Frank has informed us about the provenance of the letters in more detail. Apparently he bought them in a sale in London in 1980 and had no idea they might be by Rathbone until he read the book Famous 1914-18 which features Rathbone and gives details of his family.
Initial feedback from a WW1 author suggests additional grounds for thinking the letters might be genuine. Apparently, Rathbone’s brother John was injured at the Somme in 1916 – and this fits with the comments made about “Johnny” in letter 1.
All in all it does look distinctly possible these letters might be the real deal, and if so they are pretty significant, particularly the second one. If “July 26″ refers to 1918 then it was written on the morning of Rathbone’s heroic action in No Man’s Land that won him his MC.
We continue to want to hear from anyone who knows anything more about the origin of these letters.
Email the Project (basilrathboneproject@gmail.com) or post a comment here.
Sunday 15th
Dear all, 
Bea’s letter arrived this morning, and so also did letters from uncle Harold and other family and a parcel from aunt Elfrida which looked very promising but proved to contain nothing but woollen underwear of such gigantic proportions I am at a loss for words. We have managed to fit three men inside a single pair. I wonder if this is the intention. You must enquire politely and also discover if auntie E made them herself. I think they will make excellent tents. Do not tell her that.
We are going out of the line tomorrow, praise the lord, which means we will be able to change our clothes, wash and get some decent food and proper sleep, but it would be very fine to get some good whisky sent out before we are back again. I can’t say for sure how long we will be out, so if you could cut along and send it soon, and also some decent cigarettes, I should be eternally in your debt.
It is the Park Lane of accommodation here, the best in all the Sector and we shall be sad to leave it indeed. Even the rats wear little dress suits and have impeccable manners. And we have a gramophone, though only one thing to play on it, which is Mr Pike singing “Roses of Picardy” – it has lost much of its original charm by this time and I think we would most of us cheerfully lob the thing into No Man’s Land if only we could get it away from its owner. But he is wise to us and never lets it long out of his sight, damn him.
There is chronically little of interest to report as ever, and the state of tedium we exist in can best be illustrated by telling you the captain was sent a beef and onion pie by his people about a week ago, and it is still a topic of excited conversation for us.
Otherwise — we kill rats. And lice. Or play cards. Or take rifle inspections or censor letters or write our own letters home. Fritz has been paying this sector a fair bit of attention for the last day or so. Mostly minenwerfers and field artillery but occasionally we get one of the really big blighters. There’ll be a terrific whistle and rush and thump somewhere and the ground will shake and bits of the parapet will fall on us. Terribly jolly. The heavy stuff mostly fall on the reserves, which of course means we are getting no food sent up and are living on rations and scraps and are fairly starving right now. Sleep is impossible day or night. As soon as we stand down at dusk there is endless movement and bustle of men on fatigues and supplies coming up the communication trenches and everyone is more jittery because we can’t see so every shadow becomes Fritz creeping up on us. Star shells are going up all night. Machine guns rattle now and then at nothing. Sometimes some unlucky blighter catches it by blind chance and the call for stretcher bearers goes up even though there’s not usually much to be done. After a few days of this one is so tired and stupefied one can fall asleep standing up on watch, and is really good for nothing, and so we are sent behind the lines to sleep and wash and eat hot food and be rested enough to do it all again.
Oh but we had a real gas scare the other day. Our part in it was small but telling. It was very near to being an incident. I was out on duty and there were a few shells coming over, nothing much and mostly falling pretty deep, when one of the men said he heard the dread call ‘gas’ coming from north of us – We were all straining to catch anything unusual on the wind, but we couldn’t see or smell anything and we thought it was just imagination, until the CSM and I went along to the next traverse and we caught the smell of something sharp and acrid in the air, and we stopped dead and looked at one another, and I said ‘is it chlorine?’ and he said ‘I’m not taking the risk’ and he spun around and called out “gas” to the men and everyone began putting on respirators, and it was only then I realised my respirator was in the abri and not at my side, which was not a happy realisation. I’m afraid I took off and ran for it all the way back. Heroically of course.
And that was it. The gas alarm proved unfounded you will be happy to know.
This evening we are blessed for Fritz is being parsimonious with his gifts and the dear things in the kitchen have sent us a dixie full of hot, or at least not too cold, cocoa, to which we added our ration of rum . My sergeant has some chocolate saved and is sharing it with the men, so everything is excellently pleasant and we are sitting about playing rummy like a collection of old ladies in retirement. We are really as cosy as one can be in a hole in the ground full of mud and vermin and very unwashed human beings.
I had a letter from Johnny the other day, saying he’s hoping to be back here soon. He surely can’t be well enough yet? I had thought he would be out of it for at least the rest of the year. He has scared us enough for the present and I shan’t enjoy worrying about him again. M also writes to say the baby is now saying many complicated words so she is quite sure he is a prodigy. He wasn’t saying very much at all when last I saw him, and was prodigious only in the amount he seemed prepared to eat, so this is an improvement.
I believe William has caught a Blighty one? I’m hoping he will make a good recovery.
Your loving [word uncertain - "scion"?]
PSB
——————-
July 26th
Wed morning
Dear father – We came up from the reserves a while ago, and just before we left I had your letter and also the parcel from uncle H. Please thank uncle and all the family especially the girls for their dear little poems. The whisky has already proved helpful. I shared the cake with my men and it was consumed in three minutes and pronounced to be pretty fair, which is high praise.
I’m sorry for the awful handwriting but it’s very cold and I’m shivering terribly and there’s only an inch of candle left in the dugout to write by and it flickers. It’s 3.50 ack emma, so bitterly cold I’m wearing my great coat though it’s July, but it’s been a quiet night, and when I was out I caught a nice moon, very bright between little bits of cloud. I think it will be a very bright and sweet and warm day again like yesterday. Cloudless and a little breeze. Just the day for cricket.
Today will be quite a busy one and so I want to send this before it gets going.
I have all of Johnny’s letters parcelled up together and I will either bring them home on my next leave or arrange for someone to deliver them in person. I would send them as you asked but I would be afraid of them being lost. The communication trenches can take a beating and nothing can be relied on. If I can’t bring them myself for any reason there is a good sort here, another Lieutenant in our company who is under oath to deliver them, and who I have never known to shirk or break his word. So, you will get them, come what may.
I’m sorry not to have written much the past weeks. It was unfair and you are very kind not to be angry. You ask how I have been since we heard, well, if I am honest with you, and I may as well be, I have been seething. I was so certain it would be me first of either of us. I’m even sure it was supposed to be me and he somehow contrived in his wretched Johnny-fashion to get in my way just as he always would when he was small. I want to tell him to mind his place. I think of his ridiculous belief that everything would always be well, his ever-hopeful smile, and I want to cuff him for a little fool. He had no business to let it happen and it maddens me that I shall never be able to tell him so, or change it or bring him back. I can’t think of him without being consumed with anger at him for being dead and beyond anything I can do to him.
I’m afraid it’s not what you hoped for from me and perhaps that’s why I haven’t written. I suspect you want me to say some sweet things about him. I wish I could for your sake, but I don’t have them to say. Out here we step over death every day. We stand next to it while we drink our tea. It’s commonplace and ordinary. People who had lives and tried to hold on to them and didn’t, and now slump and stare and melt slowly to nothing. You meet their eyes, or what used to be their eyes and you feel ashamed. And now Johnny is one of them. That’s an end of it. Grieving is only ridiculous in this place. It could be me today or tomorrow and I shouldn’t want anyone to bother grieving over that.
Stand to is being called. I have to go now. God bless you and Bea. You are both dearer to me than I could ever say. Take very good care of each other won’t you.
with my best love
PSB
this looks as if it has been written by the man who wrote his autobiography
These letters are fascinating to read. Thanks for posting them! The second one, in which Basil describes his feelings after his brother was killed, breaks my heart!
Is it confirmed that they are Basil’s? The writing style sounds like him.
Would “M” in the first letter be Basil’s wife, Marion, who had had a child?
Yes, the details there add up.
the writing looks like his
OMG – I just know they are Basil’s
what I note is his indifference to his child and his emotional coldness, very unexpected
Not so unexpected about the child. Basil is a very young man, early to mid 20s (also younger than his wife), and for many men that age, the responsibilities of fatherhood don’t “hit”, especially if he has been away most of the time.
I don’t see it as coldness, I see it as British reserve and humor. I love the humor in these letters!
Me too!
Or might it not imply he knew the child wasn’t his? Perhaps his first marriage was as much of a front as his second?
Claude, no offence but stfu. The guy was in the middle of a war. Don’t bring all that Bret stuff to this.
hear hear
So because he was conscripted to fight in a war we have to give up considering him objectively?
he wasn’t conscripted, he volunteered like they all did, so watch your mouth.
I think the social pressure on men to enlist was great enough for it to be called conscription. And in his memoirs Rathbone is frank about how he felt about the prospect of war. He didn’t want to go, and he didn’t buy the talk of hating Germans. He thought it was ridiculous that he and some young German might be called upon to kill each other. Is that the portrait of a hero? Sorry if you don’t like the truth, but these are Rathbone’s own words, and those letters may not even be his.
how is saying everything he did is proof he was gay considering him objectively?
I don’t say everything he did is proof he was gay, I say the things that seem to suggest sexual ambivalence are proof he _might_ have been gay.
these are so lovely, and so tragic!
Maybe he got the day wrong? I can’t believe it’s not Basil’s letter
I noticed a date discrepancy and wonder if anyone can offer an explanation. The second letter is dated July 26th, Wednesday. July 26 fell on Wednesday in 1917, but Basil’s brother John was killed in 1918 (according to Basil’s autobiography). Do you think he was just confused about what day it was when he wrote the letter?
Maybe he started to write on a Wednesday, finished on the Friday, which is the 26th, and put the date on when he finished? The dates on the two letters are different. “Sunday 15th” in the first and “July 26th”, then what looks like a couple of empty rows (we really need Frank’s help with this!) and then “Wed morning” in the second.
That makes sense
Just noticed this: “God bless you and Bea. You are both dearer to me than I could ever say.” Basil’s mother had died in 1917. It was just his father and sister left for him by then.
I understand NeveR’s caution because if these really are genuine letters by Basil Rathbone, then this is a huge, a tremendously important find. His humour, his humanity, his intelligence are all there in those letters. I found them extremely touching and very true to his style.
What is bugging me is this: what if someone forged this, let’s say, in the early seventies, not for money (because then he would litter it with names of fellow actors also serving on the front or make Basil read Sherlock Holmes at night in the trenches…) but as a fan. I think you could imitate Basil’s style if you read his autobiography, his interviews and articles.
He is funny in these letters, he is shown as personable (with fellow soldiers), he has expensive tastes (good whisky), he is cute (“the rats wear little dress suits”), he is passionate (re. family), he is well capable of anger (at John’s death) – all of which tie in with the Basil Rathbone I think I know. And, very interestingly, he is also quite wordy, clearly someone who likes to describe his observations at length. We know he wrote, see his little Sherlock Holmes story in the autobiography.
However, it is just possible that there was a Peter Samuel Barnabas who wrote these letters. It cannot be ruled out.
Maybe if Frank can confirm which division the letter came from and anything else that only he can know as he has the originals in his hands.
But I am excited and not a little touched.
It had never occurred to me they might be forged (and I want to make clear no one is suggesting even if they were that Frank B was involved), my thought was mainly that they might be misattributed, since the signature “PSB” is not Rathbone’s standard one and there’s no record of him using it anywhere else that I know of.
But I suppose forgery is also a possibility. I agree we need more input from Frank here. If he could give i as much background as possible it would help sort this out.
A lot of the question would seem to hinge on motivation. Have these letters been sold as being by a famous person? Would a forger use a non-standard signature when signing “Basil” would increase their value?
I am just a little out of my depth in how to answer such questions!
this is amazing, I hope they are his
I have to say I don’t appreciate the suggestion I’m either a faker or someone who can’t tell a genuine 1914-18 letter from a forgery. I’ve been a collector of Great War items for forty years and I think I can identify old paper and old pencil. And as for me faking anything.Thank you very much. I let you have these letters for nothing out of wanting to lend support to what you are doing. I don’t expect thanks but I don’t expect to be insulted either.I’m not interested in Hollywood stars, I’m only here as I read in the book I told about that PSB were Basil Rathbone’s initials and I remembered the two letters I have.
I bought both those letters at a sale in London about 1980. I don’t have a clue where the person who sold them had got them but I can probably dig out my notes about the exact date and the price I paid, which wasn’t much as there was no hint they were from anyone famous. they were just letters from an unidentified soldier. They are not rare. I have a fe in my collection. some from family and some I’ve bought over the years.
They are not fakes. That’s just ridiculous if you excuse me.The paper is old and friable and very stained and worn and what kind of faker puts his fake into a WW1 memorabilia sale as an anonymous Tommy letter? They would take it to a Hollywood collector or what have you, I don’t know what they call themselves. There is no envelope, which excuse me should be obvious as if there was I’d have known who they were sent to wouldn’t I. There’s no notations and no reply address, but there often isn’t on these letters from the trenches; the folks at home knew to write to the battalion as these lads were on the move all the time, you couldn’t write to Mr Jones at No. 4 Trench. If there had been any information about the lad’s battalion or regiment I would have tried to trace him as family might have wanted the letters back, in which case I would return them for free. I have already done that once and would be happy to do it again.
I am quite upset about the way this has turned out. Thanks for your attenion
I’m sorry that you are upset about this, Frank! No one is accusing you of anything. We are just brainstorming ideas about the letters, and the idea that they might be forged is not meant as an insult to you in any way! We really appreciate you sharing the letters with us!
I apologise sincerely for being inconsiderate in my choice of words, for forgetting that my hypothesising may be offensive to you.
I am especially sorry for causing you an unpleasant moment as you have made me very happy by sharing the letter and now clearing up its provenance.
I don’t think any harm was meant, I really don’t
Mr.Belcher,
I was so happy to come home and read your second letter.Tx.
I once read a union soldiers letter home during the Civil War.That showed first evidence of “Shell Shock” or today PTSD in a US war .But,sadly no treatment available to be offered that i read or heard of.
Who would Johnny be?
His brother. Basil writes this in his autobiography:
“Some weeks later, at one o’clock on June 4, 1918, I was sitting in my dugout in the front line. Suddenly I thought of John, and for some inexplicable reason I wanted to cry, and did. Immediately, I wrote him a letter to which he never replied, and in due course I received the news of his death in action at exactly one o’clock on June the fourth. We had always been very close to one another.”
That’s ok. I’m sure no harm was meant. I’ve made a blow up of the date on the second letter if you want it. I’ve emailed it to the webmaster. Would you like photocopies of the whole letters, I suppose you might as well now. Do you know if Rathbone’s family would like the originals?
I have added the new scan to the post.
Just my opinion,but I don’t think that says Wed. I think it says Frid. There’s what looks like a dot but might be just a smudge of dirt I suppose
No it says “Wed” all right
It could be Frid, but who would write Frid for Friday?
I agree
If these are Basil’s letters then they are some of the most personally revealing words of his I have ever read. Whoever it is, you can see a change from letter to one to letter two. The first one you get the impression he hasn’t been out in the trenches long, in the second the tone is flatter and he seems much older and a little traumatized.
I agree, the first thing I thought on reading the second letter was “war trauma” or “shell shock”. He had been through quite a lot hadn’t he, his mother had recently died as well as his brother being killed.
i thought shel shock meant you were crazy or something
“Shell shock” was a term used for soldiers severely affected by what we now call PTSD. I have taught many soldiers from Iraq who have written about the syndrome. The anger and strange numbing of emotion that the second letter describes are typical of PTSD.
oh wow, thanks. They are very tragic letters aren’t they. Johnny was his little brother! How much younger was he and how did he die? I man I know he was killed in the war, but does anyone know how?
You might be able to find out some details from the batallion war diary, but you might just get “KIA”
They are beautiful words too. Unconsciously beautiful because so honest
very lovely letters. they made me cry. i’ve been a fan of Basil’s for a very long time and I’ve read everything I could find that he read and I would swear he wrote those
I agree. Have you read Daydream? It’s just like these letters! He was a wonderful writer.
Basilrathbone.net has the citation from the London Gazette on why he was given the Military Cross. http://www.basilrathbone.net/potpourri/militarycross.htm “For conspicuous daring and resource on patrol.”
Those citations are always so po-faced it’s a laugh. I’d like to see anyone “creep” through the entanglement, by which they mean massive coils of barbed wire, feet hight and deep, while under fire from machine gun posts. You’d either tear through it leaving half your skin behind or get caught on it and cut to pieces by the bullets. The old song “Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire ” wasn’t a joke. It was a miracle those boys got back that day, don’t underestimate that. By rights they were dead or wounded as soon as the alarm went up. At least one of them should have been killed outright by the guns, probably all of them should.
when you said ‘hanging on the old barbed wire’ I had to post this, it’s so moving:
This is so emotive! I agree with the other person who says there is a wonderful movie in Rathbone’s life. Jeez, he was involved in some of the most important events of the 20th Century! His family fled the Boer War, his brother was killed in World War I, and he was a decorated hero. He was on the London stage during the Roaring Twenties and on Broadway during the era of the Algonquin Round Table and Prohibition. He was one of the only male lovers of Eva le Galienne. He found the love of his life in a successful screenwriter who gave everything up to marry him and their love story was lifelong. He starred in some of the greatest pictures of the Golden Era. His story has been ignored for so long because of the lack of a proper biography. If one was written I can see it being optioned almost immediately by some producer. I’m a writer by the way, and I’d love to get my hands on this project with a great budget and a sensitive director. Keep me in mind!
Ohh. *Dies*
Wanna watch this movie so bad!
wow this i powerful, what movie is that?
there’s a Scottish piper too, which is apt as Basil was in the Liverpool Scottish
Oh how moving this film is, watching it right after reading those letters is very powerful
Also, the Osprey Military Journal (Volume 3 Issue 5) carries a two-page article about Basil Rathbone in the war, plenty of detail provided. It is available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Osprey-Military-Journal-Publishing/dp/1841763942/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346308547&sr=8-2
Very interesting indeed
I can just picture him writing them and the candle flickering in the last one and the dawn breaking outside. Someone should so make a movie about Basil
Yes, yes and yes.
Who would play him???? OOh, can you do a post about this pleeease!!
Tom Hiddleston? (she says quietly and hides, waiting for the response)
Ooooh…..cool. TH is a God
He has very similar eyes! But he isn’t as classically handsome
No. Long fingers though. Does accents and voices. And has a similar sort of grace and gentleness too.
ooh gentleness…everyone talks about Basil’s gentleness….sighhhhhh
Oh wow. I used to think that British actor Paul McGann(sp?) should play Basil, but he’s too old for the young stuff now, He was awful handsome though. And he had the same beautiful eyes and thin face as Basil. Watch him in Withnail and I and you;ll see what I mean!
Paul McGann was very handsome in his youth. And also from Liverpool! Perhaps there’s a slight Irish cast of feature to a lot of people from that city. There is a big Irish community there. Black hair and blue eyes is very Celtic coloring.
funny you say that, because when Sean Penn (another Irish man) wears that beard in Dead Man Walking, he is a dead ringer for Basil in some angles – only without the height and the class of course. Like a white trash Gisbourne. Was Basil Irish? I always think of him as essentially English, but then his dark looks are not typically English really are they?
I would love to see him play Baz!!!!!! Someone make it happen
Where is embechtel? I want to ask her something
I think someone should write Basil’s biography now
That’s so sad and really brings it home
Oh God, is that real footage?
Yes
Someone talked about PTSD in relation to the second letter. I always wondered if the incident he described in his autobiography of throwing up when he saw the pig being slaughtered was caused by war trauma.
where does he say that?
Page 6 in my copy.
Yeah, it is classic.
Someone should publish these properly
I like the image of them fitting three men in a single pair of underwear. It’s like they are still just young guys and goofing around and having some fun even though they are in this awful place. I wonder how many of those boys trying on the underwear made it to the end of the war.
Have you thought about contacting a document examiner?
I fought in ‘Nam in 68-70, and I’ve studied the effects of war on people. The day being wrong is not a problem. Picture it. The guy was stressed to human breaking point just by being out there in that hellhole for any length of time. He’s living with the possibility of being blown up any second day or night. He’s seen people blown to pieces in front of him and probably had to detail men to sweep up the residue. If it was the day he won his MC then he was looking at a high possiility he would be dead in a few hours, or horribly wounded and stranded in No Man’s Land, bleeding to death. He’s shivering with cold, and fear too. You’d have to be inhuman not to be afraid at an animal level at the contemplation of going into enemy fire. The mad men and the heroes were those who went anyway. He’s writing in the dark of a little dugout that’s probably only a few feet square and dank and wet, he’s probably had almost no sleep for the last few days if they’ve been in the line. He’s probably sick to his stomach with the tension and the waiting. Wants it to be over even if it means death. It’s amazing he can even remember his own name. I speak as one who knows people.
Very well said. People always underestimate the psycological hell these boys went through. It’s a wonder any of them were ever normal enough to take jobs and be responsible members of society again and it’s a tribute to the guts of that generation that they did it without complaining, though at a cost of burying a lot of suffering and living with it alone inside their minds. My grand father would never talk about his war, always just say “best forgotten.” He was a carpenter from the Black Country who joined up in 1915 as part of the new citizen army after the BEF had been wiped out almost. He was at the Somme and Third Ypres. He’d just say people don’t need to know, and it was only after he died I found his letters to my gran and realised what he’d went through.
This lad who wrote these letters, in the second one he’s preparing for death. He’s writing home his last letter and he’s already fixed up for some other boy to take his gear home to his family. He doesn’t think he’s coming back and he’s quietly preparing his folks for it while not wanting to scare them. If he dies they might get the letter before they get any news, and I think he’s thinking about this as he’s writing. There’s a lot of bravery in that letter that people who weren’t there or don’t know about it will overlook.
This is all very good points. He must be stressed to breaking on the morning he writes this. And he comes across a a bit suicidal
Lovely letters, has there been any more development?
OMG I found The Roses of Picardy! Is this the same recording Basil is talking about in the letter? I wanna cry!
I can just picture this song playing as he is writing his letter.
You should compare the letters with known samples of his writing, not just for the physical shaping of letters but for the same sentence structures. People tend to always fall in to the same habits of construction, even professional writers and if the same man wrote the letters as wrote his autobiography (or was it ghost written?) then you’ll find the same idiosyncrasies, roughly the same length of sentences, same length of paragraphs and other personal traits. Though thinking of it, comparing them with other letters might be a fairer comparison.
In a previous post the writing i the letters was compared to another letter that was definately written by Basil. The hand writing is very simmilar
No, this recording is by John McCormack and the recording Basil talks about is by “Mr Pike” whom I have never heard of, but how is this for coincidence, John McCormack knew Basil in Hollywood!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCormack_(tenor)
These are so beautiful, I cried reading the second one. You just don’t want Johnny to be dead! “Ever hopeful smile”- heartbreaking!
I agree. It broke my heart
Please tell us more about them, are there just these two?
Yes, just these two. No other samples of Basil’s WW1 letters (assuming these are his, which is still not certain) are currently known or published.
How moving these letters are
I want to read all the letters he ever wrote. Such dull collections of celebrity correspondence and “diaries” and opinions are published. This man had such a distinct voice and such wit and intelligence. I wish someone could collect his letters into a volume.
That’s a great idea!
There are some letters on http://www.basilrathbone.net/letters/
Also, ebay.com often has some letters for sale, you can read them there.
My grandmother used to play “Roses of Picardy” on the piano and had the sheet music. Her name was also “Rose”.
Awww that is so sweet! I never heard this tune before yesterday. It’s going to always remind me of Baz now And I wanna know where embechtel has gone, come baaaaack you were soooo coooool!!!!!!
Hi Baz Fan!
Back sort of.I just want to thank you for your kind remarks.I really need to say a big sorry to Rosebette and other devoted Baz fans for my rudeness and bad taste stories of ouida.I think Basil loved her true and was cheering your defense on.
Take Care and Best Wishes.
Hi Embechtel, great to see you back!!!
Did you ever find out any more about how Basil died?
Hi Baz Fan,no just those two i hashed out with two doctors i worked with.His death just puzzled me ,after i read Mr. Druxman,s book.
I also think he loved his wife. I think theirs was a rare and special union. She fell in love with him as soon as she saw him on the stage and told her friend “that’s the man I’m going to marry.” He fell in love with her as soon as he set eyes on her. And it wasn’t physical beauty he loved. He saw her soul and knew how special it was. As a matter of fact I’ve written some fiction based on their love story that I like to think was inspired by Basil. I was in New York on a visit and was in Central Park near where Central Park West is and I had a strong feeling of being where Basil used to walk his dog and I was almost sure he was there. And that night I had a dream about him and his wife which I felt was a sort of communication of compilation of awareness. I can post it here if anyone would like to read it.
I meant I could post my story, not my dream. Would anyone like to read it?
Basil fanfic Pleeeaze post it!
OMG – I so want to read this!
Would you consider posting it on fanfiction.net? I have actually checked there previously and found nothing with Basil, not even Sherlock Holmes-based. I just think it may reach more people that way.
I think this is a very good suggestion. And posting it in the comments here might mean it gets lost in all the nesting
If you don’t want it or don’t think it’s suitable then I won’t post it, but I wouldn’t put it on fanfiction.net as I don’t consider it to be fan fiction.
Of course you’re welcome to post it
Yes!
I have been comparing the fragments to samples of letters at http://www.basilrathbone.net and I believe they are written by the same person. Some of the letter formations are very distinctive and those in the fragments are exactly the same as those in the samples. I am sure now in my mind that these letters are written by Basil Rathbone to his family.
Ho do younow Basil Rathbone wrote the letters?
the whole discussion is about establishing that
OMG I’m so happy they are by him
Can we see the entire documents? And perhaps enlargements too?
This is very very exciting and also touching
this is the first time i ever heard of these letters, this is so interesting
About “PSB” – maybe this is how Basil signed himself when writing his family? If there were other family members with the same names (other Philips or Basils) then maybe he got used to using his initials as his unique identifier. I think this might have been more common in large Edwardian or Victorian families, for example Lewis Carroll always referred to his siblings by their initials in his letters home and he was one of 11 children. If these are the only samples of Basil writing his family then it might explain why these are also the only ones where he uses his initials like this as outside the family it wouldn’t be appropriate.
I just want to tell you that these letters should be published and not just on a blog
I am so looking forward to finding out more about this. Please post any new information you get!
I am a lifelong fan of Basil rathbone.Thanks for this site
These letters are quite beautiful, whoever wrote them. Thank you for publishing them
The handwriting closely resembles Rathbone’s – there are many examples to be seen at http://www.basilrathbone.net
has any more been forthcoming on these letters? They are so charming and so poignant. I feel as if I can really know the person who wrote them, and respect him for a good and decent human being.
I believe whoever wrote these letters changes perceptibly from the first to the second. I think he is suffering from quite a severe PTSD!
What beautiful moving letters. Can I have permission to quote them in my project? It’s about famous people who lived through the Great War and I’m doing it for Veteran’ Day at my school. I won’t be publishing them for profit or anything.
I don’t think Rathbone wrote these. They really don’t read like him to me. I think he’d have had more compassion
So interesting. Thank you for your blog.
Very intereting material
Is there any more information on this?
Does anyone know that Rathbone was in the same regiment a Ronald Colman?
What a fantastic site, thanks so much
What stunning, AMAZING heartbreaking letters, I want to read more
Visit Marcia Jessen’s site at basilrathbone.net. She has an incredible page on WWI and Basil’s involvement — emotionally powerful stuff.
I’M IN LOVE WITH BASIL and have been since I first saw him in Son of Frank twenty three years ago. I have all his films I can find on Dvd and have read his biography a thousand times. I believe it is his own voice in those lettters. I am sure of it. Thank yu for letting us see them mr Frank
Very moving letters and very impressive human being
The second letter should be required reading for war-mongers everywhere.It ought to be published in a collection of WW1 letter, whoever wrote it.
I’m actually crying over that second letter and his lovely brother
You can almost feel the pain so intense it’s numbed him completely.
Incredibly moving
I’M really so moved by all this
Basil did not write these letters, someone has forged them
Are you a handwriting expert?
I’m a Basil Rathbone expert!
WTF are you on about Alyssia?
Never could stand Rathbone as Sherlock, give me Brett every time.
You sir are insane!
I agree Rathbone didn’t write those letters
If a document examiner gave a probability of 95%+ then that’s got to be pretty much definitive comfirmtion
Basil obviously wrote those letters, what is this person’s problem?
I really hope that Basil’s letters are published some day soon.
There should be an appendix at the back of the biography for them
is someone writing his biography???
Please someone make the freakin’ movie!!!!!
lovely letters
How moving and honest they are.
Very powerful reading that second one, poor young heart is quite smashed.
Yes it breaks me every time. I just want to comfort him. He was only 26, which is like only seven years older than me, he was hrtdly over being a kid really
my grandfather was in the 2/10 Liverpool Scottish like Rathbone. He attained the rank of Sergeant in B company, what was Rathbone’s company?
actually I think it was B company too
i cried so hard over these and now i want to just know everything about world war 1 and basil in world war one. he would have been such a lovely soldire and so tragic, did he have a g/f when he went to war and did he write to her?
“M” in the first letter is his first wife Marion and the “baby” is their son Rodion. There are pictures of Rodion here: http://www.basilrathbone.net/gallery/candids/page4.htm, but I have not seen pictures of Marion.
it’s weird there are no pictures of Marion, and he never talked bout her either compared to how he went on about Ouida
He was married and had a child. For more info, see this web page:
http://www.basilrathbone.net/biography/ww1.htm
Thanks Anna and Marcia. I love Basil so much and want to learn everything about him. Why did his first marriage end? Is it a coincidence there are no pictures of her? Did she break his heart or something and it was too painful for him to remember? I’m glad he was happily married second time. Oiuda was lucky!
I think the marriage broke up because he was a different person after the war. This is a common occurrence with wartime marriages — the soldier comes back and has a rough time adjusting. He doesn’t explicitly say this in his autobiography, although he does admit responsibility for the break-up, I think.
so moving
Those letters seem vey genuine to me. Thanks for a great blog by the way.
I cant confirm he wrote them. But I can confirm he has a uncle Harold and aunt Elfrida.There Edgars bro and sister..well 2 of them anyhow.The wrighting of what happend to John is a bit “corny” but that makes me think it’s him all the more.He’s an actor! He needd to say SOMETHING to them.He couldnt just cry on a sheet of papper and post it. Perhaps they way he wrote it was all he could say.
I don;t think a faker would sign the letters “PSB” as it undercuts their provenance and value.
I don;t see why he’d sign “PSB” and it looks like wishful thinking to see it as being from him
Somewhere in a comment from a few months ago, Frank said he had the letters examined by an expert, and the expert said there’s a 95% or 99% certainty that the letters were written by Basil Rathbone.
These are such moving letters and having read many of Mr Rathbone’s letters I am sure he wrote these
I’m sure we would all be happy to hear anything and everything you have to say about those letters if you are happy to share and have the time!
I think the handwriting could be his
So moving, I agree with others, these leters should be published in a book about the real human cost of war.