling this book or this, this wad of letters and I said, ‘I’m not getting anywhere with trying to find a publisher.’ I had written to various people. Random House in fact who said what a lovely book it will be. Very nice. But we don’t want it. The usual sort of thing. And eventually David took it over and said, ‘Let me see what I can do.’ And he helped with an awful lot of the editing from where I had edited it down to I managed to find from Freiburg Archives, “[unclear] Papers.” Lists of all the houses where people lived and who they were and what their occupation was. So we were able to sift it and put it in date and took it and enhanced it further. Did a lot more work for me on it and and there it goes from there, I think.
HH: Yes. So I think we now hand the baton to David.
DS: Thank you. Yes. Well, I first came across these things as sheafs of foolscap transcript in large brown envelopes or actually in a large brown envelope that you have been sending to different publishers.
MB: Yes
DS: And they’d been, they’d been, well they’d been sending them back more or less saying we can’t cope with this. Now, I don’t think that was the message that Michael took from them but I could see that the problem was that they weren’t properly, well they weren’t really presented at all. It was just Michael saying these are a wonderful thing.
MB: Yeah. Yes.
DS: And on the whole they were agreeing with you.
MB: Yes.
DS: But they couldn’t deal with it in, in that sort of state. And any way the ones I read were absolutely fascinating. Completely absorbing. So after one of our tea sessions, after our music together I said, ‘Well, you know, if you, if you let me have a go at it I’ll produce a script of the sort that a publisher might be interested in producing and I’ll do a bit of, a bit more academic work on it.’ To make it clear that, you know this is a proper scholarly activity and not, not sort of ill considered. So and I’m afraid for about three months I was completely lost in Freiburg as well just like Michael had been. Well, Michael had been lost for a lot longer than three months.
MC: Had been for ages.
DS: Many years. But I, for about three months in I suppose this would have been 2010 something like that.
MB: Yes.
DS: About 2010 I was completely lost in it as well and it became a, well it shouldn’t really have become part of my research programme but it did. You know the way these thing float into your research and then float out again and at the end of it we had a presentable script for publishers. I’d taken that on in the first place I think because when I was very, the very first contact I had with them was Michael saying that the previous day at one of our teatime sessions the previous day he’d had a letter from a local publisher who was on the one hand offering to buy the things for a very small amount of money and on the other hand was proposing to fillet them down to a small —
MB: Down to the bone.
MC: Was that Ronnie Birkett?
DS: Yes. That was Ronnie Birkett.
MC: Yeah.
DS: So down to a handful of letters which were largely about bombing actually. What she was interested in was the account of the bombing. Nothing else. And I could see that Michael because you were at that stage I think you were quite inclined you know you weren’t, you weren’t, you were getting a bit fed up with not being —
MB: Well, yes.
DS: Not making progress. Thinking you might take this offer.
MC: But we knew what we wanted.
MB: Yes. Indeed, we did. More than we were offered certainly.
DS: And so it was at that stage I sort of said, ‘Well, I’ll take on this if you give me, give me the responsibility for doing that and we’ll do something better,’ than was being offered. And that was why I took it over and to be honest I suppose I thought I was doing that because I, Michael had been my music teacher for, well by that stage several years.
MB: Well, yes.
DS: Several years and had never charged me a penny which I was terribly terribly grateful for and I thought this might be some way of paying him back. Recompensing him. Using my expertise to help him towards his goal. In the end it turned into a bit more, a bit more of a marathon than we thought it was going to be. But anyway, to continue with the process having done, having received the, the foolscap sheets we had to get that into a digital form and then into a presentable form. Managed to do that without too much trouble. It was quite a lot of work but we managed to do that. And there was additional research which needed doing. I did that. All very interesting. And at the stage that we had a complete book I started asking where it might be published and I consulted one or two people. I consulted Axel Müller. I don’t know whether you know Axel Müller at Leeds. And he said yes, these were enormously interesting letters, well worth publishing but he didn’t really have any access to German publishers or indeed couldn’t really suggest any good publishers. So I tried Richard Morris who is a long standing friend of mine, collaborator of mine and he, he was very excited to read and I sent him some samples. Then eventually I sent him the lot and he he also was extremely excited by them and because he’s a professional writer he was interested in trying to get a book deal. And we spent I suppose at least five or six years, didn’t we?
MB: Easily. Toing and froing.
DS: Yes. Toing and froing with different publishers with Richard making proposals to publishers he knew. Often personal approaches rather than, as it were just sending them out [pause] are you ready to change?
[recording paused]
DS: Richard with his experience and his contacts in the publishing world started negotiating on our behalf. All three of us. On behalf of all three of us with various publishers and of course he was also able to do some of the, well he tweaked the editing to some extent because I’m a Medievalist I should explain and this was all news to me. Although I enjoyed enormously reading the great works of the twentieth century historians on the war but Richard is, swims in this water and he was able to tweak some of the footnotes particularly to make sure that they were referring to the right volumes. You know how important that is in academic work. I was referring to texts which had suspect qualities to them and you know the real proper text you should refer to is something else. And Richard was very good at making sure all that was okay and he also spent quite a lot of time polishing the introduction although actually we’d written an introduction.
MB: We had written an introduction.
DS: Fairly similar to the one that he polished. So he polished the introduction but to be honest Richard’s most important contribution was negotiating with the publishers and that went on for a number of years as we’ve already said and we were encountering some difficulties. I think on the whole the sorts of publishers that Richard was approaching were not the sort of publishers that were interested in this sort of —
MB: With that material.
DS: This sort of material. But in the end I was able to link up with Sean Tyas in Donnington who’s a publisher I’ve used for a number of my works. He specialises actually in Medieval publication and he was absolutely thrilled. He wanted to start and indeed has started a twentieth century list and he was, he was very keen to take it on. Very very keen to take it on to the extent that he was, he was offering me all sorts of blandishments in the way of books and one thing and another. ‘Please let me publish this.’ So, so in the end we, we agreed to that didn’t we? The three of us agreed that this was the best way forward and I don’t know within about a six or nine months of him taking it on it was, it was in proof wasn’t it?
MB: Yes. It was.
DS: And we now have this wonderful book.
HH: Published 2022.
DS: 2022. Yes.
HH: And there’s something rather fitting about the fact that it’s a Lincolnshire publisher.
MB: Oh yes.
DS: Yes, indeed. Yes.
MC: I thought that when [unclear]
MB: The other thing was when it was published I was able to take it to Mollie on her birthday.
MC: Oh yes.
MB: I gave her a copy
MC: Last year. Yeah. That was different.
HH: Fantastic. Yes.
MB: Fitted in nicely.
MC: Yeah.
HH: And how’s it been going?
DS: Well, it’s been selling very well according to Sean Tyas’ most recent communication with me. He’s very pleased with it. He’s hoping to build a reputation in this sort of twentieth century area and I think he feels that this is quite a substantial publication to to help him down that route. I’ve shown it to a number of people. I’ve had no negative comments at all. I’ve shown it to a number of historians who have been very positive about it. Most recently I showed it to Sir Ian Kershaw and he said that it was one of the most interesting books of its sort that he’d seen. He said it was particularly interesting because it made a contrast with other German diaries of the period that he’d read of which of course were in German rather than English and he said that Dorothy was writing about things that they weren’t writing about but interestingly she wasn’t writing about the things they were writing about. Apparently, there was a substantial number of German diaries of this period who are writing about the political situation and committing their thoughts on the politics of their environment to paper and of course we know that Dorothy was very very reluctant to.
MB: She’s very careful.
HH: It’s quite interesting to reflect on why that was and because there are references every now and then in her letters to her feeling like a stranger and you know maybe that was because maybe that was one of the reasons for [pause] but yes she does. She does [pause] one of the things that I found really valuable about these her letters is is the minutiae of daily life that she observes.
DS: Yes.
HH: Which I don’t think you find in any other —
DS: No.
MB: Certainly —
MC: Picking berries and making jams.
HH: And just about how much things cost and you know when rationing gets very difficult.
MC: Yeah.
HH: And when certain kinds of foodstuffs become almost unavailable and and then just I think what also struck me was the way in which their lives became governed by sirens.
MB: Yes.
DS: Yes. Yeah.
HH: And it was up and down to cellars and what to take down to the cellar.
DS: Yes.
HH: And what to protect. The amazing thing that, you know when we think back now that people’s lives were at risk and yet they were trying to think which of their possessions they wanted to save.
MB: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
HH: And you think would you want to save any of them when your life is in danger? You know, it’s those little details of everyday life are just I don’t think you see them anywhere else.
MC: No. When you think about the guest book I mean perhaps the letters you could understand why she wanted them but I thought before but the guest book you know to think well I must take that.
HH: Yes.
MC: Down to the cellar with me.
MB: It was worth looking at in its own right.
MC: Yeah, but I mean —
MB: Isn’t it?
MC: Yes, but you know, we’re talking, you know we’re talking about her.
MB: Yeah.
MC: You know and she obviously had some —
MB: Yes.
MC: She obviously had some ⸻ Well, it was her whole very short married life really.
MB: Well, it was. Yes. It goes right up to the last day of the war when the American was —
HH: Well, I think that is the other thing that is very touching about, about the book is almost anticipating the grief.
MB: Yeah.
HH: That she sort of feels is what she has to deal with.
MC: A friend of mine [unclear]I lent one of the copies to her and she said she was reading, only recently, the last week or so and she’s read all the letters and she said, ‘I absolutely had tears when I read the last letter when she was actually packing up to come away and knowing that she still didn’t know what had happened to him.’
HH: Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
HH: I think it’s, I think it’s a collection that teaches us a lot more about the very human dimension of war and it’s, it’s just so wonderful that —
MC: Yeah.
HH: That you know one way and another you’ve all had such an important role to play and you even managed to get Max Hastings to write a foreword.
DS: Yes. That was Richard actually. It was Richard that, Richard knows Max Hastings and yes he said that Max owed him a favour and so he took Max to lunch in York and talked him into writing this for him.
MB: Dietrich took a copy into the [unclear] I took and they did a whole page for me. I’ve not sent you a copy. I’ll have to let you have a copy. This little envelope came in Dietrich’s handwriting. I didn’t know what it was. When I opened it and this piece of newsprint fell out I just burst into tears because there was a picture of Freiburg on the day, a war picture of how Freiburg was and a picture of Dorothy May off the front of her book and then an article, article all about it, the ISBN number et cetera. And what intrigued me was though that, I’ve told you this before in fact I think the lady who did the review for the newspaper said there was no record in the Freiburg [unclear] Theatre of Paul having worked there. Yet we have his theatre pass and Dorothy refers to his wages coming from the theatre.
HH: Yeah.
MB: So —
HH: It’s interesting.
MB: That raises a question.
HH: It, it confirms for us once again Richard that Archives, Michael that Archives are just never complete are they?
DS: Never.
HH: For various reasons.
DS: Yes. Yes.
HH: And sometimes are Archives are censored and other times they are simply are just not a complete record.
MB: Yes. Yes.
HH: Yeah.
MB: There’s something missing. A detail.
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
MB: How did she meet Paul?
MC: I think that’s,
HH: The most intriguing.
MC: Intriguing thing. We know so much about her through the letters and through bits and papers that we found. But we don’t know how they met. And it —
MB: No. That’s right. There’s a —
MC: I mean we can speculate.
MB: Yes.
MC: But we don’t know and it just seems it’s unfinished somehow. It’s just so strange.
MB: We can’t, we can’t find out which Teacher Training College she went to.
MC: No.
MB: She mentions going to college to train as a teacher and she mentions being in Sheffield. I went up to Sheffield to the Archives there and they got me all the teacher records out to read through them and I could not find D Ardern. There was a C Ardern. That was her maiden name but it, the dates didn’t fit. They were all wrong by a year or two you know.
HH: Yeah. Lots of missing bits to produce.
MB: Lots of jigsaw bits which may come up if somebody sees it one day.
HH: I was quite interested in your introduction to read that was it Dorothy’s grandfather had been Lincoln’s gas man?
DS: Yes. That’s right. That’s closer to you, isn’t it?
MC: It is. I’ve got an old Kelly’s directory at home at Newark. I think it might even be a Lincolnshire, before the Kelly’s but it was one that oh that’s right it was one that my husband had and it actually names, names him in the directory.
HH: Gosh.
MC: A lamplighter in, where we were brought up. in that area. I’d forgotten that. Yes.
HH: So lots of links to Lincolnshire.
MC: Yes.
HH: Through the story.
MC: In fact, I think and again I meant to check it out there is a Somerton Castle isn’t there in Lincoln, in Lincolnshire?
MB: There is.
MC: And that is where, well it’s more my parents. No. Yeah. Well, that they actually lived there and some of the family I’m trying to think was it my parents or was it, no it was probably the grandparents. That’s right because Aunt Amy I think was born at this Somerton Castle which is in Lincolnshire. So although they came from Chard, you know, from Somerset and I did at one stage when we went on holiday, this was later on went around the cemeteries and there was a few Peadons which is you know a fairly unusual name and there was a few but, yeah so it is a very strong Lincolnshire connection really.
DS: Oh, I think so.
MC: Yeah.
MB: And in fact one of the things we haven’t talked about which we should just mention is the remarkable fact that when she came back from Freiburg, Dorothy came back in 1946. She got a job in the Middle Rasen Primary School and your researches because you went off and —
DS: I went down to the Lincoln Archives.
MB: You went to try and find that out, didn’t you?
DS: Yeah.
MB: We were able to find a number of her students, her pupils but no one there seemed to have any idea that she had any contact with Germany. That she’d been married. And so, the impression we’ve got —
DS: Yes.
MB: Is that she didn’t tell anyone at all.
DS: A big secret.
MC: I’d got her name you see. May.
DS: [unclear]
DS: Apparently that’s, and which is remarkable I suppose and you can speculate about why she kept quiet about that and why she didn’t tell people about this.
MC: It was still pretty close to the war. the war years really, wasn’t it?
DS: Well, they were.
HH: Yeah.
MB: I saw in the Archive there were papers between herself and the education going for an interview for the job to teach and what you could see and reading between the lines was hmmmn she’s called May. She’s actually German but doesn’t look it. Doesn’t sound. Will it be safe to let her teach? Because after the war there was that knock on effect. Oh, they were German. I went to a Steiner school as a boy and that caused problems at times, you know. And he goes to that —
HH: Yeah.
MB: Other school over there and I think yeah you know they were cautious in employing her in case it caused some upset somewhere and somebody found something out.
HH: Yeah. Which is maybe why she decided just to be very —
MB: Yeah.
HH: Discreet. Yeah.
DS: Well, she’d been very discreet during the war so —
MB: Yeah.
DS: She obviously knew how to keep her own counsel.
HH: There were also references in, and I don’t know what you make of this but there are the occasional ref, there is the occasional reference in the letters and the journal to her not really wanting to be with other people. Struggling to be among other people.
MB: She wants her peace and quiet.
HH: And I wonder if she wasn’t quite reclusive as well. There was a sort of tendency to be quite reclusive.
MC: I would say that. I mean she was [unclear] she wanted to get away from you know her mother particularly.
MB: Her mother. Yes.
MC: And I would say that she, you know she did like to be on her own. That’s probably why we don’t know so much about them.
MB: No, then she —
HH: Yeah.
MB: Frau Bender who, there were some Benders living down the, what do you call it? The gallery from her in one house. Karl Bender I think is an actor or a singer and there was Frau Bender who comes to stay indefinitely and brings granddaughter [Binchen]
HH: I know. She didn’t like that at all.
MB: Because —
MC: She talks about her yapping doesn’t she?
HH: She really didn’t like that.
MB: A bit of a beast you know.
HH: For over a year.
MB: I think.
HH: Yeah.
MB: I don’t know who I’d put in a film to play that part. No, it’s so fascinating. The more you read it, the more you delve into it the more you see. But —
MC: She seemed to have a real fondness for Paul’s mother, didn’t she?
MB: Oh yes.
MC: Yeah. There seemed to be.
MB: Josephine.
MC: Yeah. Right.
MB: Yes. She was a lovely lady apparently.
MC: Yes. Josephine.
MB: On one of the autograph pages in the guest book there’s a photograph of, not a photograph, a drawing, what have you and down in one corner there’s a coffee pot with a downturned mouth and I think that’s Frau Bender [laughs] I’m sure it is.
MC: Yeah, probably.
MB: Where it’s blazed in that.
HH: Just coming back to the post war period when she was working in Middle Rasen.
MB: Yes.
HH: Did she actually live in Market Rasen? Do you know where she lived?
MB: Yes.
MC: She sent me to do the —
DS: Well, I’ve only heard —
MC: Because she didn’t come straight back did she because she went back to her mother didn’t she?
HH: Well, that’s, she went to her mother first.
MB: She went to look after her mother.
DS: Yes, that’s right.
HH: And then came after her mum’s death.
MC: Yeah, I think she was in a cottage or something in Market Rasen.
MB: Yes.
HH: Yeah.
MB: We have a photograph.
MC: We did. Yeah.
MB: Well, we had. We knew where it was. It was a row of cottages.
MC: And she used to –
MB: I think it’s actually in Middle Rasen.
MC: Middle. Middle Rasen.
DS: It was in Middle Rasen. Having you know —
MB: Located.
HH: Joined. Yes.
DS: They were almost joined together.
MC: A terrace.
DS: And it’s just down the road opposite the school.
MC: Yeah.
DS: I mean it’s only a few steps from the school.
MC: She had the car as well didn’t she so she used to come and Middle Rasen you know is not very far from Lincoln and that was when she would come and visit Auntie Polly and Aunt Amy you know, with the car and I think it was when she got sort of arthritis or something in her neck and found that she didn’t cope driving.
MC: Couldn’t drive. Yeah.
MC: Didn’t she? She never lived in Lincoln. I think that’s when she decided and the place I can’t just think of the name of, I’ve got a feeling and looking back but it wasn’t I don’t even think it was Somerset but I think it was bordering and thinking about it probably it was the fact that’s probably what she could afford you know rather than initially until she got herself sorted. But it was, you know a county you know next to Somerset. I’ll have a look somewhere when I go home.
DS: [unclear]
HH: Look it up.
MC: Yeah.
MB: Amongst all the loose photographs there’s a little one of her in Southport in the High Street walking. You know a walkie talkie little square photograph type of thing that they used to take in Southport and I thought I wonder if Southport Family History know anything. So I wrote to them. I got a very nice letter back from a lady called Miss Ambrose. “I don’t have anything at the moment about Dorothy Ardern or Dorothy May but if I do I’ll let you know.” End of story. Months later here were a phone number comes up and I look at it and I think that’s Southport but it’s not the Southport History number. So I rang, said who I was and this man said who he was. The name’s gone.
MC: [unclear] I know who you mean.
MB: Gregory.
MC: Yeah. It was Gregory, wasn’t it?
MB: Yeah. Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
MB: And he said, ‘I’ve recently retired.’ And I’d sent some other photographs as well that was it and I said Dorothy May’s mother was very important as she lived in Southport and asked if there was anything. And he said, ‘I’ve recently retired. I went to the Southport History Society and they said, ‘What do you want to do?’ and I’d retired,’ he said, 'I’m interested in family history.’ He said they opened the books, he said, ‘My blood ran cold. I was looking at my Aunt Esther.’ That was Dorothy’s mother.
HH: Wow.
MC: This is what I mean about the coincidences. It’s just amazing really.
HH: Wow.
MB: And then of course we kept in correspondence and —
MC: He came to visit me. Yeah.
MB: Photographs passed to and fro and what have you. Yeah.
MC: Yes. They have another coincidence because they came over to again —
MB: They had a son. He was, was he married here?
MC: Married or you know came to visit me at Washingborough yes.
MB: Yeah. That’s way back. Just one of those exciting things again.
MC: Her mum was seventy so what Michael you know and all the coincidences and that when everything was collected it’s a story in itself you know.
HH: Well, I think every, every really valuable historical endeavour is full of these coincidences.
MB: Yes. Yeah.
HH: Without them we wouldn’t get to —
MB: No.
HH: Get to where we are.
DS: I think I should say that the professional story as it were that what Michael did as a complete amateur, you don’t mind me saying that do you?
MB: Oh no [laughs] Not at all.
DS: Was absolutely remarkable. Absolutely remarkable.
MB: Yes.
DS: And first of all identifying that these were really valuable things and then having learning the skills.
MB: Yes.
DS: Effectively that’s what you did.
MB: Yes.
DS: You learned.
MB: Learned a lot.
HH: Well, Michael I think we should say that you’ve completed your apprenticeship.
DS: And you’re now down as a lead author in a major historic text.
MB: Yes.
MC: I always remember Myra saying to me which makes me laugh, I always remember Myra saying to me when we started on this trip she said to me that I didn’t get any you know there was nothing left for me or anything like that and she said this could be your inheritance she said. I do remember that. But I don’t think that’s likely to come off.
DS: It’s a bit of a ropey inheritance I’m afraid.
MC: It is indeed. Yes.
HH: I think that the other thing about a project like this is that although an important milestone has been reached with the publication of that book the story will go on and on.
MB: Yes.
HH: Because the more historical sources get digitised —
MB: Yes.
HH: The more you will likely find.
MB: People will spot things and think –
HH: About the story. So I think, I think it’s a good maybe moment to pause to say the story will continue.
MC: Continue. Yes.
HH: And thank you very much for the roles that you have played in bringing it this far. Thank you.
MB: Thank you.
DS: Thank you.
MC: Yeah.
MC: Right. I was born in, born in Lincoln and lived in Lincoln for the majority of my life apart from ten years in Sleaford. I’ll start with sort of my connection, my first connection with, with Dorothy May and that is she was a first cousin of mine. Her mother was one of my dad’s sisters and my dad was the only boy in a family of nine girls and so that my maiden name was Peadons so there’s not many Peadons about because that’s how it was. I lived in Lincoln. I didn’t know but a lot of difference in our ages between Dorothy May and myself. I think it’s getting on for twenty years so I didn’t know really much about her at all. I lived in Bracebridge which at the end one or two of my dad’s sisters lived in that area and I went to school in Lincoln. I was one of the, I was the youngest in a family of eight children. There was quite a gap between me and my sister. She was, yes, she would be seven I think when I was born. The others, there was only about eighteen months difference in, in their ages. Now, I’m just the only one of the eight siblings left. As I say we lived in Bracebridge and one of the things I do remember being told, not remembering because I wasn’t old enough was where we lived in Bracebridge which is, you know the house no longer exists. It was where the last, where the trams used to go by and the last trams. So I lived in that part of Lincoln, the bottom part of Lincoln all my life. I went to school. I went to the Secondary School. I trained as a social worker and again all the people that Dorothy May, the aunties of Dorothy May had contact with when she, I knew we’d get there eventually. But when she, when she came back to Lincoln eventually she did spend a lot of time with Aunt Polly and Aunt Amy and they ran a, together with Uncle George I think his name was they ran a, I suppose this day would be like a modern delicatessen except that they they lived in a terraced house and at the back they had outhouses and they did all their cooking, all their pork pies and everything else down there. And then they sold and they sold things like scraps. You know, batter that’s really crisp and everybody enjoys eating, or we did and so I did have not a lot to do with them but certainly I didn’t know Dorothy May as I say at that time. And then I think opposite them there was another auntie. One of my dad’s sisters. Where do I go from there?
MB: Dorothy’s father was a butcher was he not?
MC: Well, that I wouldn’t know.
MB: Yes, he was.
MC: No, you see I didn’t know anything about him. About them at all. I mean I’ve learned more about them since you’ve been doing the book than, than before. I think I probably met, when Dorothy came back to, to England and then her mother died and she came to live in Market Rasen. That’s when she used to come to Aunt Polly and Aunt Amy and, but again I can’t remember really seeing her. I think the first [pause] the first time, no. I’m just trying [pause] I can’t think. At some stage she she wrote to me and asked if I would be her executor and I think the reason she, well I know the reason was because as I say there’s a big age gap because my mum was forty five when I was born. So it was sort of a very old, you know old family and by the time Dorothy May contacted me I was the youngest really, almost going to be the last. The last one so although I knew a little about her that’s when she said would I be her executor and that’s how I got. And a friend and I did, we went and I was trying to think of the name of the village. She was in Somerset by this time.
MB: Chard.
HH: Chard.
MC: No. No. No.
MB: No.
HH: Not Chard.
MC: No. It was Chard but not when I went to stay.
MB: No.
MC: Stay in her cottage for the first time. It was a thatched cottage and I just, I just can’t think. I was trying to think of it this morning and I couldn’t think of it and my friend and I, Dorothy invited us to go and stay in her cottage while she did one of her many trips because she did used to go travelling a lot. So we stayed there but I don’t even think we saw her then because she was gone, you know. And then, then the really one time I can really remember seeing her was when my husband and I when we got married. That was in 1990. We went to Plymouth for our honeymoon and on the way back I suggested that perhaps we went to see Dorothy and at that time she was living in because she was Old Chard and Chard I think and, but before that it was something beginning with W that I can’t really remember. So we went to see her and I do remember her offering us a cup of tea and we never did get the cup of tea and I think she was beginning at that stage to you know not, not be quite as sharp. But that just might be nerves and whatever. So we never saw her. I never saw her again until we were you know contacted about being executor. Is there anything, any gaps you might like me to say a bit about?
HH: So, can we just take that a little further Mollie because you were the one were you as the executor who then took possession of the letters?
MC: Mine. Yes.
HH: And you —
MC: I’ve explained the —
HH: And did you, did you know what they were?
MC: No.
HH: What, had you been told what was there?
MC: I’ll explain that to you.
HH: Okay.
MC: Yes, when we went. When we went, my husband as the others, the last time I ever did a long journey, drove actually did the driving because I drove down to Truro would it be? Yeah. Wouldn’t it. Yeah. But he came with me. We stayed in a, well so we went the day before the funeral. That’s right. I went down the day before the funeral. Obviously to see what was in the bungalow. So we booked into a hotel so we went across and that was Chard. I think it was Old Chard. I’d have to look that, I know there’s the two so that she made sort of three moves in, so in the time that I knew her. When we got to the house the very kind neighbour came across and invited us in for a cup of tea and said, ‘You know when you go go and look in the bureau.’ And it was a bureau, you know with the lid that came down. ‘And you’ll find something.’ I can’t remember how she described it but she said, ‘You’ll find something of interest there.’ And it was the, I think it first of all it was the letters and there was also the —
MB: Guest book. The guest book.
MC: Yes, I know. I was going to say.
MB: Sorry. Sorry.
MC: Just trying to, yes and the guest book and so I took them out and you know obviously had a look and then I went into the bedroom which was absolutely scattered with photographs and all sorts of things. Yeah. All over the bed so almost because by this time you know as I say she’d died and she had I think she’d gone into a home and she had, she was wandering around at night et cetera, you know. So I left them at I think we must have gone back the next day and I looked around and then there was loads of music in a, in a sideboard. But not knowing, you know knowing so little about her I mean you know hindsight’s a wonderful thing isn’t it? You know. I feel as though I let so much go but obviously I was aware of the significance of the book. The memoirs and the guest book and of course the letters were all in English but the guest book was more varied than that. And there was one or two pieces of pottery that I thought quite possibly came from her own parents that were quite old et cetera. So I took a took, took some things but I took very little really and even the photographs I don’t, I didn’t take many at all because I didn’t even know he was an actor or just didn’t know anything about her. I did find out that she was a member of the WI which I am and was then and there was one or two programmes. And she did have the relationship with this neighbour who was very kind. So that’s, that was my real connection with her and obviously then when I did look at the, you know eventually looked through the papers I realised the significance and that’s when you know I thought of Michael because I knew that he was learning German. So, so unfortunately at the funeral it was very sad and one thing I do remember when we opened the bungalow door there was an envelope on the floor and I think, I don’t know whether it was a lady that used to do some cleaning for her but had put a sympathy card in which I thought was rather nice. I mean she didn’t know the significance at all. And really there was no one at the funeral. I was only thinking about it you know since I’ve been coming, was coming here and I really felt that I ought to contact him because we have got or did have sisters but my dad’s sisters three or four of them had gone to Keighley. Why they went? I’ve never found out why they went there but I think one of them in fact married a mill owner and they were and I know that, as far as I can recall I didn’t contact them because I wasn’t having any contact with them and I regret that, you know, now because the only people that were there was me really. And to be absolutely honest I was only there because being executor rather than a real you know connection with her. So then of course when I came back to Lincoln. I suppose that was one of those perhaps I, oh I haven’t said how I knew Michael. I knew Michael through his wife Myra. We were in the Girl Guides together about fourteen or fifteen or something like that and we always got on very well together and then of course Michael came along to do his National Service and we all used to, on a Sunday evening we used to take this [unclear] on a Sunday evening we went to the, Myra and I went to the same chapel together and you used to come down didn’t you? And we went to some friends on a Sunday evening after chapel to have a sing and you know just to keep us all together. And that’s how we you know got together really. And so then I knew Michael from then and we got on, we had a lot of laughs together didn’t we? I’ve got a photograph of Michael and I walking in the sea. Was it Mablethorpe?
MB: Skegness.
MC: Skegness with, you know, having a paddle. So we go back a very long way and then eventually I was bridesmaid to them and that’s our connection. And apart from when you came to live, where was it? Leeds? Leicester, was it? Where was it we lost contact?
MB: Lincoln. From Lincoln to Leicester to Sheffield.
MC: Yes, well I lost contact with you a bit then.
MB: Yeah.
MC: Until you came back to Lincoln and then we kept in, Myra actually made our wedding cake for us so yeah. That.
HH: Wonderful. Wonderful.
MB: Yeah.
HH: Well, Mollie you played such an important role in rescuing and looking after those letters and without without that act we wouldn’t all be sitting here today talking about what happened next. So Michael I think this is your entrée to the story.
MB: True. Mollie came to me and she brought the guest book first of all. It’s a German guest book. Black leather bound with gold lettering under, “Gast,” and it was autographed inside from the date Dorothy and Paul were married in, in Freiburg. She had met Paul apparently we don’t know it’s a mystery because within two days of her arriving in Freiburg she married Paul. We don’t know where they met. We suspect he may have been in London at some time and have some connection there. And Molly said, ‘Yeah, have a look at this book. See what you can make of it.’ Some of it was in English which was fun to read because one lady writes and says, “I’d give anything for a new hat but you can’t get hats for love nor money.” [laughs] Sort of thing. Lovely little memories like that. A lot in German which I set about trying to translate as much as I could. Some of the script is rather difficult and looking at that, sort of playing about with it then Mollie came and she said, ‘There’s a bunch of letters.’ I said, ‘Would you let me see them please? She said yes and brought them. I started to wade through them. They were in a raffia, red and white raffia folder with a linen cover inside and at the back there was a tiny little photograph which was Dorothy May’s photograph and she’d written on the back, “This is a photograph of my passport. I’m not always as miserable as this.” [laughs] which, and it’s still there and it’s preserved in that folder of course which is its home. I started to go through the letters and read them and got my little old steam typewriter out, worked busily away at nights and much to Myra’s annoyance at times while I am, because you’re clacking away on that typewriter but what have you.
HH: How long ago was this Michael?
MB: Twenty three years ago. No. Twenty years ago. 2003. And I gradually got I thought this paper needs preserving. It’s no good just leaving, leafing through this and handling and handling it it’s getting so fragile. So I started to make a typescript, poor typist that I am but I managed and going through it eventually I came across a chapter or a letter where Dorothy had heard of an English lady living in Freiburg and she said, ‘I will go and see her.’ And okay she went. The lady wasn’t there. The nurse or assistant opened the door and said, ‘I’m sorry she’s gone to Switzerland.’ And Dorothy wrote very sharply, “Fancy going to Switzerland in the middle of the war.” This sort of idiom, and leaving two sons, you know. Why ever did she do that? That was the end of it and then I was given a book in a little German group we were running which printed in Freiburg called, “Let’s Face It,” by a lady called Dorothy Elchlepp and it turned out that Dorothy Elchlepp was an English Dorothy and I wondered if the two of them knew one another. So I wrote to the publishers. I said who I was and what I was about. Could they forward the letter on to Frau Elchlepp and say what was happening? Six months went by. I had no reply. We were shopping in Newark and I saw a book, “Rough Guide to Germany,” for a pound. Myra said to me, ‘What on earth do you want that for?’ I said, ‘Freiburg’s a dead duck. I’ve heard nothing. I want to read about Germany.’ So I bought it. Read about it. The next morning there was a letter on the mat from Herr Dietrich Elchlepp who said, “The publishers have passed your letter on. Unfortunately, my mother died two years ago but yes they probably knew one another. I’m coming to England. I’d like to see the letters that you have.” And he came. Mollie, you came too did you not to meet him and his wife and when he saw the papers he said that these must be published. And so it went on from there with an awful lot of detail, research, excitements and things along the way which eventually took me to stay in Denzlingen where Dietrich Elchlepp and his wife lived and they were able to take me around and go to the Archives, show me the flat where Dorothy and Paul had lived and so on and it just went on from there with all sorts of coincidences and little excitements along the way. What more can I say about that?
HH: So you transcribed the letters. You did all of this research and then how does David come into the story?
MB: Well, David used would come to me on Tuesday afternoons. We had a recorder session playing the recorder and piano and coping with the music having a very enjoyable time and he knew that I was handling this book or this, this wad of letters and I said, ‘I’m not getting anywhere with trying to find a publisher.’ I had written to various people. Random House in fact who said what a lovely book it will be. Very nice. But we don’t want it. The usual sort of thing. And eventually David took it over and said, ‘Let me see what I can do.’ And he helped with an awful lot of the editing from where I had edited it down to I managed to find from Freiburg Archives, “[unclear] Papers.” Lists of all the houses where people lived and who they were and what their occupation was. So we were able to sift it and put it in date and took it and enhanced it further. Did a lot more work for me on it and and there it goes from there, I think.
HH: Yes. So I think we now hand the baton to David.
DS: Thank you. Yes. Well, I first came across these things as sheafs of foolscap transcript in large brown envelopes or actually in a large brown envelope that you have been sending to different publishers.
MB: Yes
DS: And they’d been, they’d been, well they’d been sending them back more or less saying we can’t cope with this. Now, I don’t think that was the message that Michael took from them but I could see that the problem was that they weren’t properly, well they weren’t really presented at all. It was just Michael saying these are a wonderful thing.
MB: Yeah. Yes.
DS: And on the whole they were agreeing with you.
MB: Yes.
DS: But they couldn’t deal with it in, in that sort of state. And any way the ones I read were absolutely fascinating. Completely absorbing. So after one of our tea sessions, after our music together I said, ‘Well, you know, if you, if you let me have a go at it I’ll produce a script of the sort that a publisher might be interested in producing and I’ll do a bit of, a bit more academic work on it.’ To make it clear that, you know this is a proper scholarly activity and not, not sort of ill considered. So and I’m afraid for about three months I was completely lost in Freiburg as well just like Michael had been. Well, Michael had been lost for a lot longer than three months.
MC: Had been for ages.
DS: Many years. But I, for about three months in I suppose this would have been 2010 something like that.
MB: Yes.
DS: About 2010 I was completely lost in it as well and it became a, well it shouldn’t really have become part of my research programme but it did. You know the way these thing float into your research and then float out again and at the end of it we had a presentable script for publishers. I’d taken that on in the first place I think because when I was very, the very first contact I had with them was Michael saying that the previous day at one of our teatime sessions the previous day he’d had a letter from a local publisher who was on the one hand offering to buy the things for a very small amount of money and on the other hand was proposing to fillet them down to a small —
MB: Down to the bone.
MC: Was that Ronnie Birkett?
DS: Yes. That was Ronnie Birkett.
MC: Yeah.
DS: So down to a handful of letters which were largely about bombing actually. What she was interested in was the account of the bombing. Nothing else. And I could see that Michael because you were at that stage I think you were quite inclined you know you weren’t, you weren’t, you were getting a bit fed up with not being —
MB: Well, yes.
DS: Not making progress. Thinking you might take this offer.
MC: But we knew what we wanted.
MB: Yes. Indeed, we did. More than we were offered certainly.
DS: And so it was at that stage I sort of said, ‘Well, I’ll take on this if you give me, give me the responsibility for doing that and we’ll do something better,’ than was being offered. And that was why I took it over and to be honest I suppose I thought I was doing that because I, Michael had been my music teacher for, well by that stage several years.
MB: Well, yes.
DS: Several years and had never charged me a penny which I was terribly terribly grateful for and I thought this might be some way of paying him back. Recompensing him. Using my expertise to help him towards his goal. In the end it turned into a bit more, a bit more of a marathon than we thought it was going to be. But anyway, to continue with the process having done, having received the, the foolscap sheets we had to get that into a digital form and then into a presentable form. Managed to do that without too much trouble. It was quite a lot of work but we managed to do that. And there was additional research which needed doing. I did that. All very interesting. And at the stage that we had a complete book I started asking where it might be published and I consulted one or two people. I consulted Axel Müller. I don’t know whether you know Axel Müller at Leeds. And he said yes, these were enormously interesting letters, well worth publishing but he didn’t really have any access to German publishers or indeed couldn’t really suggest any good publishers. So I tried Richard Morris who is a long standing friend of mine, collaborator of mine and he, he was very excited to read and I sent him some samples. Then eventually I sent him the lot and he he also was extremely excited by them and because he’s a professional writer he was interested in trying to get a book deal. And we spent I suppose at least five or six years, didn’t we?
MB: Easily. Toing and froing.
DS: Yes. Toing and froing with different publishers with Richard making proposals to publishers he knew. Often personal approaches rather than, as it were just sending them out [pause] are you ready to change?
[recording paused]
DS: Richard with his experience and his contacts in the publishing world started negotiating on our behalf. All three of us. On behalf of all three of us with various publishers and of course he was also able to do some of the, well he tweaked the editing to some extent because I’m a Medievalist I should explain and this was all news to me. Although I enjoyed enormously reading the great works of the twentieth century historians on the war but Richard is, swims in this water and he was able to tweak some of the footnotes particularly to make sure that they were referring to the right volumes. You know how important that is in academic work. I was referring to texts which had suspect qualities to them and you know the real proper text you should refer to is something else. And Richard was very good at making sure all that was okay and he also spent quite a lot of time polishing the introduction although actually we’d written an introduction.
MB: We had written an introduction.
DS: Fairly similar to the one that he polished. So he polished the introduction but to be honest Richard’s most important contribution was negotiating with the publishers and that went on for a number of years as we’ve already said and we were encountering some difficulties. I think on the whole the sorts of publishers that Richard was approaching were not the sort of publishers that were interested in this sort of —
MB: With that material.
DS: This sort of material. But in the end I was able to link up with Sean Tyas in Donnington who’s a publisher I’ve used for a number of my works. He specialises actually in Medieval publication and he was absolutely thrilled. He wanted to start and indeed has started a twentieth century list and he was, he was very keen to take it on. Very very keen to take it on to the extent that he was, he was offering me all sorts of blandishments in the way of books and one thing and another. ‘Please let me publish this.’ So, so in the end we, we agreed to that didn’t we? The three of us agreed that this was the best way forward and I don’t know within about a six or nine months of him taking it on it was, it was in proof wasn’t it?
MB: Yes. It was.
DS: And we now have this wonderful book.
HH: Published 2022.
DS: 2022. Yes.
HH: And there’s something rather fitting about the fact that it’s a Lincolnshire publisher.
MB: Oh yes.
DS: Yes, indeed. Yes.
MC: I thought that when [unclear]
MB: The other thing was when it was published I was able to take it to Mollie on her birthday.
MC: Oh yes.
MB: I gave her a copy
MC: Last year. Yeah. That was different.
HH: Fantastic. Yes.
MB: Fitted in nicely.
MC: Yeah.
HH: And how’s it been going?
DS: Well, it’s been selling very well according to Sean Tyas’ most recent communication with me. He’s very pleased with it. He’s hoping to build a reputation in this sort of twentieth century area and I think he feels that this is quite a substantial publication to to help him down that route. I’ve shown it to a number of people. I’ve had no negative comments at all. I’ve shown it to a number of historians who have been very positive about it. Most recently I showed it to Sir Ian Kershaw and he said that it was one of the most interesting books of its sort that he’d seen. He said it was particularly interesting because it made a contrast with other German diaries of the period that he’d read of which of course were in German rather than English and he said that Dorothy was writing about things that they weren’t writing about but interestingly she wasn’t writing about the things they were writing about. Apparently, there was a substantial number of German diaries of this period who are writing about the political situation and committing their thoughts on the politics of their environment to paper and of course we know that Dorothy was very very reluctant to.
MB: She’s very careful.
HH: It’s quite interesting to reflect on why that was and because there are references every now and then in her letters to her feeling like a stranger and you know maybe that was because maybe that was one of the reasons for [pause] but yes she does. She does [pause] one of the things that I found really valuable about these her letters is is the minutiae of daily life that she observes.
DS: Yes.
HH: Which I don’t think you find in any other —
DS: No.
MB: Certainly —
MC: Picking berries and making jams.
HH: And just about how much things cost and you know when rationing gets very difficult.
MC: Yeah.
HH: And when certain kinds of foodstuffs become almost unavailable and and then just I think what also struck me was the way in which their lives became governed by sirens.
MB: Yes.
DS: Yes. Yeah.
HH: And it was up and down to cellars and what to take down to the cellar.
DS: Yes.
HH: And what to protect. The amazing thing that, you know when we think back now that people’s lives were at risk and yet they were trying to think which of their possessions they wanted to save.
MB: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
HH: And you think would you want to save any of them when your life is in danger? You know, it’s those little details of everyday life are just I don’t think you see them anywhere else.
MC: No. When you think about the guest book I mean perhaps the letters you could understand why she wanted them but I thought before but the guest book you know to think well I must take that.
HH: Yes.
MC: Down to the cellar with me.
MB: It was worth looking at in its own right.
MC: Yeah, but I mean —
MB: Isn’t it?
MC: Yes, but you know, we’re talking, you know we’re talking about her.
MB: Yeah.
MC: You know and she obviously had some —
MB: Yes.
MC: She obviously had some ⸻ Well, it was her whole very short married life really.
MB: Well, it was. Yes. It goes right up to the last day of the war when the American was —
HH: Well, I think that is the other thing that is very touching about, about the book is almost anticipating the grief.
MB: Yeah.
HH: That she sort of feels is what she has to deal with.
MC: A friend of mine [unclear]I lent one of the copies to her and she said she was reading, only recently, the last week or so and she’s read all the letters and she said, ‘I absolutely had tears when I read the last letter when she was actually packing up to come away and knowing that she still didn’t know what had happened to him.’
HH: Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
HH: I think it’s, I think it’s a collection that teaches us a lot more about the very human dimension of war and it’s, it’s just so wonderful that —
MC: Yeah.
HH: That you know one way and another you’ve all had such an important role to play and you even managed to get Max Hastings to write a foreword.
DS: Yes. That was Richard actually. It was Richard that, Richard knows Max Hastings and yes he said that Max owed him a favour and so he took Max to lunch in York and talked him into writing this for him.
MB: Dietrich took a copy into the [unclear] I took and they did a whole page for me. I’ve not sent you a copy. I’ll have to let you have a copy. This little envelope came in Dietrich’s handwriting. I didn’t know what it was. When I opened it and this piece of newsprint fell out I just burst into tears because there was a picture of Freiburg on the day, a war picture of how Freiburg was and a picture of Dorothy May off the front of her book and then an article, article all about it, the ISBN number et cetera. And what intrigued me was though that, I’ve told you this before in fact I think the lady who did the review for the newspaper said there was no record in the Freiburg [unclear] Theatre of Paul having worked there. Yet we have his theatre pass and Dorothy refers to his wages coming from the theatre.
HH: Yeah.
MB: So —
HH: It’s interesting.
MB: That raises a question.
HH: It, it confirms for us once again Richard that Archives, Michael that Archives are just never complete are they?
DS: Never.
HH: For various reasons.
DS: Yes. Yes.
HH: And sometimes are Archives are censored and other times they are simply are just not a complete record.
MB: Yes. Yes.
HH: Yeah.
MB: There’s something missing. A detail.
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
MB: How did she meet Paul?
MC: I think that’s,
HH: The most intriguing.
MC: Intriguing thing. We know so much about her through the letters and through bits and papers that we found. But we don’t know how they met. And it —
MB: No. That’s right. There’s a —
MC: I mean we can speculate.
MB: Yes.
MC: But we don’t know and it just seems it’s unfinished somehow. It’s just so strange.
MB: We can’t, we can’t find out which Teacher Training College she went to.
MC: No.
MB: She mentions going to college to train as a teacher and she mentions being in Sheffield. I went up to Sheffield to the Archives there and they got me all the teacher records out to read through them and I could not find D Ardern. There was a C Ardern. That was her maiden name but it, the dates didn’t fit. They were all wrong by a year or two you know.
HH: Yeah. Lots of missing bits to produce.
MB: Lots of jigsaw bits which may come up if somebody sees it one day.
HH: I was quite interested in your introduction to read that was it Dorothy’s grandfather had been Lincoln’s gas man?
DS: Yes. That’s right. That’s closer to you, isn’t it?
MC: It is. I’ve got an old Kelly’s directory at home at Newark. I think it might even be a Lincolnshire, before the Kelly’s but it was one that oh that’s right it was one that my husband had and it actually names, names him in the directory.
HH: Gosh.
MC: A lamplighter in, where we were brought up. in that area. I’d forgotten that. Yes.
HH: So lots of links to Lincolnshire.
MC: Yes.
HH: Through the story.
MC: In fact, I think and again I meant to check it out there is a Somerton Castle isn’t there in Lincoln, in Lincolnshire?
MB: There is.
MC: And that is where, well it’s more my parents. No. Yeah. Well, that they actually lived there and some of the family I’m trying to think was it my parents or was it, no it was probably the grandparents. That’s right because Aunt Amy I think was born at this Somerton Castle which is in Lincolnshire. So although they came from Chard, you know, from Somerset and I did at one stage when we went on holiday, this was later on went around the cemeteries and there was a few Peadons which is you know a fairly unusual name and there was a few but, yeah so it is a very strong Lincolnshire connection really.
DS: Oh, I think so.
MC: Yeah.
MB: And in fact one of the things we haven’t talked about which we should just mention is the remarkable fact that when she came back from Freiburg, Dorothy came back in 1946. She got a job in the Middle Rasen Primary School and your researches because you went off and —
DS: I went down to the Lincoln Archives.
MB: You went to try and find that out, didn’t you?
DS: Yeah.
MB: We were able to find a number of her students, her pupils but no one there seemed to have any idea that she had any contact with Germany. That she’d been married. And so, the impression we’ve got —
DS: Yes.
MB: Is that she didn’t tell anyone at all.
DS: A big secret.
MC: I’d got her name you see. May.
DS: [unclear]
DS: Apparently that’s, and which is remarkable I suppose and you can speculate about why she kept quiet about that and why she didn’t tell people about this.
MC: It was still pretty close to the war. the war years really, wasn’t it?
DS: Well, they were.
HH: Yeah.
MB: I saw in the Archive there were papers between herself and the education going for an interview for the job to teach and what you could see and reading between the lines was hmmmn she’s called May. She’s actually German but doesn’t look it. Doesn’t sound. Will it be safe to let her teach? Because after the war there was that knock on effect. Oh, they were German. I went to a Steiner school as a boy and that caused problems at times, you know. And he goes to that —
HH: Yeah.
MB: Other school over there and I think yeah you know they were cautious in employing her in case it caused some upset somewhere and somebody found something out.
HH: Yeah. Which is maybe why she decided just to be very —
MB: Yeah.
HH: Discreet. Yeah.
DS: Well, she’d been very discreet during the war so —
MB: Yeah.
DS: She obviously knew how to keep her own counsel.
HH: There were also references in, and I don’t know what you make of this but there are the occasional ref, there is the occasional reference in the letters and the journal to her not really wanting to be with other people. Struggling to be among other people.
MB: She wants her peace and quiet.
HH: And I wonder if she wasn’t quite reclusive as well. There was a sort of tendency to be quite reclusive.
MC: I would say that. I mean she was [unclear] she wanted to get away from you know her mother particularly.
MB: Her mother. Yes.
MC: And I would say that she, you know she did like to be on her own. That’s probably why we don’t know so much about them.
MB: No, then she —
HH: Yeah.
MB: Frau Bender who, there were some Benders living down the, what do you call it? The gallery from her in one house. Karl Bender I think is an actor or a singer and there was Frau Bender who comes to stay indefinitely and brings granddaughter [Binchen]
HH: I know. She didn’t like that at all.
MB: Because —
MC: She talks about her yapping doesn’t she?
HH: She really didn’t like that.
MB: A bit of a beast you know.
HH: For over a year.
MB: I think.
HH: Yeah.
MB: I don’t know who I’d put in a film to play that part. No, it’s so fascinating. The more you read it, the more you delve into it the more you see. But —
MC: She seemed to have a real fondness for Paul’s mother, didn’t she?
MB: Oh yes.
MC: Yeah. There seemed to be.
MB: Josephine.
MC: Yeah. Right.
MB: Yes. She was a lovely lady apparently.
MC: Yes. Josephine.
MB: On one of the autograph pages in the guest book there’s a photograph of, not a photograph, a drawing, what have you and down in one corner there’s a coffee pot with a downturned mouth and I think that’s Frau Bender [laughs] I’m sure it is.
MC: Yeah, probably.
MB: Where it’s blazed in that.
HH: Just coming back to the post war period when she was working in Middle Rasen.
MB: Yes.
HH: Did she actually live in Market Rasen? Do you know where she lived?
MB: Yes.
MC: She sent me to do the —
DS: Well, I’ve only heard —
MC: Because she didn’t come straight back did she because she went back to her mother didn’t she?
HH: Well, that’s, she went to her mother first.
MB: She went to look after her mother.
DS: Yes, that’s right.
HH: And then came after her mum’s death.
MC: Yeah, I think she was in a cottage or something in Market Rasen.
MB: Yes.
HH: Yeah.
MB: We have a photograph.
MC: We did. Yeah.
MB: Well, we had. We knew where it was. It was a row of cottages.
MC: And she used to –
MB: I think it’s actually in Middle Rasen.
MC: Middle. Middle Rasen.
DS: It was in Middle Rasen. Having you know —
MB: Located.
HH: Joined. Yes.
DS: They were almost joined together.
MC: A terrace.
DS: And it’s just down the road opposite the school.
MC: Yeah.
DS: I mean it’s only a few steps from the school.
MC: She had the car as well didn’t she so she used to come and Middle Rasen you know is not very far from Lincoln and that was when she would come and visit Auntie Polly and Aunt Amy you know, with the car and I think it was when she got sort of arthritis or something in her neck and found that she didn’t cope driving.
MC: Couldn’t drive. Yeah.
MC: Didn’t she? She never lived in Lincoln. I think that’s when she decided and the place I can’t just think of the name of, I’ve got a feeling and looking back but it wasn’t I don’t even think it was Somerset but I think it was bordering and thinking about it probably it was the fact that’s probably what she could afford you know rather than initially until she got herself sorted. But it was, you know a county you know next to Somerset. I’ll have a look somewhere when I go home.
DS: [unclear]
HH: Look it up.
MC: Yeah.
MB: Amongst all the loose photographs there’s a little one of her in Southport in the High Street walking. You know a walkie talkie little square photograph type of thing that they used to take in Southport and I thought I wonder if Southport Family History know anything. So I wrote to them. I got a very nice letter back from a lady called Miss Ambrose. “I don’t have anything at the moment about Dorothy Ardern or Dorothy May but if I do I’ll let you know.” End of story. Months later here were a phone number comes up and I look at it and I think that’s Southport but it’s not the Southport History number. So I rang, said who I was and this man said who he was. The name’s gone.
MC: [unclear] I know who you mean.
MB: Gregory.
MC: Yeah. It was Gregory, wasn’t it?
MB: Yeah. Yeah.
MC: Yeah.
MB: And he said, ‘I’ve recently retired.’ And I’d sent some other photographs as well that was it and I said Dorothy May’s mother was very important as she lived in Southport and asked if there was anything. And he said, ‘I’ve recently retired. I went to the Southport History Society and they said, ‘What do you want to do?’ and I’d retired,’ he said, 'I’m interested in family history.’ He said they opened the books, he said, ‘My blood ran cold. I was looking at my Aunt Esther.’ That was Dorothy’s mother.
HH: Wow.
MC: This is what I mean about the coincidences. It’s just amazing really.
HH: Wow.
MB: And then of course we kept in correspondence and —
MC: He came to visit me. Yeah.
MB: Photographs passed to and fro and what have you. Yeah.
MC: Yes. They have another coincidence because they came over to again —
MB: They had a son. He was, was he married here?
MC: Married or you know came to visit me at Washingborough yes.
MB: Yeah. That’s way back. Just one of those exciting things again.
MC: Her mum was seventy so what Michael you know and all the coincidences and that when everything was collected it’s a story in itself you know.
HH: Well, I think every, every really valuable historical endeavour is full of these coincidences.
MB: Yes. Yeah.
HH: Without them we wouldn’t get to —
MB: No.
HH: Get to where we are.
DS: I think I should say that the professional story as it were that what Michael did as a complete amateur, you don’t mind me saying that do you?
MB: Oh no [laughs] Not at all.
DS: Was absolutely remarkable. Absolutely remarkable.
MB: Yes.
DS: And first of all identifying that these were really valuable things and then having learning the skills.
MB: Yes.
DS: Effectively that’s what you did.
MB: Yes.
DS: You learned.
MB: Learned a lot.
HH: Well, Michael I think we should say that you’ve completed your apprenticeship.
DS: And you’re now down as a lead author in a major historic text.
MB: Yes.
MC: I always remember Myra saying to me which makes me laugh, I always remember Myra saying to me when we started on this trip she said to me that I didn’t get any you know there was nothing left for me or anything like that and she said this could be your inheritance she said. I do remember that. But I don’t think that’s likely to come off.
DS: It’s a bit of a ropey inheritance I’m afraid.
MC: It is indeed. Yes.
HH: I think that the other thing about a project like this is that although an important milestone has been reached with the publication of that book the story will go on and on.
MB: Yes.
HH: Because the more historical sources get digitised —
MB: Yes.
HH: The more you will likely find.
MB: People will spot things and think –
HH: About the story. So I think, I think it’s a good maybe moment to pause to say the story will continue.
MC: Continue. Yes.
HH: And thank you very much for the roles that you have played in bringing it this far. Thank you.
MB: Thank you.
DS: Thank you.
MC: Yeah.
Collection
Citation
Heather Hughes, “Interview with Mollie Caunt, Michael Bassett and Professor David Stocker about the Freiburg Letters,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed June 18, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/46027.
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