双语感人美文：百年家信

摘录：“能这样直接和他沟通，实在非常有趣，不然他只是人口普查表上的一个名字。现在我们认为他是一个实实在在活生生的人，非常体贴关怀人，从过去直接给我们寄来了这封信。我觉得非常感激他。我觉得这是给予我们——他的玄孙们一份真正的礼物。这是我们接收到的非常神奇的信息。

双语感人美文：百年家信

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.索普的高曾祖父写了一封让子孙后代世代流传的信。信中为我们描绘了他那个时代的有趣景象。

蒂姆.索普刚记事儿的时候，就知道这封写自1912年12月12日的信。20世纪70年代，当他还是个孩子的时候，他的家人就开始谈论，他的高曾祖父野心勃勃地传递给一百年后子孙的讯息。终于，索普收到了属于自己的那份手写信的复印件。盖伊.伍德在1912年12月12日写了这封信，在他离世之后，信中传递的信息仍深深吸引着他的后代。比如像索普这样的后代，这封信使他们燃起了对于塑造他们生活和事业的历史的强烈兴趣。

"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."

“这是飞行机器和汽车刚兴起的年代。 我常试图在脑海里中想像2012年12月12日会是什么样的。”伍德写道。当时伍德51岁，马上就要从收容所服务员领班的岗位上退休了。“今天，我要写下这封信，然后放起来。留给我的子孙后代阅读。”

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.

尽管伍德没有接受多少正规教育，但是他非常热衷于读报，恐惧地预测到了德国的崛起和使数千人丧命的死亡机器的发明。但是，他的信被当成珍贵的传家宝，这点儿可能是他没有预想到的。当2012年12月12日真正来临时，他的玄孙仍在阅读着他写下的文字。得知这些，他应该会很欣慰吧。

"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.

“这封信写得非常生动，对那个时代的领悟非常精彩，而且确实促使我培养起对历史的兴趣，”索普说道。他现在47岁了，是诺福克林恩博物馆的收集员。

"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，发生了有史以来最大的海难事故”伍德在记述泰坦尼克号沉船事故时写道，“施工人员说，这艘船的密封舱觉不会漏水，因此这艘船是不会沉的。船下沉的时候，乐队演奏了‘更近我主’，然后一切都结束了。

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.

伍德的信后来又描述了“一战的肆虐，巴尔干半岛的同盟国保加利亚，塞尔维亚，蒙特尼哥罗，希腊联合反抗迫害了他们五百多年的土耳其人。”当然，这场混乱是八十多年前南斯拉夫解体的重新抬头。

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，大规模移民是爱德华时代另一件十分令人头疼的事情——今天这一现象又再次重演——伍德担心每周都有数千名英国人“迁往加拿大，澳大利亚和新西兰”，这使他担心未来2012年他的国家会是什么样子。“英格兰，我想，应该还会存在吧。不过，有时候看起来，我们好像要被德国或其他某个国家吞并了，他们正花大价钱买各种战船，准备海战和空战。”

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.

伍德自己认为战争是毫无价值的，这一点非常清楚。“在我看来，医生正花大量的金钱和时间来拯救生命，其他人发明枪支和各种各样的杀人机器屠杀成千上万的人，仅仅是为了满足欲望或征服他人，”他这样写道。

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?

索普说，这封信使我想到了14年前出版的HG 威尔士的《世界大战》，跟威尔士一样，伍德是一名社会学家，阅读每日论坛报——一种面向工人阶级的新型日报。然而，一个人要坐下来认真地考虑一下一百年后的时光，给还未出生的人写一封信，甚至是在一个前途未卜的，作家们正在创作第一本科幻小说的年代，这是多么不可思议的一件事情啊!是什么促使伍德这样做的呢?

"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.

“他想把他的担忧在纸上记录下来，这一天到来了。他是由于自己无能为力无法改变这一切而感到焦虑才这样做的吗?”索普说道。这封信记录了历史性的事件是如何影响普通劳动者的感受的，但是并没有描述他个人的生活。但是通过写这封信，并使它世代流传，他确实做了一件我们任何人都有能力做却没有做到的事情——那就是使他成为一个真正的不同寻常的祖先。

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.

相比较而言，他的后代们对于他倒是了解的很少。只知道在他一生之中，丧亲之痛使他伤痕累累。他1861年出生于约克郡的巴特利，后来与索菲亚结婚，但是他的四个儿子，由于住在同一个房间，最后都因肺结核而死去。在这场悲剧发生之后，他们举家迁往了南部，伍德在萨利郡的凯恩山疗养院(后来成为医院)得到一份工作。他的女儿弗洛伦斯活了下来，还有一个儿子叫哈利，11岁便不再上学了，在凯恩山疗养院当大厅服务员。他的父母似乎仍担心他也会死于肺结核，所以在他17岁的时候，就鼓励他气候暖和时在游艇上工作——他在那里拉小提琴。后来，哈利成为埃塞克斯的第一位工党郡议员。

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写一些过于自己家庭的事儿吗?“他可能觉得他并不重要——他并不是在吹嘘自己的人生。”他说，“这封信在很多方面都表达了他个人的想法，他的希望和担忧都表达的淋漓尽致。”实际上，伍德活着亲眼见证了他1912年所做推断的结论。妻子过世之后，伍德决定让哈利和他的家人照顾自己。“我的保姆仍记得，他带着一个盛着钢琴和小提琴乐曲的大箱子，来到她的前门，说：‘现在你要来照顾我了，’”索普说道。

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.

他的母亲黛富妮回忆道，40年代当她还是个孩子时，记得伍德穿着一件吸烟服，戴着一顶土耳其毡帽，在他祖父前屋吃饭，吸烟，惬意地独自生活着。午饭和晚饭前，黛富妮会被叫去和曾祖父说几句话。“在他吃午饭前，会和黛富妮简单聊几句，”索普说。“我觉得他是一个脾气暴躁的老头儿——那时，他80多岁”索普说。1946年，索普去世了，当时他85岁。

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."

伍德的信展示了一个世纪的变迁，但同时也表明了人性的永恒和我们不变的希望和恐惧。他观察的结果也表明预知未来是多么的困难。争取女性投票权是他看到的“一场极度的愤怒的爆发”数百名女性聚集在一起，他们打碎玻璃，还故意做出其他各种暴行。”现在我们知道，妇女们肯定会获得解放，但是当时伍德却说——“我不知道她们是否获得了投票权”——可见在当时，这并不是一个有先见之明的结论。第一次读到伍德的信时，索恩还是个孩子。“在70年代，当我们设想2012年的情景时，我们想到的是科幻小说家阿瑟.克拉克所描绘的能在太空探险的科幻的世界。”

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.

索恩所听说过的别的家族中，他们的高曾祖父除了一张照片就没留给过他们别的什么纪念品了，但是伍德对于未来的迷恋，还有他为我们提供的探究过去的机会，是一种极好的持久的遗产。黛富妮成为了一名历史老师，索恩说，这封信激发了他对于现代史的兴趣，他在大学学了现代史，然后在博物馆工作。

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.

索恩非常确信，他的高曾祖父的信还会再流传一百年，他和他的两个兄弟还会将这封信传给他们的孩子。索恩考虑过更新一下信的版本吗?“我要从哪开始呢?一百年之后生活会是什么样的?你怎样去设想呢?”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."

“能这样直接和他沟通，实在非常有趣，不然他只是人口普查表上的一个名字。现在我们认为他是一个实实在在活生生的人，非常体贴关怀人，从过去直接给我们寄来了这封信。我觉得非常感激他。我觉得这是给予我们——他的玄孙们一份真正的礼物。这是我们接收到的非常神奇的信息。