Issue Date: 11 July 2000 (resaved 15/6/2001)

Return Home

For Chester's Children, see:
Antony Campbell Poole
Richard Armstrong Poole
David Manchester Poole


There follows a direct copy of the original carbon of Chester's 
autobiographical work passed down to A Maitland, 1997:

Missing Acres
R.F.D. 3.
Charlottesville , Virginia

Dear Dick and David,                              (his sons)

May 1st, 1964.

 It must be 20 years ago that my brother, your Uncle Bert, first asked
me to write an account of my life for him Poole family Genealogy, then
taking shape. His own interesting biography ran into 27 pages and he
wanted mine as its counterpart, we being the two surviving Poole
descendants of our line.

Several false starts bogged down and were discarded.  Then, when I
retired to Virginia in 1949, I  applied myself to the task with such
vigour that the penciled draft covered 150 Pages of foolscap. Crammed
with personal exerience, it was thoroughly impractical for Bert's
purposes; and after typing 17 pages, I abandoned it. The next attempt
was so short as to be stupid.  More urgent appeals from Bert inspired a
fresh effort but by this time you boys had both married and in the end
I found myself so deeply involved in, and intrigued by, not only your
mother's lineage but your Wives' ancestry too, that what I have finally
achieved is a complete genealogy of my branch of the Poole Clan far-
reaching as to again be out of place in Bert's  compilation.

 Meanwhile, sadly, Bert has gone, having died in Florida June 11/1962;
and his daughter Eleanor hopes to have his life-work printed, I think,
therefore, that I should limit my contribution to what Bert originally
asked for - my own life story; and to regard the annals I have gathered
together, with your mother's help, as a separate genealogy for you and
your children, to whom it particularly relates.

 This will explain why most of the following pages are blatantly headed
"Subject 2-B Otis Manchester Poole" - whether the text concerns me or
not. This was to conform to the system followed throughout Bert's
Genealogy.  More definitive headings would now be desirable but the
task of alteration is beyond me

 Since what I have compiled was intended to be supplementary to Bert's
Poole Genealogy, it contains nothing about my Poole or Armstrong
forbears. To make my volume completely independent of Bert's, it
should, of course, include the Poole Tree. The information is all here
in my copy of "Bert's Begats" (as Mother dubs them) which he prudently
sent me as fast as he typed it. Some day I may make a summary to be
included herein, but not just now.  For the moment, I am satiated with
ancestors and must take time out to revive this wilted descendant,

Your affectionate father,
OM Poole.




CONTENTS


1. Chester's biography.
2. Dorothy's biography
  "       Campbell ancestry.
  "       Ric ancestry.
Tony's history, including Luba's and Clive's.
Dick's history.
Jillian's history.
  "       Hanbury ancestry, including Diana.
  "       Rawnsley ancestry,  "         "    and Coatsworths.
David's history.
Sally's history.
  "     Jarret and White ancestry.


Subject 2-B

                        OTIS MANCHESTER POOLE


  Called Chester. Younger son of Otis Augustus Poole.

An account of his life written by him in l96l/2 for his brother Herbert
A. Poole's history of the Poole Family, including the Rics and Campbell
ancestry of his wife Dorothy May Campbell and short histories of their
sons Anthony Campbell Poole, Richard Armstrong Poole and David
Manchester Poole.


 I was born at 3731 Forest Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, on September
6/1880. A twin sister did not survive. My only brother Herbert was
three years older than I, my sister Eleanor two.

Forest Avenue, now known as Giles Avenue, was a pleasant tree-lined
residential street close beside fashionable Grand Boulevard which
followed the contours of Lake Michigan Southwards.  We three spent our
childhood there with Summer visits to our Grandfather Armstrong's farm
at Arcola, 150 miles South in the wheat lands.  When old enough, I
followed Bert and Eleanor into Cottage Grove School and had two tears
elementary grounding before our lives were completely changed.

In May,1888, father, whose business was in China and Japan teas took us
all out to Japan to live permanently in Yokohama.  There a little blue-
and-white bungalow at No. 89 Bluff, half hidden in a trim garden hedged
by tall oleanders, camellias, magnolias and cropped cedars, became the
Poole family home for thirty years.

Bert has so well described what Yokohama was like in those days that it
would be redundant for me to add my impressions but I still recall with
nostalgia the booming of temple bells at night, the waiting call of the
amaa-san (blind masseurs) and soba vendors, the wooden clack of the
night watch-man. I picture the rikisha stands at every twist of the
winding Bluff road their idle pullers crouched in a fragile lean-to
over a charcoal fire or playing "Go" (chess) awaiting the next call
"Hai! Kuruma!".  I see again the oblong-sailed fishing sampans gliding
down the bay in the pearly morning light and hear their conches blowing
as they returned at dusk.  I think, too, of the sandy beaches beneath
the Bluff, around Juniten and in the coves of the Honmoku cliffs where
we used to swim with our foxterriers; and the sweep of the emerald
paddy fields rippling in the Summer breeze.   All that has "gone with
the wind" now, but not from memory.

That first Autumn Bert and I entered the Victoria Public School,
established in 1887 by the British community, where, among the sixty
other English and American boys, we made many lifelong friends, such as
Sydney and George Wheeler, sons of old "Judy", the beloved Irish
Doctor. Sydney died in Shanghai during World War 1, while George, a
Captain in the Gurhkhas, won the Victoria Cross for valour in the
relief of Kut in Mesopetamia. Then there were Halstead and Thayer
Lindsley who later made their fortunes in gold mining in Canada and
whose sister Maya became Bert's wife. Killian van Rensellaer Smith,
"Van", son of one of the partners in father's firm Smith Baker & Co.,
has been perhaps my most constant friend through the years and still
strenuously enjoys life in Switzerland; Nicholas ("Beau") Hannen, son
of Sir Nicholas, Judge of the British Court, who became well-known on 
the London stage; Morris Mandelson whose life was studded with 
tragedies; Charlie and  George Moss, the latter knighted for his 
Consular fortitude when the Japanese invaded North China in the '30-s; 
Eric and Harold Irwine,  the parson's sons, - Eric fought in the Boer 
War and never settled down, whereas Harold emerged from World War 1 a 
Major, M.C., and wound up a Director of Imperial Chemical Industries.  
There were others such as Aubrey and Rex Brent and Harry Cook who who 
became bankers and forestry officers in India of Burma and faded from 
our ken. It was a dashing group of boys and we were constantly together, 
especially enjoying long walks in the hills back of the Bluff with our 
dogs and 22 cal. guns. I shall never forget one morning in our workshop 
as I sat cleaning my rifle, and Halstead picked my revolver, its six 
chambers loaded alternately with bullets and dust-shot, clicked it 
several times with his thumb on the hammer, held it to my head and 
fired. By the Grace of God it was a dust-shot that fired and a thick 
double seam of my tweed cap stopped the fine pellets so that I was only 
pricked. But Halstead went white as a sheet and vowed he would never 
touch a firearm again. Ten Summers later he was a Deputy Sheriff in 
Telluride, Colorado, with Two Colts. in his belt.

Father was away every Winter in America but in the Summers was very
companionable with us boys and taught us many crafts. In the Summer of
1891, we all spent a month at Hakone Lake, with its lovely view of Fuji
across the water.  The Wheeler boys and Beau Hannen were there too and
we had a lot of fun.  Then in 1892, father took Bert, George Wheeler
and me with two of our foxterriers up Fujiyama.  It was a thrilling
experience, riding on pack-horses through the woods to the cinder level, 
then trudging up endless lava slopes, sleeping in rock Huts on top among 
bands of white-clad pilgrims and, most memorable, drinking in the superb 
views from the 12,000 ft. crater.

Following in Bert's footsteps, l left school at fourteen and was
privately tutored in French, Japanese, shorthand and type-writing. In
September, 1895, I joined the Yokohama office of Dodwell, Carlill & Co.
(later Dodwell & Co. Ltd.) a British merchant house engaged in
importing, exporting and shipping, with chief offices in London and
Hongkong and branches at the main seaports of China, Japan and the
Pacific Coast.  I soon became secretary to the manager, George Syme
Thomson, a big, rugged Scot and brilliant shipping man, who took pains
to coach me as we went along and to whose kindly interest I owe a great
deal.

In January, 1899, I was sent down to our Hongkong office for several
months, where I lived with the bachelor manager, E.S. Whealler, in his
mansion "Hazeldene" part way up the Peak. Life in a British colony was
a stirring change from that in Japan, and the milling hordes of Chinese
crowding the gaily colored streets fascinated me.  While there I took
the night boat to Canton up the Pearl River and was carried by chair
from the little foreign colony of Shameen on a shady islet over a
guarded bridge into the Chinese city, through narrow, bannered alleys
to silk shops, temples and pagodas to the massive walls and lofty gates
guarding the city. Then to a far grimmer sight, the prison, a collection 
of infested open-air cages holding cowering creatures that once were 
men. Nearby was the execution ground, a bare earthen courtyard along one 
side of which stood a long row of barrells full of decomposing human 
heads. A brutish executioner, lolling in a doorway, stepped out at a 
word from my Chinese companion, gave a few swipes with his heavy sword 
and lurched back. My blood ran cold and I was glad to get away.

With two other young Chaps, I also visited the Portuguese colony of 
Macao on a Saint's day, gambled at Fan-Tan in a reeking Chinese den, 
and, though I did not realise it, had the first glimpse of my future
wife, Dorothy Campbell, a fair little 3 year old in a red dressing
gown, summering there with her mother from Hongkong.

Returning to Yokohama in one of our freighters, the "Lennox", in 
ballast, we nearly foundered in a typhoon in the Formosa Channel.  It
was nip and tuck and I landed on the opposite side of the poop saloon
with a cracked rib, but we pulled through.

In 1900 Bert and I made a trip together to the Northern Island, 
Hokkaido, to see the fast disappearing Ainu people, the aboriginal race
that once inhabited Japan as far south as Fujiyama. They are supposed
to have sprung from a stray Nordic tribe as they lack the Mongolian eye
but are black-haired and squat, the men not only bearded but thickly
covered with hair on their chests and limbs.  The women tattoo their
faces with indigo and their garments resemble the American Indians',
with bold key-patterns. They ware fishermen and hunters and still used
bows and arrows. Now, sixty years later, they are practically extinct.

Life in Yokohama in the early days was singularly pleasant. Every type
of sport was readily accessible.  In our teens, Bert and I shared a
zest for swimming, rowing, sailing and bird shooting; and when the
safety bicycle came in about 1893, made many up-country trips. Cars, of
course, were still unknown.

Under guidance by mother, who was a brilliant pianist, Eleanor also
developed into one, while Bert shone as a violinist. In fact, 89 Bluff
became the rendezvous of musicians of many nationalities.  My leanings
were more artistic than musical and sketching in water colors has 
afforded me much pleasure all my life. In sports Bert adhered to sailing 
and rowing, in both of which he often represented Yokohama in interport 
events.  I gradually swung over to tennis and riding, shooting and 
climbing in the mountains.  The latter became my keenest interest and so 
many were the trips I organised in my twenties that I came to be 
regarded by fellow-enthusiasts as something of an institution.  An 
aptitude for photography inherited from father added interest to these 
explorations, of which accounts often appeared in the local papers. 
Walter Weston, the Alpinist, in his book "The playground of the Far 
East", contained several of  my photographs of the Japanese Alps, refers 
to me as "my friend "Chester" Poole, the European doyen of artistic 
landscape photography in the Kamikochi region". I was elected a Fellow 
of the Royal Geographical Society and enlargements of some of my 
photographs of the Japanese Alps taken during the scaling of Yarigatake 
in 1905 hung on the walls of its headquarters in London for many years. 
S0 many and varied were these excursions with boon companions, and so 
exciting their incidents, that it would be impossible to describe them 
here. The narrative of one 240 mile walk from Nikko to the Tenryu-gawa 
with five other young fellows, was printed in book form illustrated by 
many of our photographs.  It was probably one of the best known of all 
our trips, and led on to our later sallies into the Japanese Alps, in 
1095 to 1908.

Socially, our lives were equally jolly. The daughters of the community
were exceptionally zestful and attractive. Dinners, dances, picnics and
garden parties brought young people together in intimate groups, and
romances flourished. Living on such a remote "frontier", the community
had to create its own entertainment, and the frequent concerts and
theatricals revealed a surprising amount of talent.

In November, 1901, I received my first home leave, and accompanied 
father across the Pacific in the S.S."Doric" on my first return to
America since leaving it as a boy of seven.  From San Francisico we
slipped down to Monterey and Carmel then up the Pacific Coast to
Portland and Tacoma and across the Continent the via Denver and Salt
Lake to Chicago, meeting again my dimly remembered Uncles, Aunts and
cousins. Then on to Boston, via frozen Niagra Falls, where Halstead and
Thayer, in Harvard College, gave me a jolly time. Then to New York,
Philadelphia and Washington and back for a round of theatres, opera,
concerts and sights that were an eye-opener to me.  These weeks in
America were father's 21st birthday present to me and I shall long
remember his generosity and stimulating companion-ship.

We parted after Christmas, I to continue alone across the Atlantic in
the White Star "Teutonic" to put in five months in our London office.
I shared diggings in Chelsea with our accountant, Fred Baker who had
had some earlier years in Manila and visited friends all over the
country. My schoolmate Aubrey Brent took me on many bicycle excursions,
including a most enjoyable one to Oxford.  The Company's Chairman,
George B. Dodwell, was particularly kind in inviting me frequently to
his stately home "Coniston" in Watford where I became well acquainted
with his five lively daughters of 14 to 22 and two sons, George 
Melville, 18 and Gordon 15. George was in later years my close
associate in the Company and finally himself Chairman.

While in London I took three weeks off to visit Leipzig, (where my
friend Cecile Rogers was studying music), Heidelberg, Lucerne, Monte
Carlo and Paris. I was lucky at the gaming tables in Monte Carlo and
had a jolly good time in Paris. It was all an interesting first glimpse
of Europe's fabled attractions.

Finally, in May I sailed from London in the Japanese Liner "Bingo
Maru", via Port Said, Suez, Colombo, Singapore and Hongkong, arriving
home in June sunburned and full of adventures.

I was now in the Shipping Department and in 1903 was sent on a mission
to Formosa where I stayed with the typan of one of the Tea Hongs in
Daitotei, the small foreign colony just outside the walls of Taipei on
the banks of the river. I visited Keelung and Tamsui and crossed over
to Amoy.  On my favorable report as to facilities and prospects,
Dodwell's New York ships thereafter made direct calls at Keelung for
tea cargoes, eliminating transhipment to Amoy.

In 1904 the Russo-Japanese War broke out.  Although the conflict was
too far removed from Yokohama to affect our lives, Dodwells had twenty-
four ships on time-charter to the Japanese, and our office teemed with
Sea Captains exchanging thrilling yarns. When peace came, we re-
patriated to Odessa shiploads of hulking Russian prisoners.  They were
always hungry and would eagerly pluck a round loaf from a barrel, break
it open, insert a handful of salt and eat it like a hamburger.

Events came quickly at that time in our family. In 1904, Eleanor
married Nathaniel George Maitland, "N.G.", an Englishman in the
Chartered Bank who had a fine baritone voice and was much at home at 89
Bluff. Two years later they moved to Shanghai and we saw them only on
summer visits with their small boys. Bert had joined a Belgian firm in
Tokyo, Mosle & Co., and lived mostly up there. At the end of 1904, he
made an extended trip around the world.  Most disrupting of all the Tea
Trade suddenly shifted from Yokohama to the Tea fields of Shidsuoka
half way down the coast to Kobe.  Some foreign merchants whose large
tea-firing plants were idled, including father's firm Smith Baker &
Co., elected to close up rather than move to the isolated tea district.
Father however, started his own concern, Otis A Poole & Co. in
Shidsuoka, living in a picturesque Japanese house and garden that had
once belonged to a Samurai, but retaining 89 Bluff for mother, with
whom I, the last of her family, continued to live. Bert's marriage in
1908 to a lovely American girl in Tokyo, Bessie Ballagh, completed his
desertion of the old home, although they lived close by us on the
Bluff.  Tragically, their happiness was short-lived; Bessie died seven
months later of menengitis,

In 1908,  Dodwells "opened" Yokkaichi, the fishing-village port of
Nagoya by establishing the first direct service to foreign lands. I
went down 3 weeks ahead to pave the way, smoked out daily in my shack
called the Seaman's Club by attentive officials. When the day came the
Japanese put on great celebrations, three Governors gracing the final
banquet for notables. The little town was bedecked with flags and
lanterns, while the geisha quarter festooned a banner reading "33 1/3
percent discount to our Noble Allies." (This was the era of the Anglo-
Japanese alliance.) The City of Nagoya presented me with an inscribed
watch and chain which I lost in the earthquake of 1923, to my regret,
as it was quite a historic event.

My second home leave came in 1909 when an American pal, Orville G.
Bennet linked his leave with mine and we set off in January for England
via Shanghai, Hongkong & Singapore; thence through the Malay States to
Penang, Rangoon and Calcutta; up to Darjeeling to view the Himalayas, a
stupendous snowy ridge floating in space. Then up the Ganges to Benares
with its battlements and temples overhanging the river like a page from
the Arabian Nights. Thence North into the Punjab to see my schoolmate
George Wheeler, now a Captain in the Gurkha Rifles in cantonments at
Dehra Dun, where we had a taste of Kipling's India, watched manoeuvres
and dashing polo games and dined in the Officer's Mess in evening
dress, respectfully listening to the Colonel's anecdotes.  After 15
years of soldiering, George was a fine sahib, but still George. Thence
to Delhl and its 21 deserted cities; Agra, the peerless Taj Mahal,
Fatehpur Sikri - a walled marble city never occupied because of
poisonous water; the desert stronghold of Gwalior, to whose fortress on
a great rock we ascended on one of the Maharaja's elephants, escorted
by a guard of six barefoot soldiers.

After Gwalior, we had a few days in Bombay, especially impressed by
the Towers of Silence on Malabar Hill, wherein the bodies of dead
Parsis are laid out on slabs and reduced to picked skeletons in a few
hours by hordes of black vultures that perpetually line the rims of the
towers and perch in surrounding trees awaiting their next gruesome
meal.  From Bombay, we crossed India southwards to Madras where we said
goodbye to our dragoman Abdul Gafoor and sent him back to Calcutta,
while we continued South to the reeking, bat-ridden Hindu temples of
Madura; and finally to Tuticorin and Colombo, delighting in some golf
again and a visit to Kandy in the mountians.

A sunny five days at sea took us to Suez and Cairo where we climbed to
the smooth pinnacle of Chephren, a ticklish feat, and next day drove
five golf balls each off the top of Chephren, the highest tee in the
world. Then by rail up the Nile to the ruins of Karnak, Luxor and the
Tombs of the Kings where the scents of the desert and the lonely
silence of the massive columns and monuments carry one out of this
world into a dreamlike past.  A strange and overpowering sensation.

From Egypt, we crossed the Mediterranean to Naples, Pompeii, Capri,
Rome and Venice. Then, shoudering rack-sacks, a week's walk through the
Austrian Tyrol, down again to Milan and Monte Carlo (where I was again
modestly lucky) Switzerland, down the Rhine on a grey day brightened by
Sauterne; a two day walk across Holland from Amsterdam to the Hague,
and over to England and Scotland, playing on twenty two golf courses as 
we went.  A fabulous kaleidoscope of unforgettable scenes and episodes.

On winding up in London, "Og" and I parted, he to continue on to New
York and I to return to St.Andrews for some professional coaching in
golf, after a spell at North Berwick.  Who should I run across at
St.Andrews but my schoolmate "Beau" Hannen, his pretty wife and pink
baby son; and we had a wonderful three weeks of of golf together. I
cycled across from Inverness to Fort William beside some lovely lochs
and coming down the West Coast of England, visited quite few old
friends. Then followed several months in London office before sailing
for New York in September in the decrepit old "St Louise", "Og" Bennet
was on the dock to whisk me off on a week's walking trip through the
Catskills and Schwangunk Mountains, followed by some golf with his
brother Walter at Greenwich. Then to Philadelpida and Washington and on
to Chicago to get up to date with our warm-hearted relatives and on to
San Francisco via the Grand Canyon, a noble sight. The S.S."Korea"
finally put me back in Yokohama in November, impoverished but thrilled
with a host of wonderful experiences.

Early in 1910 I was transferred to Kobe where, because of my modest
reputation as a climber, I was warmly welcomed by, and joined the
"Mountain Goats", a small group of doughty walkers who climbed the Kobe
hills every morning from 5 to 7 A.M. to the little shrine of Futatabi,
and on Winter weekends scrambled over the rugged Rokkosan ridges.  A
member Of the Kobe Club once wrote of them:-

                    Oh, who would be a Mountain Goat
                      And leap from crag to crag?
                      I'd rather be just what I am
                       And crawl from jag to jag.

Well, that was Kobe! I enjoyed my three bachelor years there,
especially Summer weekends of golf on the crest of the Rokkosan Hills.
Though never a scratch golfer, I generally made the Interport Team, and
throughout the years played for both Yokohama and Kobe. I also played
against the first team that the Tokyo Japanese were able to  muster
when they took to golf. We walloped them.  In a year's time they had so
improved that our team scored only one halved match, - and that was
mine.

It happened also that the braid business in my charge in Kobe did
phenomenally well, which was not overlooked in London and did me no
harm.

In April, 1913,  I Was transferred back to Yokokama, where mother was
still living at 89 Bluff.  On our very first evening, at a play at the
Gaiety Theatre, I met and was greatly attracted by a pretty, vivacious
and charming girl of barely eighteen, just out from school in Guernsey
and Germany, - none other than Dorothy Campbell. Mother had a tiffin
party next day for a dozen people, including Dorothy, as a "welcome
home" to me; and from that time on I saw as much of her as I could.
Our parents had been friends from first day in Yokohama; in fact, I
could remember her mother, Calla Rice, when a girl of seventeen
spending mornings at our house practising songs to Mother's 
accompaniment on her clear, soprano voice; whereas Dorothy's father, a
wonderful swimmer, diver and yachtsman, had at the same time taught all
us chavers his tricks and called us his "tadpoles".  But the Campbells
had lived many of the intervening years in Hongkong and Kobe and,
except for the Macao episode,  I had only seen Dorothy as a girl Of
twelve homeward bound to school, and mother had given her a gold and
silver brooch fashioned like a true-lovers-knot with enamelled forget-
me-nots.  Perhaps it was a talisman.  When I discovered she liked to go
sketching in water-colors, I precipitately bought a Studebaker open
touring car and whisked her off to picturesque spots in the  hills.  Of
course I taught her how to drive; that was elementary.  Cars were only
just appearing in Japan and mine was one of the first.  Van Smith
followed my lead and our twin cars opened up a new life of picnics,
Sunday jaunts to the sea-shore and long country trips far beyond
anything previously accessible.

In July, 1915, Dodwells sent me on a business trip to New York and
London.  I crossed the Pacific with my brother Bert in the Pacific Mail
S.S."Korea", he en route to Boston to marry Maya Lindsley, sister of
our schoolmates Halstead and Thayer Lindsley. Halstead met us in In San
Francisco where we saw the spectacular Pan-American Exhibition and
where I left them to pursue my way to New York via the Giant Caves of
Kentucky and Niagara Falls.  World War 1 was on and things were a bit
sticky crossing to London in the Cunard "Aquitania" and even more
during my shirt stay there; even more so coming back with twelve
passengers, men only in the giant "Baltic". Again Og Bennet met me in
New York and took me off for a week's visit with his brother and wife
at Martha's Vineyard, where yachting parties by moonlight, good
swimming and dancing with a jolly young group, filled the days
delightfully.  Three weeks later I was back in Yokohama.

There is a proverb about absence, and not long after my return, Dorothy
capitulated and we became engaged.  As if one momentous event were not
enough, my rugged but king typan of twenty years, George Syme Thomson,
died of a stroke two days before Christmas and London cabled
instructions for me to take charge as Manager.

Six months later, on June 21/1916, Dorothy and I were married in Christ
Church, at the other end of the same block as No 89. Van Smith was my
grinning best man and half Yokohama attended the reception at the
Campbell's house, No 1 Bluff. We divided our honeymoon between
Miyanoshita, Nikko and Chusenji Lake, in idyllic surroundings. Our
first home was at No.68 Bluff, a comfortable two-storied house with a
small garden, within a stone's throw of mother now once more alone at
89. There our first son, Anthony Campbell Poole, was born on March
29/1917, amidst great rejoicing. But an unusually hot summer pulled
Dorothy down and it was decided she should accompany father in November
to America, to spend six months at Coronado Beach with friends and at a
Swedish Health Home. She returned in June, 1918, a picture of radiant
health.

Meanwhile, mother had become desperately ill about Christmas time and
Eleanor came over from Shanghai to be with her, but at the end of three
months had to return to Shanghai to have her fourth son, Donald. To our
sorrow, mother died June 4/1918, in her 77th year, mourned by the whole
community. Father came up from Shidzuoka and Bert from Kobe and we
buried her in the Bluff cemetery looking towards Fujyama. Father
relinquished 89 Bluff and that was the end of the Poole Family home of
30 years.

Our next two sons were not long in appearing on the scene, Richard
Armstrong Poole on April 29/19l9 and David Manchester Poole July
4/1920. Our Japanese servants, jubilant with traditional pride over
THREE sons to carry on the family name, flew great paper carp from a
tall bamboo pole for a week.

In those tears I served on many committees, and in 1920 was elected
President of the American Association of Yokohama. This was all part of
the Far Eastern life and everyone had to do his bit.

Because of World War I and all our branches being short-handed,  had
had to forego my regular home leave, so the company now made up for it
by giving me a whole year instead of the usual 6 months.

In February, 1922, accompanied by a pretty English nanny homeward
bound, we all sailed for England via Sues in the Japanese liner "Haruna
Maru", and settled for the summer at Brook in the New Forest, also
visiting the scenes and friends of Dorothy's school days in Guernsey. I
also made a business trip to Switzerland, through the battlefields of
Belgium, the villages still stark and unrepaired. Many friends visited
us, stopping at the Bell Inn, including Dorothy's brother Archie from
Durham University, her cousin Evelyn Gillett and her paternal Aunt Lady
Jephson, a  grand character and artist.  In September we shifted to
Devonshire, spending two months at Lustleigh, where I enjoyed walking
over the moors; and we also visited Dorothy's cousins the Fulfords of
Fulford, still living in their moated Norman Castle, perhaps the oldest
inhabited building in England. Then finally we were back in London for
a last fling.  After X'mas, I had to return to Japan via America, for
business reasons, leaving Dorothy and the boys to go the other way via 
Suez with a Danish Governess we had engaged, Miss Lauritsen. Unluckily, 
before X'mas, Dorothy fell downstairs and broke her collar-bone; and it 
was March before she could safely sail.

Back at 68 Bluff by late Spring, everything seemed set for a resumption
of our happy home life. Then, on September 1/1923 came the terrible
earthquake that utterly destroyed Yokohama and most of Tokyo.  It
struck at three minutes before noon on a Saturday, when I was at the
office, No.72 Settlement, and just closing up to go to the Club, the
Far Eastern custom; and and the children were at home.   First there
were a few creaks and a feeling of dizziness, then a violent shaking
with a crescendo of noise and then suddenly the earth began to heave
and toss with a thunderous roar, bringing down pictures,  ceilings and
walls and flinging the furniture about like corks. Instantly the air
was filled with the dust of crumbling plaster and you could'nt see
twenty feet. All one could do was grip the side of a doorway and hang
on for dear life, awed by terrible crashes on all sides.  For four
minutes this uproar continued; then sudden silence.  The staff flocked
to the entrance hallway by my door.  We counted heads and all were
there, only a few cut and bleeding.  Thanks to a unique roof
constructed fifty years earlier of whole treetrunks, our building was
still standing, though reduced to a shambles.  But around us spread
nothing but shocking ruins.  A five storied brick godown (warehouse)
across the narrow street was just a heap of rubbish and forty seven
silk workers within it were killed. Wherever one looked stood remnants
of buildings, festooned with timbers. On the Bluff, houses were split
asunder or pancaked like Jackstraws with a lid on top.  Mercifully, 68
Bluff was one of the few that, though shattered, did not fall; and
Dorothy, the children and servants scrambled out into the garden
unhurt; but as only a fringe was left, the rest having slid into the
valley below, they took refuge in the garden of 89 Bluff.  Two other
married men of our staff and I agreed to stick together and make for
the Bluff and our families, while the unmarried men were to take care
of the girls and head the open park. We all knew there was more to
come.  Clambering over massive ruins that blocked the streets, and
splashing knee-deep through flooded subsidences, we fought our way
towards the Bluff in an uncanny, sulphurous light from a copper-colored
sun seen dimly through the dust. We crossed the canal by the remains of
Nishi-no-hashi bridge into Notomachi, the strip of Japanese town under
the abrupt sides of the Bluff.  It was a scene of horror, the flimsy
native houses having been reduced to matchwood from the depths of which
came cries and groans and bodies lay on all sides. Worst of all, fires
were leaping up on all sides; and as we sprang through this mess, a
wall of flames pursued us like a demon, roaring in the high wind.
Frank Anderson with his wife Honor and daughter Patsey were now living
in 89 Bluff and though the house had pancaked, Honor and Patsy wriggled
out uninjured but for bruises and a broken rib. There I found Dorothy
and the boys, together with her parents who had rushed to her side from
their their own shattered house at 37 Bluff.

By now a pall of black smoke was billowing past close over-head and we
trekked along the Bluff to Camp Hill leading down to the waterfront.
Blocked there by a cauldron of fire, we took refuge in the terraced 
lawns and tennis court  of the British Naval Hospital on the cliff tops 
overlooking the Bay.  Leaving the family under a deodar, I made a sally 
along the Bluff to Bateman's house accompanied by a willing bachelor 
friend. It was toppled against a telephone pole but across the way lay 
the ruins of the Syme Thomson house from which Bateman and the gardener 
had only just dug out his wife and Mrs Syme Thomson, buried in timbers 
for two hours but saved by the back of a sofa from being crushed.  
Making chairs of our hands, we carried them to the road, where they 
could stumble along to the Naval Hospital and join our party. Looking 
back, we had been only just in time. Flames had already leaped the road 
and the Syme Thomson ruins were ablaze, as was Bateman's house. In fact, 
the situation had become menacing.  We were now hemmed in by a fast 
approaching ring of flames as fallen residences caught fire in quick 
succession and the hot smoke brought it home to the grim knots of 
fugitives that we would have to go over the cliff or he consumed. Tennis 
nets were hastily tied together and let down over rim, the upper end 
fastened to a Summer-house outlook, and in response to urgent 
exhortations, people risked their lives in a hazardous scramble down the 
not quite perpendicular cliff face, transferring half way down to a 
slide where the cliff had avalanched.  At the bottom an open space of 
reclaimed ground extended a hundred yards to the west of the bay and by 
the Grace of God a scow of fresh water lay tied to the sea wall.  
Everyone by now was parched with thirst from the choking smoke and water 
was a life-saver.  I made three trips up and down the cliff to carry our 
children down and the third time met my father in law half way down, 
carrying Dick precariously on his shoulders. Time had run out and as the 
fire struck the Naval grounds, people panicked and overwhelmed the rope, 
which broke before our eyes. Sheets of fire appeared above the brim like 
a Niagara and as it licked those who had feared to go over the cliff, 
many threw themselves over in flaming pinwheels, thudding in piles on 
the beach below.  A sickening sight. 

By 4 p.m., Yokohama was gone, burned to embers; and a sudden change of
wind from offshore to onshore made it possible for the "Commodore"
(Mr.Campbell) and me to work along the Bund (water-front boulevard)
wall, kneedeep in water to the tumbled rocks that had been the Boat
Club Jetty, from which we could hail the sendo (sailor) of his big
cabin yacht "Daimlo" and get him to row the dinghy ashore. In this we
transported our families and many others in distress to the "Daimyo"
and surrounding yachts, while lifeboats from the ships in harbor or out
in the bay plied back and forth taking off those who remained.

Through the night Yokohama and every other town around the Bay,
including distant Tokyo, burned like a display of fireworks; and when
dawn exposed the complete desolation, it was realised that life for the
foreigner in Yokohama was ended; and those left alive were received on
board ships in port to be evacuated to Kobe. But getting away was
fraught with fresh perils.  In the course of Sunday morning, the wind
again changed to off-shore and flames suddenly ignited the fuel oil
that had spread during the night over the harbor from burst tanks on
shore. The "Empress of Australia" with 2,000 refugees on board and the
anchor chain of another ship fouled in one propeller, escaped only by a
miracle of seamanship into the open bay.  Other vessels were towed out
by daring tugs.  The Commodore and I, again on board the "Daimyo", and 
two companion yachts, had a terribly close shave, first of being 
engulfed in burning oil, and then of being run down by the fleeing 
ships, and all the while compelled to watch the desperate manoeuvres of 
the "E/Australia" with our families aboard.

 A hundred and fifty thousand people were killed; and of the foreign
population of Yokohama one in eight perished. We were among the lucky
ones, though of course our home and all our possessions were destroyed.
Dodwell's premises shared the common fate of the entire city. The rest
of our staff escaped being trapped by the flames in the recreation
park, or got to the hills behind the Bluff. But the canals and wharves
were choked with the bodies of these who could not escape.  Dorothy's
widowed Aunt Mabel Fraser was nearly one of these, having been been on
the way to the railway station; but just managed to ride it out in an
island square surrounded by canals.

This is but a fragmentary picture of the disaster. Dorothy and the boys
went on to Shanghai and were taken in by my sister Eleanor and George
Maitland, while the Campbells and I stayed behind in Kobe, where three
months later we were reuinted.

For the next two years we lived in the firm's house at "San-bon-matsu"
(The three pines) high up the Kobe hillside.  As former residents, we
had many friends and everyone was most kind. For the Summer of 1924, we
rented one of the semi-Japanese bungalows that dotted the Rokkosan
hills around the golf course, escaping the sea-level heat.  The
Campbells had gone back to Yokohama and were living in one of the
prefabricated houses that sprang up on the Bluff as temporary homes.

The period of reconstruction was an arduous one for me. Since about
1918 I had been General Manager for Japan, our senior manager, Matt
Smith, an Kobe, having died. Therefore the burden of planning for the
future, as well as retrieving the past, fell upon me.

Then in 1925, just before going again to Rokkosan for the Summer, Kobe
forgot its historic immunity from earthquakes and suffered one so
violent that at its height I thought we were in for another Yokohama
disaster.  However, it simmered down, though not before considerable
damage had been done and Kobe's inhabitants had had a bad scare.
Dorothy, who had been caught part way downtown, ran back up the hill in
apprehension for the children and on finding safe in a neighbor's
garden, collapsed from exhaustion. She had come through the Yokohama
ordeal with the fortitude of a pioneer woman, but this second shock
brought on a siege of boils, as had happened to many after the Yokohama
quake, and had to go into hospital. Hearing of this, Stanley Dodwell,
our Chariman, suggested we should all go across to Victoria, British
Columbia, for a three months well-deserved change. So, on July 7/1925,
we sailed from Kobe on the "Empress of Asia", and on arrival rented a
nice house on Transit Road, only a few yards from Shoal Bay. While
there, our New York manager's health broke down and London cabled me to
go across and take over until he recovered.  He never did and I stayed
on permanently, and was shortly made a Director of the Company. Thus,
by sheer chance, I came back to my own country after 37 years abroad
and have never seen Japan or the Far East again.

The following June, I went back to fetch Dorothy and the boys from
Victoria; and from July 1st, 1926, for the next 23 years, we dwelt in
Summit, New Jersey, a lovely suburb on the crest of wooded hills
eighteen miles out of New York.  After boarding for a while to find our
bearings, we moved into an airy third-story apartment in a remodelled
residence at 15 Euclid Avenue, where the squirrels came to our casement
windows to be fed. The boys went to Lance School, a private school for
boys, and soon had a nice group of friends.  Being so much of an age,
they were always companionable and provided a nucleus for other boys to
rally round for games, a flat valley just below our garden providing a
handy playground. Three feminine friends of my young days in Japan, now
married with young families resided in Summit and Short Hills and
Dorothy and I were quietly welcomed into their circle.

The years that followed were happy ones, with our children emerging
into energetic boyhood.  They were all good at drawing and water-
colours, and at weekends we would drive out to sketch, picnic, swim and
row at Surprise Lake, at that time still secluded. Tony especially, had
real artistic talent and having had a good start under Miss Lauritsen
in Yokohama, took naturally to the piano and was coming on well when
the 1929 stock market crash compelled an abandonment of some of the
advantages we had planned for our sons.  However, it may not have been
altogether a misfortune as they loyally adapted themselves to simpler
pleasures and turned out well.

In 1932 we moved into an attractive, two-storied house at 12 Hobart
Ave, where the boys, now breaking into their teens, would have more
elbow room. They were good lads, nice looking, pleasant spoken and
enterprising. Their companions came from good families and as they grew
older and went to dances, etc., the same held true of the girls. To our
amusement, whereas at first they had been identified as OUR sons, it
was now WE who were identified as THEIR parents. We were members of the
Canoe Brook Country Club where I enjoyed the two fine golf courses, but
our warmest friends were mostly in the Art group and we helped an
artist friend, Blanche Greer, start an evening life class. In 1933, I
was elected the first president of the budding Summit Art Association
since grown beyond recognition to one of the foremost Art Schools In
the Country.  Dorothy also developed a gift for poetry that created for
her some very devoted friends. Years later I had a book of her verses
printed for her on our fortieth wedding anniversary, illustrated by
Dorothy's own delicate drawings.

Meanwhile, things had been happening in our families back in Japan. The
Pacific Mail Steamship Company, pre-eminent for over a lifetime, folded
up in l925, and Dorothy's father had had to go into business for
himself in Kobe. My father Otis A. Poole, honoured doyen of the tea
trade in Japan had finally retired in 1926, to live at Cloyne Court in
Berkeley, California, being then 79 years old. He made us a final visit
in Summit and died not very long afterwards on April l/1929, of heart-
failure. His ashes repose beside mother's in the Bluff Cemetery in
Yokohama.

In 1932 my brother Bert retired from the Standard Oil in Japan, and he
Maya and their four children, John, Eleanor, Molly and David, settled
in Milton, Mass. the traditional Lindsley home. They spent several 
Summers at Squawn Lake, New Hampshire and invited us to stay with them.  
The young cousins, all of an age, thus came to know one another in happy 
surroundings.

In 1934 Dorothy, not having seen her parents in over eight years, went
out alone to Japan in one of Dodwell's freighters, The "Penrith
Castle", from New York via Panama Canal, Los Angeles, Manila, Honkkong
and Shanghai to Kobe, an enjoyable trip with a congenial handful of
passengers. There she spent the Summer with the Campbells at their
house on Shioya Beach, fringing the Inland Sea eighteen miles from
Kobe, experiencing one of the most destructive typhoons Japan had ever
known. Their garden was completely washed away and house inundated by
giant wares, forcing them to high ground, while several neighbouring
houses were demolished. Dorothy came home via San Francisco and the
Grand Canyon, arriving at Thanksgiving.  She had found her parents both
beginning to age, and Japan itself drably changed by modern innovations. 
The old familiar faces were gone and strange ones blankly replaced them. 
In truth, it was a sad revelation of how nothing ever remains static.

While she was away, I enjoyed an explorative motoring holiday with Colin 
Law of the Hongkong Bank, driving up through New England, pausing to 
glimpse Tony who was at Goose Rocks Beach studying painting under Eliot 
0'Hara, and stopping off to see Dick and David visiting my brother's 
family at Sqawm Lake; then climbing Mt.Washington and eventually 
Mt.Katahdin in Northern Maine.

In February, 1936, I was invited by the Board to come over with Dorothy
to London to discuss my ideas for the reorganisation of the Company.
These involved a reduction of Capital to erase a long-standing deficit;
and after six weeks of discussion, this was effected. It proved a
turning point and the Company has prospered and paid good dividends
ever since. While in England, Dorothy and I went down to Byfleet in
Surrey to see my sister Eleanor and her family; and Dorothy also
journeyed to Fort Rose, Scotland, where her brother Archie was Rector,
and met his young wife, Jean Douglass. We also gave a large reception
at Brown's Hotel in London, bringing together many old Japan friends.
It is a pleasant memory for that was the last time we have been out of
America.

Early in 1938 Dorothy's father, still in Japan, began to fail in health
and was persuaded to retire and come with Calla to live with we in
Summit. They arrived in May by air, he a very sick man, and in spite of
an immediate operation and careful nursing, died on September 21/1938
at the age of 79. So passed on of the merriest and best-loved characters 
of the Far East. His ashes were sent to Scotland and scattered over the 
waters of the Clyde by his son Archie, then Rector of Trinity Church, 
Dunoon, who had come over in July for a last meeting with his father.  
Dorothy's mother spent the next year in London with her two widowed 
sisters, but as World War II intensified in 1940, she came back in June 
in the last ship to carry passengers, to live permanently with us in 
Summit, where I bought a house at 8 De Bary Place, the first one I ever 
owned.

Our boys, on leaving Lance School, each took two final years in Summit
High School before going on to Haverford College near Philadelphia. One
by one, on taking their degrees, they stepped out into the world on
their chosen careers: Tony with the Grace Steamship Line and Pan
America Grace Airways in South America; Dick in the U.S Department of
State Service: and David as a flyer and nuclear engineer.  Their
individual careers will be described further on. During World War II
Tony managed the Panagra Air Lines in La Paz, Bolivia and later also
managed the Aerovias del Ecuador, including the German Airlines taken
over by the Government. Dick joined the U.S Navy in Spain, came home
for training in combat military government and reached Japan with the
occupation forces a few weeks after her surrender. David won his wings
in the air force as a fighter pilot but was picked out to be an
instructor in flying and bombing and never get overseas.

Towards the end of 1943, Tony, then in La Paz, became attracted to a
newcomer to the American Embassy, a American girl of Russian parentage,
Luba Gustus, and they were married in La Paz on December 19th, 1943.
Almost immediately afterwards, Tony was appointed Panagra's manager in
Guayaquil, Ecuador, and there six weeks later, he contacted typhoid
fever, was flown to Lima, Peru where, after a brave fight, he died on
April 18/1944.  For his young wife at four months it was a terrible
tragedy; and for Dorothy and me a lifelong sorrow.  Handsome, debonair
and talented, he was one of those blythe spirits who are greeted with
smiles wherever they go. One of his college mates wrote us that all of
them who went through Haverford came out with something of Tony in
them.  Luba returned to America and came to stay with us in May, a
dainty, distinguished girl who has been very dear to us ever since, she
later married a young Englishman, Clive Parry, remarkably like Tony,
and has two children, Katherine and Anthony. They all feel like our own
family, and though he is a Cambridge Don, they have visited us often
through the years.

In April, 1949, after fifty-three years of service with Dodwell & Co.,
I retired at the age of 68, ending as happy an association as anyone
could wish for. I was given a royal send-off in New York, with letters
and telegrams from all over the world and a complete silver service.
That I was a bit homesick at first goes without saying, but it soon
passed off in new surroundings.

Half a dozen years earlier our closest friends in Summit, Claude and
Pen Argles, Far Easterners like ourselves, had retired to "Pine Hill",
Ivy, Virginia, where we had annually visited them for the first week in
May, becoming more and more attached to the lovely countryside and
their group of friends.  Two years before my approaching retirement, I
bought a 75 acre estate known as "Missing Acres" (because it was
suppose to have been 100 acres) five miles west of Ivy at the foot of
the Blue Ridge Mountains. A rather handsome white residence, surrounded
by lawns and tall trees, occupies the crest of a knoll commanding
beautiful views in all directions. Pastures and woods run down to
Lickinghole Creek half a mile any. To this ideal spot Dorothy, her
mother Calla and I came down in May 1949 and it has been our home now
for twelve years. Surrounded by retired people like ourselves, we have
many good friends; and though the Argles had to go back to England,
Charles and Nan Mott also from the Far East, came soon after to fill
the gap. The life here is very pleasant; one can be as secluded or as 
socially active as one pleases.  Charlottesville, with all the 
diversions of a University town, lies only twelve miles any, and 
Farmington Country Club, formerly one of the large old Virginia estates, 
is even nearer.  Cocktail parties, mostly out of doors, are the favorite 
way of bringing friends together. Though Dorothy does'nt play l get 
quite a lot of bridge of which I am very fond now that I am no longer 
limber enough for golf. That is rather an understatement as in the last 
few years a touch of arthritis has made my knee very rusty and a walking 
stick my constant companion. It makes me sigh to think of my mountain-
climbing days. Dorothy, like her mother, has become quite deaf but is a 
devoted and tireless gardener.  When we first came down here, I tried my 
hand at the alluring hobby of raising cattle in a small way but it only 
took two years to find it was no child's play and cheerfully abandoned 
it. There are six acres of lawns and gardens, slopes and shrubbery 
around this house, and even with good help, it is all one can do to keep 
the place trim and orderly. So now I rent our pastures to my 
neighbouring farmer and have all the pleasure of watching his cattle 
grase the sunlit fields with a backdrop of mountains, yet have none of 
the responsibility of caring for them.

Naturally in the twelve years we have been here, things have gone on
happening within our family, some happy, some sad.

In 1949 David, then working in the U.S. Army Nuclear Energy Plant at
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, flew up to Providence, Rhode Island, to be best
man at a friend's wedding; fell for a pretty little blonde bridesmaid
who turned out to be the bride's cousin Sally Jarret, younger daughter
of Isabel and Huge Jarret, a prominent woolen-mill owner of Woonsocket,
R.I., with the upshot that they were married on June 23/1950 at the
Jarret's beautiful residence at Woonsocket.  Of course Dorothy and I
went up for the happy event; and my brother Bert his wife Maya and
daughter Eleanor came down from Boston.  David & Sally honey-mooned in
Bermuda and now have two sons, Jeffery born July 11/1952, and
Christopher born November 11/1954.  They lived first at Oak Ridge then
Centerport, Long Island and finally at Rye, N.Y. close to the Sound
where they can enjoy their small yacht. He has for some years been
Project Engineer of the Nuclear Development Corp. of America.

My sister Eleanor and her husband N.G.Maitland, who retired from
Shanghai in the late twenties with a comfortable fortune, had made
their home ever since in West Byfleet, Surrey.  Sad to relate, he died
there February 14/1951 at the age of 76.  Eleanor and her faithful
maid-companion of 50 years, little Emily continue to live in West
Byfleet. Their four sons, Francis, Jack, Otis and Donald all married
and had children; but her eldest, Francis, a doctor, died at 33 in
1938, only a few months after his marriage. His three brothers and
their families are all thriving, and the Maitland clan grows apace.

On August 15th, 1951, Bert's dynamic wife Maya Lindsley died of
cerebral thrombosis in Milton, Mass. in her 67th year, a sad blow for
Bert and their children who by then were all married and scattered
except for Eleanor who was still in Milton.  She and her children lived
in the parental home and later she, Bert and the children moved 
permanently to Palm Beach, Florida, where they are now living in
Eleanor's delightful house on Sea Spray Avenue. Eleanor has been a
devoted daughter and taken wonderful care of him, especially in the
last few years of frail health through emphysema. I last saw  him in
Palm Beach in 1960 and was saddened to find him so thin and fragile,
though high-spirited as ever.  A wonderful character.

Dick, whom we had begun to regard as a confirmed bachelor, while on a
short leave from Colombia in 1957 discovered that he was so happy in
the company of a Washington girl he had known since his previous leave
that he could'nt contemplate the prospect of going back to Bogota
without her, and with only ten days to go, he and English-born Jillian
Hanbury became engaged and were married a week later, November 2/1957.
Her father Anthony Hanbury, being in Natal and her mother, Una Rawnsley
Brown in Paris, they were married from "Missing Acres". A wedding
breakfast at Farmington Country Club and a service at St.Paul's
Episcopal Church, Ivy, was followed by a jolly reception here at
Missing Acres, looking its loveliest on a perfect Indian Summer day.
For the next two years Dick was Chief of the Political Section in the
Embassy at Bogota, whence they returned to Washington in August, 1959,
for a four year spell in the State Department in charge of Peruvian
affairs. They quickly bought a house in Langley Forest, Mclean, 15
miles out of Washington, where their son Anthony Hanbury Poole was born
on February 6/1961.

In 1959 Dorothy's dear little mother Calla passed away.  Soon after she
joined us from England in 1940 arthritis made its appearance and by the
time we came down to Virginia, she was already badly crippled. It seems
a strange irony of fate that one so active as she, who had played on
the Interport tennis teams in the Far East for fifty years, who skated
and danced with equal zest should in the end be so cruelly crippled.
In the Spring of 1951, she stumbled and fell in her room, breaking her
leg near the hip, and in spite of an operation, never recovered the
ability to walk. The years that followed were borne with unfailing
courage and spirit till she finally slipped away on September 26/1959
at the age of 88. She is buried in St.John's churchyard, near Ivy.  A
very dear and merry person all her life.

And so it has come about, after all our wanderings, that 1962 finds
Dorothy and me living by ourselves in happy retirement at "Missing
Acres" gardening, pursuing our various hobbies and enjoying the
companionship of kindred spirits around us.  To sit under the trees and
look out upon the peaceful hills, changing in every light, is a constant 
Joy.  Our sons with their families and new relatives who all love 
"Missing Acres", make it a sort of Mecca and keep us young at heart; 
while friends of the past from all over the world visit us from time to 
time and keep old memories green.  Sometimes, looking back upon our 
changeful lives, we wonder by what kind fate our paths were shaped
to lead us eventually to this lovely corner of Virginia.