Sous-série 1914 - 1914

17 letters and 2 postcards, paper

Ruth Turner's letters to George Mallory, to whom she became engaged in April 1914 and married on 29 July 1914. They first met at a dinner in the Autumn of 1913 at the house of Arthur Clutton-Brock, a lawyer and writer who lived in Hindhead Road not far from Charterhouse School where George was teaching. Ruth’s mother Mary had died six years before and Ruth and her two sisters Marjorie and Mildred lived with their father, Hugh Thackeray Turner, at Westbrook, an elegant house on the far side of the Wey Valley. They met socially several times over the next few months and in March Thackeray Turner invited George to accompany him and his daughters on a trip to Italy. George and Ruth fell in love during the week long’s holiday and became engaged in May.

Shortly after the engagement Ruth left to accompany her family on a long standing pre arranged holiday in Ireland based in County Donegal. George and Ruth pledged to write letters to each other daily when separated.

George and Ruth got married on 29 July 1914, George’s father conducted the ceremony and their best man was Geoffrey Young. Due to the worsening situation in Europe they could not spend their honeymoon in the Alps as they had hoped but instead went to North Devon and then camping on the Sussex coast.