Share Six: July 2026: LETTERS

Letters are the window to one’s soul. They tell a story of days long gone. Share Six explores the idea of {Letters} in this month’s theme.

To be honest with the lack of time I thought I was going to be taking photos of letters on a building, but I really wanted to go back to the craft of writing a letter. Things that we really no longer do as a form to keep in touch.

I remember as a young child that I would have pen friends. I had around a 100 of them and at one stage, I had multiple across Europe and the idea of backpacking was fresh in my mind. I did tent camp across 95 % of Europe but it was not to all my pen friends. There was the anticipation of waiting on the mail to arrive, sorting through it to see if there was anything for you, reading the news, and then sitting down to write your response. Once that was done it was off to the Post Office and then the long wait for the mail to travel to it’s destination. It took a minimum of about 6 weeks before the next letter came.

My mother was the keeper of records, and by default, when she died, I became the keeper of records. My mom had all sorts of documentation and she kept letters that the aunts, uncles, cousins etc had written to her. As I looked through my paperwork I came across a number of letters, not my favorite one but I will share a bit on it at the end.

If I have not mentioned it before I am of English and Australian decent. Both sets of grandparents made their way to South Africa for different reasons. A lot of this correspondence went between England and South Africa.

This first letter was in the format of an invitation sent to my mother for the 60th anniversary of her cousin Phyllis and husband Bill. Phyllis was the daughter of my grandmothers sister and as cousins they were close. Bill was a rather interesting man. He had joined the navy in England and made his way off to World War 11. Story goes that they stopped in port in Durban, and while disembarked he met up with Phyllis. Bill, if I recall correctly, obviously had to re-embark but kept in touch with Phyllis and when he was released from the army made his way back to South Africa to marry the woman he fell in love with. 60 years later they will still going strong. Bill had the most amazing stories and he was a favorite of mine to sit and listen to.

My great grandfather was a tailor with the British military and in the 1900’s the entire family, minus the older boy, traveled by boat to South Africa. 1910 was around the time when the British has won the Second Boer war, and there was the unification of all 4 provinces. These are the recollections of my grandmother at the age of about 70, remembering through the eyes of a 10 year old child. She talks of arriving in South Africa December 31, 1910. They were taken by wagon train through to Ladysmith where my grandfather was stationed for a year. After that they moved back to Durban. She talked about her encounter with an African man in a loin cloth who brought milk to the door. She spoke about a grass fire the first winter after they arrived. Knowing the countryside like I do the grass would have been dry and quickly caught on fire. She mentioned having to hide in a small quarry and the fire went over their heads. Apparently there were bullets around some soldiers graves and they exploded with the heat.

Dear cousin Mabel. This letter goes back to December 9, 1962. I was just a wee baby when this was written. It is a letter to my grandmother from her cousin Mary. Mary’s mother and my great grandfather were siblings. It appears that the family tended to catch up each year around December, probably all the Christmas wishes going out. Mary talks of her husband in hospital, but it appears he recovered and was back at work. The weather in England was cold and foggy and she ruminated on the fact that South Africa was probably sunny and warm. She wished she had the money to just “follow the sun”. It appears she hated the winter. She also talked about my grandmother flying to Salisbury, Rhodesia (which would now be known as Harare, Zimbabwe). I can only think that my aunt Joy was living there at the time.

Another December letter. This one was too me from my uncles second wife. I’m going to say that it was after my mother died and Joan wrote to me updating me on the local happenings and on the church I attended when I was a child. She talked about renovations to the hall and I have to confess that hall was falling down when I attended the church as a teenager. It was a small church with a small congregation and not a lot of money for maintenance to the hall. The church was a solid brick building but the hall I believe was tin and it did not stand the test of time that well.

Dear Daphne. This letter was written to my mother after the passing of my father. Queenie was her aunt who lived in Cheshire, England and I recall they wrote fairly regularly. This letter was written when she was 95 years old. Her husband Ivor as not doing well. From what I get from the letter my mother probably reached out on behalf of me when I started asking questions about family history. She gives a little bit of history mainly about her mother and mothers family, which would be my grandfathers family on my mom’s side. I love reading through all these notes and figuring out the family history.

Dear cousin Mabel. This letter goes back to December 10, 1956. My grandmother would have been about 46 years old, and this was a letter of condolences after my grandfather had passed away suddenly from a heart attack. She talks about the petrol rationing in the UK and how it is making prices of everything rise sharply. She asks after my grandmothers sister Elsie and brother Frank. The letters were written on small note book size pages. Not a lot of so

My favorite letter was from my grandmother’s sister, Elsie. She had married a Scotsman in South Africa and they had decided to go back to Scotland to live. The letter describes her adjustment to her new circumstances and how she had to use the outdoor privy in the middle of winter. It apparently was not fun.

Letters give us context of a life beyond ours. The art of letter writing is for the most part dead. I don’t know when I last wrote a letter and when I did I typed it on the computer. Perhaps what I should do is write little letters to my grandkids and put them in a box for them to read one day. There is nothing more thrilling for me than picking up a letter and learning something from it. There was so much I gleaned from just these few letters I pulled out this weekend.

Thank you for joining me on this photography journey. Blogging may change from month to month. Sometimes I will link up to a fellow blogger, sometimes I may not. It appears this month I will not be linking up.

Until next time..

Stay well