雙語感人美文：百年家信

摘錄：“能這樣直接和他溝通，實在非常有趣，不然他只是人口普查表上的一個名字。現在我們認爲他是一個實實在在活生生的人，非常體貼關懷人，從過去直接給我們寄來了這封信。我覺得非常感激他。我覺得這是給予我們——他的玄孫們一份真正的禮物。這是我們接收到的非常神奇的信息。

One hundred years ago, Tim Thorpe's great-great-grandfather wrote a letter to be handed down the generations. It provides a fascinating snapshot of his time.

For as long as Tim Thorpe can remember, he has known about the "12.12.12" letter. When he was a boy in the 1970s, his family would talk about his great-great-grandfather's ambitious message to people "belonging to me" 100 years into the future and, eventually, Thorpe received his own photocopy of the handwritten letter. The power of Guy Wood's message from beyond the grave, written on 12 December 1912, continues to fascinate his descendants, and for some, such as Thorpe, it sparked an interest in history that has shaped their lives and careers.

一百年前，蒂姆.索普的高曾祖父寫了一封讓子孫後代世代流傳的信。信中爲我們描繪了他那個時代的有趣景象。

蒂姆.索普剛記事兒的時候，就知道這封寫自1912年12月12日的信。20世紀70年代，當他還是個孩子的時候，他的家人就開始談論，他的高曾祖父野心勃勃地傳遞給一百年後子孫的訊息。終於，索普收到了屬於自己的那份手寫信的複印件。蓋伊.伍德在1912年12月12日寫了這封信，在他離世之後，信中傳遞的信息仍深深吸引着他的後代。比如像索普這樣的後代，這封信使他們燃起了對於塑造他們生活和事業的歷史的強烈興趣。

"This is the time of Flying Machines and Motor Cars only in their infancy. I often try to picture to myself what things will be like in 12.12.2012," wrote Wood, who was 51 and nearing the end of his working life as "head attendant" of an asylum. "I am writing this today to put on one side so that some of my offspring may perhaps read it."

“這是飛行機器和汽車剛興起的年代。 我常試圖在腦海裏中想像2012年12月12日會是什麼樣的。”伍德寫道。當時伍德51歲，馬上就要從收容所服務員領班的崗位上退休了。“今天，我要寫下這封信，然後放起來。留給我的子孫後代閱讀。”

Despite having little formal education, Wood read newspapers avidly and fearfully predicted the rise of Germany and the invention of "death dealing machines" that would kill people in their thousands. What he could not foresee was that his letter would become a treasured heirloom, and he would be delighted to know his words were still being read by his great-great-grandchildren when 12.12.2012 came to pass.

儘管伍德沒有接受多少正規教育，但是他非常熱衷於讀報，恐懼地預測到了德國的崛起和使數千人喪命的死亡機器的發明。但是，他的信被當成珍貴的傳家寶，這點兒可能是他沒有預想到的。當2012年12月12日真正來臨時，他的玄孫仍在閱讀着他寫下的文字。得知這些，他應該會很欣慰吧。

"It's written in a very dramatic way and gives an insight into the times in a very exciting way, and it really helped foster my interest in history," says Thorpe, 47, who is now collections officer at Lynn museum in Norfolk.

“這封信寫得非常生動，對那個時代的領悟非常精彩，而且確實促使我培養起對歷史的興趣，”索普說道。他現在47歲了，是諾福克林恩博物館的收集員。

"This is the year of the greatest shipwreck ever known," wrote Wood of the sinking of the Titanic. "Said by the builders to be unsinkable owing to her watertight compartments, as she was sinking the Band played Nearer My God To Thee and then all was over."

“今年，發生了有史以來最大的海難事故”伍德在記述泰坦尼克號沉船事故時寫道，“施工人員說，這艘船的密封艙覺不會漏水，因此這艘船是不會沉的。船下沉的時候，樂隊演奏了‘更近我主’，然後一切都結束了。

Wood's letter next described how "a Great War is raging between the Balkan allies Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece against the Turks who have persecuted them for over 500 years". This turmoil was, of course, to resurface with the breakup of Yugoslavia some eight decades later.

伍德的信後來又描述了“一戰的肆虐，巴爾幹半島的同盟國保加利亞，塞爾維亞，蒙特尼哥羅，希臘聯合反抗迫害了他們五百多年的土耳其人。”當然，這場混亂是八十多年前南斯拉夫解體的重新擡頭。

Interestingly, while mass immigration was another anxiety of Edwardian times to be replayed today, Wood worried about the consequences of thousands of English people emigrating "every week to Canada, Australia and New Zealand", which led him to fear for the future of his country in 2012. "England I suppose will still be in existence although it looks sometimes as if we should be swallowed up by Germany or some other country the way they are spending money on warships, both for sea and air."

有趣的是，大規模移民是愛德華時代另一件十分令人頭疼的事情——今天這一現象又再次重演——伍德擔心每週都有數千名英國人“遷往加拿大，澳大利亞和新西蘭”，這使他擔心未來2012年他的國家會是什麼樣子。“英格蘭，我想，應該還會存在吧。不過，有時候看起來，我們好像要被德國或其他某個國家吞併了，他們正花大價錢買各種戰船，準備海戰和空戰。”

Wood's own views of the futility of war are clear. "It seems to me doctors are spending money and time in trying to cure and save life. Others are inventing guns and different kinds of death dealing machines to kill people by thousands all for greed and to conquer others," he wrote.

伍德自己認爲戰爭是毫無價值的，這一點非常清楚。“在我看來，醫生正花大量的金錢和時間來拯救生命，其他人發明槍支和各種各樣的殺人機器屠殺成千上萬的人，僅僅是爲了滿足慾望或征服他人，”他這樣寫道。

As Thorpe observes, the letter is reminiscent of HG Wells's The War of the Worlds, published 14 years earlier. Like Wells, Wood was a socialist and read the Daily Herald, a new daily paper for the working man. Nevertheless, it is strikingly unusual for someone to sit down and seriously consider a time 100 years from now, and write a letter to people not yet born, even in an era of great uncertainty when writers were creating the first science fiction. What compelled Wood to do so?

索普說，這封信使我想到了14年前出版的HG 威爾士的《世界大戰》，跟威爾士一樣，伍德是一名社會學家，閱讀每日論壇報——一種面向工人階級的新型日報。然而，一個人要坐下來認真地考慮一下一百年後的時光，給還未出生的人寫一封信，甚至是在一個前途未卜的，作家們正在創作第一本科幻小說的年代，這是多麼不可思議的一件事情啊!是什麼促使伍德這樣做的呢?

"He wanted some way of putting down his fears and anxieties on paper and the date came along. Did he do it out of a feeling of frustration at his powerlessness and his inability to change these great events?" says Thorpe. The letter reveals how historical events can affect the perceptions of an ordinary working person but it does not reveal much about Wood's personal life. And yet by writing his letter and reaching across the generations, he did something that any one of us could do, but don't – and marked himself out as a truly remarkable ancestor.

“他想把他的擔憂在紙上記錄下來，這一天到來了。他是由於自己無能爲力無法改變這一切而感到焦慮才這樣做的嗎?”索普說道。這封信記錄了歷史性的事件是如何影響普通勞動者的感受的，但是並沒有描述他個人的生活。但是通過寫這封信，並使它世代流傳，他確實做了一件我們任何人都有能力做卻沒有做到的事情——那就是使他成爲一個真正的不同尋常的祖先。

His descendants know relatively little about him, except that his life was scarred by bereavement. Born in Batley, Yorkshire, in 1861, Wood married Sophia, but four of their sons, who shared a bedroom, died of TB. After this tragedy, the family moved south and Wood got a job at Cane Hill asylum (latterly hospital) in Surrey. His daughter, Florence, survived, as did one son, Harry, who left school at 11 and became a "hall boy" at Cane Hill. It appears his parents continued to worry that he too would succumb to TB, and he was encouraged to work in warmer climes, on a cruise ship – where he played the violin – when he was 17. Later, Harry became the first Labour county councillor in Essex.

相比較而言，他的後代們對於他倒是瞭解的很少。只知道在他一生之中，喪親之痛使他傷痕累累。他1861年出生於約克郡的巴特利，後來與索菲亞結婚，但是他的四個兒子，由於住在同一個房間，最後都因肺結核而死去。在這場悲劇發生之後，他們舉家遷往了南部，伍德在薩利郡的凱恩山療養院(後來成爲醫院)得到一份工作。他的女兒弗洛倫斯活了下來，還有一個兒子叫哈利，11歲便不再上學了，在凱恩山療養院當大廳服務員。他的父母似乎仍擔心他也會死於肺結核，所以在他17歲的時候，就鼓勵他氣候暖和時在遊艇上工作——他在那裏拉小提琴。後來，哈利成爲埃塞克斯的第一位工黨郡議員。

Does Thorpe wish his great-great-grandfather had written more personally about his family? "He probably didn't see that as important – he's not boasting about his own life," he says. "In many ways it is personal, in that his hopes and fears are expressed very well." In fact, Wood lived to see the logical conclusion of many of the trends he identified in 1912. After his wife died, Wood decided he would be looked after by his son Harry and his family. "My nanny remembers him arriving at her front door complete with a huge box of piano and violin music, and he said, 'You're going to look after me now,'" says Thorpe.

索普希望高曾祖父多寫一些過於自己家庭的事兒嗎?“他可能覺得他並不重要——他並不是在吹噓自己的人生。”他說，“這封信在很多方面都表達了他個人的想法，他的希望和擔憂都表達的淋漓盡致。”實際上，伍德活着親眼見證了他1912年所做推斷的結論。妻子過世之後，伍德決定讓哈利和他的家人照顧自己。“我的保姆仍記得，他帶着一個盛着鋼琴和小提琴樂曲的大箱子，來到她的前門，說：‘現在你要來照顧我了，’”索普說道。

His mother, Daphne, recalls that, when she was a child in the 40s, Wood wore a smoking jacket and a fez, and lived in glorious isolation in her grandfather's front room, where he took his meals and smoked his pipe. Before lunch and dinner, Daphne would be told to go and speak to her great-grandfather. "She would have a quick chat with him before he took his lunch," says Thorpe. "I think he was quite a grumpy old man by then – he was in his 80s," says Thorpe. Wood died in 1946, aged 85.

他的母親黛富妮回憶道，40年代當她還是個孩子時，記得伍德穿着一件吸菸服，戴着一頂土耳其氈帽，在他祖父前屋吃飯，吸菸，愜意地獨自生活着。午飯和晚飯前，黛富妮會被叫去和曾祖父說幾句話。“在他吃午飯前，會和黛富妮簡單聊幾句，”索普說。“我覺得他是一個脾氣暴躁的老頭兒——那時，他80多歲”索普說。1946年，索普去世了，當時他85歲。

Wood's letter demonstrates the transformations of a century, but also shows the great constant of human nature and our unchanging hopes and fears. His observations also prove how difficult it is to know what is to come. Votes for women is a "great rage" he observed, in which "100s of women congregate together and smash windows and other kinds of outrageous deeds on purpose." With hindsight, the political emancipation of women seems inevitable, but Wood's verdict – "I don't know if they will get votes or not" – shows it was far from a foregone conclusion at the time. Thorpe first read Wood's letter when he was a child. "In the 70s, when we imagined 2012 we thought of an Arthur C Clarke world of space exploration and science fiction."

伍德的信展示了一個世紀的變遷，但同時也表明了人性的永恆和我們不變的希望和恐懼。他觀察的結果也表明預知未來是多麼的困難。爭取女性投票權是他看到的“一場極度的憤怒的爆發”數百名女性聚集在一起，他們打碎玻璃，還故意做出其他各種暴行。”現在我們知道，婦女們肯定會獲得解放，但是當時伍德卻說——“我不知道她們是否獲得了投票權”——可見在當時，這並不是一個有先見之明的結論。第一次讀到伍德的信時，索恩還是個孩子。“在70年代，當我們設想2012年的情景時，我們想到的是科幻小說家阿瑟.克拉克所描繪的能在太空探險的科幻的世界。”

Thorpe knows of no other family mementoes of his great-great-grandfather except one photograph, but Wood's fascination with the future, and the window he created into the past, has had an enduring legacy. Daphne became a history teacher and Thorpe says the letter inspired his fascination with modern history, which he studied at university before choosing a career working in museums.

索恩所聽說過的別的家族中，他們的高曾祖父除了一張照片就沒留給過他們別的什麼紀念品了，但是伍德對於未來的迷戀，還有他爲我們提供的探究過去的機會，是一種極好的持久的遺產。黛富妮成爲了一名歷史老師，索恩說，這封信激發了他對於現代史的興趣，他在大學學了現代史，然後在博物館工作。

Thorpe is certain that his great-great-grandfather's letter will survive for another 100 years, and he and his two brothers will pass it on to their children. Has Thorpe considered writing his own updated version? "Where do you start? How do you imagine what life is going to be like 100 years from now?" he says.

索恩非常確信，他的高曾祖父的信還會再流傳一百年，他和他的兩個兄弟還會將這封信傳給他們的孩子。索恩考慮過更新一下信的版本嗎?“我要從哪開始呢?一百年之後生活會是什麼樣的?你怎樣去設想呢?”他回答道。

"It's fascinating to have this direct line of communication from him, otherwise he'd just be a name on a census list. Now he'll always be thought of as a real living human being who was very thoughtful and caring and sent us this direct line from the past. I'm so grateful. We feel it's a real gift to us, his great-great grandchildren. It's such a magical message to receive."

“能這樣直接和他溝通，實在非常有趣，不然他只是人口普查表上的一個名字。現在我們認爲他是一個實實在在活生生的人，非常體貼關懷人，從過去直接給我們寄來了這封信。我覺得非常感激他。我覺得這是給予我們——他的玄孫們一份真正的禮物。這是我們接收到的非常神奇的信息。