Hugh Thompson gives a talk on his book about his great grandparents
Hugh Thompson giving his talk at the day centre
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Regenerate Rise the old people’s day centre at the Platt reopened at the beginning of June which has meant a programme of activities can resume.
This week local writer Hugh Thompson gave a talk based on his book about the courtship and marriage of his great grandparents Nelly and Arthur Bosworth who corresponded throughout 1885.
Centre manager Paul Beadles says, ”The twenty or so who come either four days or once a week love anything that helps them remember and reminisce, this was a perfect vehicle,”
While one remembered that she had come to Putney sixty odd years ago as a German au pair and, on her return, her husband won her back by writing to her every day.
Another told of her parents first meeting on a trip to Spain and getting lost and returning to the party riding the same donkey, just as well they got married, she laughed. Another told of the boy she couldn’t marry because he was a Roman Catholic but over the last seventy years they have written regularly to each other.
Rolande Logez loved the Nelly and Arthur story because, “It showed a different more formal old fashioned kind of courtship. At first Nelly and Arthur wouldn’t use Christian names, but within three months they were engaged.”
Her friend Anne loved the fashions saying, “The feathers, the stays, the long dresses, the starched collars. The whole business of writing letters almost every day it’s a forgotten world, it could be a TV series.”
Hugh Thompson says, ”I wrote the book for my family and friends it’s amazing that anyone else is interested.”
The book “Nelly met Arthur, A Victorian Romance, 1885” is being privately published and copies can be obtained by emailing scribbler2000@yahoo.com.
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July 2, 2021
