Record Number: 34518

---

Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'I received your two letters on Wednesday and Thursday mornings. I had not thought that your love for me is as great as it is and that you have loved me ever since you were at Rydal—it is very beautiful to me, Cecil, that you have loved me all these years ... No dear, I won't leave it over till after the war. I know that at the bottom of your heart you don't want to. Do you remember in "The Knight on Wheels" that Philip wanted to be Peg's knight and to do something for his lady love—won't it help you to think you are fighting for me—I want to look upon you as my knight.'

Century:

1900-1945

Date:

Between 1 Mar 1916 and 17 Mar 1916

Country:

England

Time

n/a

Place:

city: Barnsley
county: South Yorkshire
specific address: Heath Cottage, Silkstone Common

Type of Experience
(Reader):
 

silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Type of Experience
(Listener):
 

solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

---

Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

Dora Willatt

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

Female

Date of Birth:

1894

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

VAD Nurse

Religion:

Methodist

Country of Origin:

England

Country of Experience:

England

Listeners present if any:
e.g family, servants, friends

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

---

Text Being Read:

Author:

Ian Hay

Title:

A Knight on Wheels

Genre:

Fiction

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

unknown

---

Source Information:

Record ID:

34518

Source:

Print

Author:

Dora Willatt

Editor:

Alan Wilkinson

Title:

"Thank God I'm Not a Boy!": The Letters of Dora Willatt, Daughter, Sweetheart and Nurse, 1915-18

Place of Publication:

Hull

Date of Publication:

1997

Vol:

n/a

Page:

39-40

Additional Comments:

Letter from Dora Willatt to Cecil Moorhouse Slack, 16 June 1916. The unabridged letters exchanged by the Slack and Willatt families during the First World War have now been digitised by East Riding of Yorkshire Council and can be found here: https://digital1418.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/cecil-slack-the-great-war-letters/.

Citation:

Dora Willatt, Alan Wilkinson (ed.), "Thank God I'm Not a Boy!": The Letters of Dora Willatt, Daughter, Sweetheart and Nurse, 1915-18, (Hull, 1997), p. 39-40, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=34518, accessed: 24 November 2024

---

Additional Comments:

Willatt is reacting (with perhaps some residual shock) to a sudden marriage proposal that month from her childhood friend, Cecil Moorhouse Slack, then serving as a Lieutenant in the East Yorkshire Regiment. She copes with this shock partly by aestheticizing their relationship, likening it to that between Philip and Peg in "A Knight on Wheels," a book she had sent to Cecil to read after reading it herself earlier in 1916. The shared memory of the book therefore becomes another layer of private experience binding the two of them together. In a letter written on 17 March 1916, Willatt records having just finished the book herself and sending it to Slack for him to read in the trenches, which enables a precise date range and location to be fixed to that initial reading experience. See record 34519.