I am thankful to Sandra from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, for this letter to the ‘Editor of the Abingdon and Reading Herald’, written by her great great great Uncle Joseph Argyle of Abingdon in the very wet and miry year of 1879 …
Joseph left many journals, and inspired Sandra’s writing, and perhaps also had some influence on Percival Argyle, his grand nephew who was a journalist himself and sent reports to the Herald while he was on the WW1 war scene in France. Percival was killed and his name appears on the monument commemorating Abingdon’s fallen soldiers.
P.S. I would love to read those journals.
The journals are too fragile to read due to their age. But Sandra Marie Lewis did read them when she first received them. She has written a novel around them with, obviously, a good degree of artistic licence. It is called Just Where You Stand. It narrates the tale of her family from their lives in Abingdon with many recognisable mentions? Eventually they emigrate to Canada where she finds herself now. The book is available from Mostly Books in Stert Street and online. I really enjoyed it.