Fighting for Fame: The ‘Heroines of Pervyse’ and the Disputed Construction of a Public Image

Abstract

Abstract: This investigative analysis bases itself on an array of documentary material from the archives of the Imperial War Museum in its effort to recover the intricate story behind the two British volunteer nurses who made their name during the First World War with the first-aid station they set up in Pervyse, a mere stone's throw away from the Belgian firing line. The essay juxtaposes a variety of documentary sources—the unpublished diaries of the two women, Geraldine Mitton's reconstruction of the story out of the nurses' journals and letters in The Cellar-House of Pervyse (1916), and two photograph albums, ‘The Women of Pervyse’, bequeathed to the Imperial War Museum—in a quest to understand how the two nurses came to acquire their status of national heroines. Sifting through the source material, this investigation reveals the numerous inconsistencies and gaps that exist between the published and the unpublished accounts of the dressing station, whose true genesis is obscured by several competing narratives. A close reading of Mitton's account and the photographic portraitures discloses that neither of these documents ought to be taken at their face value. They need to be understood as valuable tools in the nurses' own battle for authority, public recognition and their opportunity to feature as genuine protagonists in the arena of war.

Keywords:

• Women of Pervyse
• The Cellar-House of Pervyse
• nurses' diaries
• photographic portraitures
• rivalry between women
• women's writing in the First World War

Notes

This article is the product of research conducted in the context of a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2008-01932/FILO). I am grateful to this institution for its support. I also wish to thank the trustees of the Imperial War Museum for their permission to reproduce material from the Papers of the Baroness de T'Serclaes Collection and the Papers of Miss Chisholm Collection, and Paul Knocker, in particular, for his interest and support. To Patrick Vanleene, all my gratitude for an unforgettable day in Pervyse and for having shared with me his impressive knowledge on the subject of the two nurses. Finally, I owe much gratitude to Peter Lauber, whose intelligent criticism and generous help have been invaluable in the writing of this article. Several insights on the volume The Cellar-House of Pervyse are his, and I wish to thank him for having shared them with me.

¹‘To our delightful “Lady Ambulance Driver”, / all Sweetness, all Kindness; / To the heroine of Pervyse / Who—under shellfire—has been / a Soldier … and a Sister of Charity!’ (my translation).

²The ‘cellar-house’ was their first ‘home’ at Pervyse. In the course of the war, the two women were repeatedly shelled out and forced to find new quarters in the village (see Vanleene 2001).

³The clippings in the Baroness de T'Serclaes Collection at the Imperial War Museum reveal the impact their photographs had in the press. The Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Daily Mirror, Lady's Pictorial and the Tatler, to name but a few, displayed images of the two nurses at the front with captions such as: ‘Women Who Work in the Danger Zone’; ‘Sandbags Instead of Handbags’; ‘Ministering Angels’; ‘Heroines’; ‘Modern Amazons’; ‘Misses Nightingale’ and ‘The New Ladies of the Lamp’.