Margaret C. Osgood to Mary Alden Childers and Erskine Childers, 6th December 1913. IE TCD MS 7867/33

Digitised version of IE TCD MS 7867/33, a letter written by Margaret C. Osgood, Harvard, Massachusetts, United States to her daughter Mary Alden Childers and her son-in-law Erskine Childers, 25th August [1918]: "The moon is so beautiful, I have been out walking & looking at the Northern Lights which are superb to night I wish you had been at the Camp last might. I went at six and had mess with the officers, under a pergola covered with pine boughs. Then we went across the field to some huge trees, and there were all the soldiers lying on the ground waiting for my Jack. I sat on a very small raised platform & had a single light, a sort of portable gas affair. The men sat on the ground all around me, over 200 of them. The moon was out & the stars lovely & inspiring. I talked for over an hour, I wish you could have seen their faces. They were all smoking when I began, but as I talked their cigarettes went out & they did not light them again. When I stopped they begged me to go on, and at the end they all surrounded me & gave me a sort of inititation into their Corps. They knelt & said strange words (a Red Indian incantation). Then they bowed lower & lower until their faces touched the earth, muttering all the time the strange words. I felt as if I were in another world. It was simply wonderful. The men are all crazy about me & I love them all & would do anything for them. Many of them go to France next week. There are 45,000 at the Camp now. I am going over to the Camp & to mess tomorrow & Marjorie goes again with me. She is enchanted too, & crazy over it all. 40 of the Corps came to to day to have tea & a swim in the lake. I shall have to have private talks with the men. Several have asked me to talk with them, & I hope they will each take a testament from me to carry to the front. O how I love them all, men I care more for than women, I always have. I wish I could tell you what they said to me, that [?] them &c. They can't bear to think of my going away from here. My visit of ten days ends tomorrow. Fiske invited me to stay until Tuesday. I love & adore you. Send this on to precious Erskine." Margaret Cushing Pearmain Osgood (1847-1941), was an American writer and poet, mother to writer and nationalist Mary ('Molly') Alden Childers who was married to Erskine Childers, and the maternal grandmother of Erskine Hamilton Childers (1905-1974) who became the fourth President of Ireland 1973-1974.