On his off-duty walks around the countryside of northern France, Collingwood Ingram met and talked with local people. At Candas, Edouard Dumetz, an old sack-cloth weaver, invited him into his home. Collingwood returned the next day and sketched Edouard and his wife, and also Edouard at his loom.

He wrote of them,   

'The tide of war has twice swept past their cottage and yet their peaceful peasant life has remained undisturbed. Exempt in 1870 and now, of course, far too old, Dumetz must have stood and watched the armies of three nations march, day after day, through the muddy streets of his little old-world village, usually so sleepy and silent!'