Kingsley Hotel
[postscript] London
18th Jan. 1917.

Dear Ones All,

I have tried to picture your surprise and the remarks that each one of you would make when you heard the news of my marriage, and I would give a good deal to see you all now and to tell you all about it and to hear what you have to say.

To begin at the beginning- I travelled up to Liverpool from Cornwall the day before the passengers from the "Philadelphia" were due to land, having got the necessary information from the steamship company. Then I went to the landing dock, met Molly, got her luggage through the Customs and all that sort of thing and finally caught the boat train for London.

On the train we got everything talked out and it was a mighty happy reunion. We decided that there was no reason why we shouldn’t be married and various very good ones why we should, and made up our minds to get it over with as soon as the law and the church would arrange it . (That was on Jany. 7th and we were married on Jany. 13th so you can see that there wasn’t an enormous amount of time lost)

I took Molly to this hotel which is a quiet inexpensive place, and one where there always seem to be numbers of Canadian nurses. Of course, I had to go straight to Hounslow and report for duty but luck has been with me - the weather has been bad and I was able to get in to town on the tube every afternoon and spend a few hours with Molly. It is sort of complicated getting married in England- and there were ever so many difficulties in getting the thing through. They hate to do anything in a hurry here you know, and to get married in a hurry is almost an unforgivable offence. In order that there might be no mistake about the legality and regularity of it all, we went direct to the Bishop of London’s Registry in St. Paul’s Churchyard and after passing through a gruelling examination after proving to the satisfaction of several worthy but suspicious gentlemen that our motives for getting married were worthy motives, that our characters were not more than normally bad, and that Molly was not a Hun- we got a license, some license too- Bishop of London’s seal and all! That was the worst of our troubles over with. Then we got a ring. Molly helped to choose it- some ring too, cost me two pounds, five. There was only one place in England where we could legally be married and that was in Hounslow, so we next arranged the details with the vicar of St. Paul’s Hounslow. My C.O. was awfully good about it and gave me ten days’ leave- 13th to 22nd inst. inclusive. So I came in to town on Friday night and on Saturday morning we set forth to Hounslow with Pete Wedd and "Gyp" Wilcox (  the two chaps with whom I lived for so long when I was at Adastral House) as our only "guests"- really they were just for witnesses and nothing else.

We were married by the vicar- a dear old man he was- in such a pretty old church, at noon on Saturday, January 13th. We were both so glad that the sun decided to shine for a few hours at about that time. We only get a glimpse of the sun about once a week over here in the winter time. The service of course was the very simplest and there was no music; but we didn’t need any for nothing could have been happier than we two were that day. The Church of England marriage service is so impressive and I remember long, long ago wishing that I could be married in an Anglican church , little thinking that it would ever work out that way.

We spent our honeymoon at The Piccadilly, one of the really nicest hotels in London. Of course we really are still on our honeymoon so I should have said that we stayed there for the first few days of it.

Molly is going to nurse of course, and will start in to work at once. The pay that nurses receive over here is barely enough to live on, still it will do, together with the small amount of help that I am able to give her. It is the hope of both of us that she may get into one of the small private hospitals in London. They are very plentiful just row owing to the congestion of the military hospitals everywhere, and trained nurses are correspondingly scarce, so there should not be much difficulty in getting what she wants.

We are both as happy as can be, and if only we can manage to carry on through our married life some of the spirit of the honeymoon with all its love for each other and its unselfishness- as my own father and mother have done- I know it will be a really happy married life. We are starting out with some very clear ideas and good resolutions on the subject at any rate, and I am sure everything will come out all right ever though the future does look so uncertain at present.

If you are writing to Molly, the address at the top of this page will find her as she will leave her address here when she leaves.

Mother and May, will you please make out a list of all the relatives and of all my Walkerton friends, to whom my wedding announcements should he sent- and mail the list to Mrs. Charles Champion, St. Petersburg, Florida. She is having them engraved. I'll send her a list of all my friends outside of Walkerton, but will not include any relatives in the list.

Now I must close, Dear People. You will have noticed that I have been very remiss in acknowledging all my Christmas gifts, but surely there is a good excuse for me isn’t there!

With heaps of love to you all from us both,
Yours as ever,
Eric.