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The Townend Family Letters

Correspondence from the 1930s - 1940s between members of the Townend family
HPV + LJT Letters 1933 to 1935

1933 August

From LJT to Annette

14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
3/8/33

My darling Annette

I have been thinking so much about you yesterday and to-day, and wondering how the operation has gone off. I am simply aching to hear. I hope you did not have much pain or discomfort.

Both Dad and I are enormously pleased to hear about your attempts in the diving line. Mr Janvrin, though he gets a very high spring off the board, sometimes goes in “on all fours” just as you describe. In think the cure for that is “stretch”! Think about stretching out as far as ever you can, from your head to your toes, If you do that, you cant go in on all fours, and you only have to duck your head at the last moment, to take you into the beautifully. Of course there are all sorts of other receipes for getting a good dive, just as there are for getting a good swing at golf, but though they may sound different, they all aim at the same thing by different roads.

Have you ever read Jean’s book “The Stars in their Courses”? There are some some awfully interesting things about colour in it. He and Beebe are two men who write marvellously well abuot scientific things for ordinary people.

I think the next thing I am going to do is to learn how to classify plants into their proper classes. Dr Green, the Everest man to whom I was talking yesterday, says it is quite easy to learn how to do it, and then one can use the text books I very much wish now that I had really studied botany at school. I only did a little elementary stuff, and did not in the least realize how valuable it would have been to me to be able to pop plants into their proper classes.

Tell me, do you mind me writing to you on the typewriter? Some people cant bear having a personal letter typewritten, and if you don’t like it I wont do it.

Have you seen much of June this term? You have not mentioned her very often. I believe she is in a different form, so I suppose you do not see much of one another unless you make a special point of it. How is she doing at school? Is she good at her work?

There is such a high wind blowing this morning, that we have actually had to shut some of the windows, for all the curtains and flowers and things were blowing about so much. I am glad that I am not coming up the Bay of Bengal to-day.

Other letters call, so I must stop.

Best love my darling,
From
Mum

From HPV to Annette

Calcutta
August 3rd

My dear Annette

We thought of you yesterday and sent you good wishes by thought wave and sympathy.

A storm must be howling along in the Bay of Bengal for the wind is rushing past in great smashing gusts. When there is a storm down here there is fine weather as a rule in Darjeeling: it is so now: and the people up there say that it is because the Everest expedition has returned and has ceased to annoy the Gods. I met three of them yesterday. It is strange how ordinary and scrubby looking are the men who do great feats. Tonight there is a dinner in their honour: contrary to my custom, I shall go.

To keep down my papers under the fan, your mother has bought me strips of brass, like rules, very smart. Quite flat, so that I can put other papers on top of them. And for the better disposing of pens and pencils, she has caused to be made blocks of wood, eight inches by three, with holes this shape (diagram inserted) every inch or so: at present there are a horde of pencils and pens tumbling about on my table – though there is a tray for them.

My note on irrigation in Bengal which practically urges that we should abandon the Permanent Settlement, is to all intents and purposes done. Sad to say, it runs to 134 pages of typed matter, say 70 printed. Too much. But it takes longer to write short than to write long.

I found a portable typewriter in my office, bought a few years ago for an officer who had a touring job: so I brought it home to see if I could type quick enough on it, with one finger, to make the effort worth while. And I found that this made three in the house: your mother’s, one lent to her while her own was being adjusted, and the office one. Mogul was delighted. He felt that this was grandeur. – With the finishing of the note I shall be at leisure almost: in other words I shall not work after dinner each night.

Glad to hear that tennis was going a bit better. It’s a slow business learning anything – except, for you, bookstuff!

Much love
Daddie.

From HPV to Annette (typewritten letter)

Calcutta calling,
August 9th 1933.

My dear Annette,

Why don’t we call you Ananias for short? I am exhausted after making a speech of the most vehement in Council, counter-attacking the Swarajists who in a debate on the Municipal Bill (Calcutta, amendment), had been giving the Minister the devil of a dressing down; they got more than they gave eventually . . . . . . and I am weary. However it was a scene of triumph, handshakings and congratulations. And they were beaten in the first division by 80 votes or so, a real hammering. The Bill is not finished yet but the first division sets the pace; and I am supposed to have won over the waverers who always try to back the winning side.

We have done a fair amount of diving this week. Not at the week-end, for the evening with the Everest climbers fair broke me up, and I spent the week-end sleeping mostly. Found one of the sleep-producing pills that I had while on sick-leave and took it. When one is too tired sleep doesn’t come and I have been doing no end of a lot lately. That and barley-sugar of which I have sucked a lot did the trick and I am really very fit. The note on getting round the permanent settlement I have sent to be printed. It is a small book, having grown immensely. Whether it is any good, I can’t say; so many corrections and rewritings, as new stuff came in, that it has all lost continuity and balance.

So you are taking up German. There I cannot follow you, never having done it, though I listened to the first lesson which a small boy had at my pup-school in the hope of being able to pick it up without actually learning it. If you realise that people really talk other languages, it’s a great help. This is the office typewriter and not very clean. I hit it with not one finger exactly but one finger and five thumbs. Learn the story of Columbus. As he sailed towards the empty West and just when they had decided that they must turn back they spied week floating and some small crabs on it; so Columbus said “See, we are near to land!” and cheered they went on. The naturalist Beebe says of this that if Columbus had known any natural history he would have turned back; for the weed was Sargasso weed and the Crabs were those which live on the Sargasso weed and die miserably if they drift on to the shore. That is out of a book called Nonesuch Island full of strange things and very well written. I have forgotten to put the paper straight in the machine.

There is something to be said for typing when one has been writing a lot all day. It is less tiring to the fingers but it makes the mind shut up. Also my back is bruk (stet) over the labour of it.

That is enough about elephants
Much love,
Daddie.

From LJT to Annette

14/1 Rowland Road.
Calcutta.
Aug: 10th 1933.

My darling Annette,

All this week I have been thinking about you so much, and wondering how you are getting on. It is on this sort of occasion that one notices the time that letters take to get to and fro.

Last mail I had a letter from Miss Capstick, in which she tells me that you think that you would like to work with the idea of trying for a scholarship at one of the ‘Varsities, when the time comes. She says that you have good brains, and should stand a reasonable chance of winning a scholarship. She suggests that you go for modern languages, which will entail you taking up German as soon as possible. This costs an extra 4 guineas a term, but we are quite willing to pay this if you really think you would like to go in for a ‘varsity career. Will you think it over and settle it with Miss Capstick? Dad and I would like you to be equipped in some way to earn your own living, for the whole world is so much in the melting pot that it is just as well for everyone to be prepared to stand on their own feet. I shall be rather envious if you do go up to Oxford or Cambridge, for I badly wanted to do so myself.

It was a funny little two columned letter that you wrote us from camp, but you were a good child to get a letter written at all. I am sorry you just hit off one of the rainy days for camp. You had bad luck last year too, did’nt you?

I did my first Blue Bird enrolment ceremony last Tuesday, and was rather afraid I should get it mixed up with the Guide one. I am glad to say I did not, and it went off quite well. We are busy making plans for a patrol leaders party. I have promised to try to think out a good Mature game.

On Tuesday I had lunch with Mrs Miller, whose neice, somebody Edwards, used to live next to the school at Hemel Hempstead, and with whose Grandmother, Mrs Mitchell Innis, we had lunch one day. Mrs Miller was very interested to hear about St Monica’s.

I am able to write much faster on the typewriter now, but I find if I wrattle away too fast, I am apt to press the letters in the wrong order.

Will you adress your next letter to Rockville Hotel, Darjeeling and make a note in your diary, to adress the letter you write about the 11th or 12th of Oct: back to Calcutta again – at least if you write on a Sunday, that will be the 8th Oct:

Best love, my darling
From
Mum

From HPV to Annette

Calcutta
August 15th

My dear Annette

A good report on your term’s work: very pleasant to us to read. We were happy to see how well you had been doing. I wonder how you show ambition in swimming. Do you crawl yet? I don’t but wish that I did. And in tennis. Funny to see comments on tennis style in a school report.

Yesterday we went out in the afternoon to Mr Colson’s for tea. He is head of the Calcutta Police. He told us that since he took to sun baths each morning he has had no chills. He sits in the sun with nothing on while doing his work in the morning. Your mother was at once filled with a desire to have me imitate him: and as this morning is clear and sunny I am obliging her and sitting with my pyjama jacket off in the window.

It is not yet eight o’clock but already the sun is hot and I have just decided that it would be better to turn round and let the other side have a do. We have had very cloudy weather of late and I’m never out of doors except going in the car to office and back. So I am decidedly pale these days.

My daily programme is up at 7. Tea and the newspaper. Shave and dress and fiddle around generally, I fear; do a little work: breakfast at a quarter to nine: after breakfast to office. Back to the club for lunch at one or at two – work keeps me sometimes: down to the Council House at a quarter to three: and there till seven. In the evening nothing, because I am tired out. But I have not been so tired these last few days because I am throwing off the effects of the flu (it must have been flu) perhaps on the strength of a perfectly filthily tasting tonic which your mother bought for me: concentrated liver and iron: I dislike it. It makes my breakfast drum against my palate. But everyone says that it is good and I have started a second bottle.

No golf, no tennis. But a thing which grieves me a bit is no French: at any rate no gramophone: because the only time that there is for it is the evening and I am too tired then.

Mrs Walker has written from Darjeeling to ask if I shall act in a play: a part which she says would suit me excellently – that of a person who has been for fifteen years in a lunatic asylum. There’s a compliment for you! For me that is. – I shall be going to Ranchi, in Bihar, to visit a lunatic asylum before going up to Darjeeling. But even so I have no intention of taking the part. Even If I had the leisure I should not do it because it always ends in rows bitterness and the like.

Your mother is coming on in the diving line. I suggested that she’d find a running dive easier to start with – first three quiet steps and a crouching sort of head first dive into the water. There’s no sort of jump about it. But from that one goes on to the jump-off and the plain standing dive.

I’ve not got back any of my dives, I am sad to say. Still I lack the necessary kick and energy. However that’s a small matter.

Much love
Daddie

From LJT to Annette

The Saturday Club
Calcutta
Tel:- Park 510
Aug 16th 1933

My darling Annette

It was most thrilling to get an Air Mail letter from Auntie yesterday, telling that the operation on your eye had been successfully performed and that everything was going on well. How thrilling it will be when you are able to have the glass eye in. At the moment she wrote, she said that you did not seem to have a great deal of pain in the eye, only general discomfort from the anesethetic. I was also glad to hear that they thought you a bouncingly healthy young woman.

I am writing from the Saturday Club, because rain stopped our golf early and the friend with whom I was playing arranged to drop me here, where Dad is to come and bathe. I had to stick to the programme as he is in Council and I cant get at him – and I have half an hour or more to put in before he arrives I am awfully glad you enjoyed camp so much. Its odd how a grumbler can spoil things for other people. It always seems to me such a foolish sort of activitity – If something is wrong do your best to cure it – but if you cant, stick to the old adage “What cant be cured must be endured” – at least, that’s my feeling I am looking forward to hearing how you got on in London – Being who you are, I am sure you will write – I should say – have written and told me about it

It seems odd writing letters here. I am on that sort of big landing upstairs, between the two stair-cases. Do you remember it?

Best love, darling
from
Mum

From HPV to Annette (typewritten letter)

Calcutta
August 16th. 1933.

My dear Annette,

It was a great relief to us to get your aunt’s air-mail letter saying that the operation had been a success. I thought Sir John Parsons was a nice old man and I hope that he proved to be so to you. But by the time that you get this the whole thing will perhaps feel stale. It is curious how soon things lose their edge and cease to be vivid. One comes back from somewhere feeling that there is so much to tell and then all the people you meet are so keen to tell you their probably commonplace doings that you never really have a chance of saying your little piece . . . and then of a sudden it doesn’t seem worth the telling, till years later something brings it back to mind. But tell us.

The roof of this house leaks. We keep a bath-tub on the verandah and various jars and pots in different parts of different rooms, on top of the cupboard in my bedroom for instance. It just occurred to me how comic it must look, people take it as a matter of cours; almost all houses in Calcutta leak a good deal, because the expansion in the heat of the day and contraction at night cracks the concrete roofs. Also having steel beams helps that way. It has incidentally been an unusually wet year; or to less dim in my talk it has spouted rain. Day after day. I stopped . . . .It’s a strange thing that I can’t type even with my two-finger method and looking at the keys, without making gross errors. It was going to say that I stopped t. . . . . . by gum, there’s another. I was going to say that I stopped to consider what I could say on the subject that was not dim or stale and could find nothing.

Your mother is out to dinner tonight. Just as well for I am no company these days. Too tired every night to talk or to stop thinking about work. And too bad-tempered. It’s a miserable sort of life. Barring that I get good food and manage to have a bathe occasionally, I should be better off as a convict. There is no end to work; and the amazing thing is to see how fit I am in spite of it: but the temper is gradually fraying and I shall end by deeds of violence against the minister. Not much to tell about. I had a holiday on Saturday; to wit, I came away from office at 4.30. And then I felt so dead-beat that I did nothing, went to bed at 9 o’clock, and returned to my bed at eleven on Sunday till lunch and again after lunch till tea-time; only to go bed again early that night. On Monday I went to the swimming bath after Council broke up but the young men there were howling, howling and bawling in a most hideous manner, unbearable with a headache and I retired. Yesterday I didn’t get there till twenty to eight, which was too late for a bathe, but tonight I managed one. Did nothing in particular. There were a lot of people there but no obscene noise.

The dog has his leg out of splints; a dull little dog. I suppose you heard that he had broken it? chasing a cat and falling down the marble steps? A silly little dog.

A silly little letter too. The only fresh things in it are the mistakes. But I am drooping with fatigue and must away to bed. Much love, my dear.

Ever your’s
Daddie

From LJT to Annette

14/1 Rowland Road.
Calcutta
Aug: 24th 1933.

My darling Annette,

It was a very interesting mail last week, with yours and Rosemary’s reports. Your report for work was excellent, and I am awfully glad that you have got a place in school order. I hope you will do your best to deserve it, and to go higher. Looking back at my school life, though I am grateful for any small amount of learning I may have got, the thing I really back to with tremendous gratitude, is the character training. I believe I did have something the same difficulty that, judging from your report you evidently have, and that is being tolerent. Somehow Miss Heath-Jones managed to convey the idea or belief to me, that other people’s points of view are always worth considering, and that people who seem intellectually stupid, often have other qualities which more than make up for it. Youth is almost always intolerent, and it is the wise people who learn tolerence quickest. Its a helpful thing to try to put yourself into exactly the place of the person on whom you are passing judgement. I am always having to do that with my Anglo-Indian Guides, when I find myself expecting the same standard from them that I should have had at their age, or that I should expect from you or any child brought up with the advantages you have had. I have to remind myself of all the things they have to fight against. To begin with, climate. They have most of them never been to the Hills, but have spent their lives in some Calcutta slum, probably in an over-full house, with people who have no sort of intellectual or esthetic interests, and very little in the way of any moral code. One must put oneself in their place, before one can be in any way fair to them.

Well you must be getting tired of this prosing, but it is a subject on which I feel very strongly, for in the end intolerence means unhappiness not only for the people who are criticised, but also for the critic. The people who go on being loved when they are old are the people who have developed broad and sympathetic minds.

There are lots of interesting things in your letter. I always enjoy the first letters from Highways, because you come fresh back to all sorts of things, that Auntie seeing from day to day forgets to mention. All the things you say about the garden and the marrows and the lavender make me look forward to sharing them with you next year.

What an interesting trip your friend Peggy must have had. What does her family consist of?

Talking about swimming, (which you at the place I am at in your letter) A friend of mine told me the following story, which amused me very much. She was trying to teach herself to dive, with very little idea of how to set about it. In the Saturday Club bath. she flung herself time after time off the board, and landed anyhow in the water. There was just one woman sitting watching. My friend said to her, “Can you give me any hints about diving?” “Well,” came back the answer, in a strong American accent, “I believe you have to try to put your head in before your feet”.

News is mostly in the family letter. I am longing for this weeks mail with possibly more news of your operation. I hope it did not take you long to pick up after it

Best love, my darling
from
Mum

From HPV to Annette

Calcutta
August 24th

My dear Annette.

A pleasant letter from you on Sunday. I’m glad that you’re not pen-shy and unable to say two words on paper. We look forward to next week’s letter which should be that after your operation. For me, I don’t like operations – having had one only: for appendicitis.

Your reports came in last week: good enough – which is high praise, in the sense. Miss Capstick laments a tendency not to suffer fools gladly. My father always used to quote that at us – adding the rest of it “being yourselves wise” – which had a sting, for we know that we weren’t wise. It is easy for a wise man to suffer fools: and to enjoy it: he is removed from them. What is hard is for the clever man to suffer a fool: for there one sees no difference in kind, only a difference in degree. One does not envy the strength of a tiger as one might that of a man; or be annoyed at the weakness of a lapdog. An analogy which is not sound. I am not sure that the suffering of fools by the wise is not more galling to the fools than the inability of the clever to treat them so: there may be on the side of the fools more of the feeling “Oh, we’re fools and don’t count” about it: but not if the wise are really wise, I suppose. The great safeguard is that fools are fools only in patches, and in patches are amazingly shrewd. Also fools grow up into cleverness and into wisdom. Also it is only when one is nearly at fool-level that one realises the fools to be fools: at any rate the really great men of the earth, the geniuses, always annoy the clever by making friends with fools – vide the books: which means that in a different way the clever are fooled too and so, being nearer to genius (though not by so much) are in a position to annoy them. But why should I write an essay, - or toy with ideas, without thinking them out? – Conclusion, one should abstain from judgements and even more from irritability. Rule: never score off anyone who is not competent to score off you.

News. Work: sleep: and bathes. – Why talk about the? Yesterday was out 20th wedding day. Solemn thought.

Much love
Daddie

From LJT to Annette

14/1 Rowland Rd
Calcutta
Aug 30th 1933

My darling Annette

Thank you so much for the most cheerful letter you wrote from Uncle Roy’s, just after your operation. I expect Pip enjoyed having you there to make him trains and what-not. Everyone seems to have been very good to you when you were in the nursing home and it sounds as if you will be set up with scent for a long while to come.

Did you go along to the nursing home alone on the bus? I suppose at your comparatively mature age you would be quite capable of doing such things.

The information that you gave me sometime ago about taking “rubbings” of leaves, with oiled and blackened paper, has been of great use. I experimented myself and then gave a demonstration at the All-Calcutta patrol leaders rally on Monday. I also had an exhibition of different sorts of woods which are good in different degrees or different ways for fire-making. I got branches from the trees, and typed little tickets with the name of the tree in Hindi as well as its common English name (when such exists.) and its qualities on it. People seemed pleased with the section and our Division Commissioner range me up this morning to know whether I would do it again for a Guiders Rally in the autumn – so she evidently thought well of it

This paper is too thin tow rite on both sides, so I am going to jump onto another sheet.

I wish I did not get so sleepy after dinner – Its only 9.45. now and I am simply consumed with sleep, and yet if I went out anywhere I should stay awake quite happily till 1 or 2 o’clock and not feel sleepy at all. However, inspiration is not flowing to-night, so I think I shall give it up and go to bed and finish to letter in the morning

8.a.m. Next morning. That’s better! My brain does not feel like cotton wool now! Its such a lovely morning, with big white clouds, chasing over a blue sky and a strong south wind, which still has the feel of the sea in it, though it has travelled so far across rice fields. My mind has been very full of my Guides this morning, planning what to do next term and how best to get them on with their tests and at the same time not make Guiding too much a matter of tests. Also how to get my Patrol Leaders to do more “leading” – At present they do scarcely anything and are frightfully careless over Patrol possessions. Its a curious example of how little value most people attach to what they do not have to pay for. These girls are the poorest of the poor, most of them and subscribe nothing towards Guide funds. We get some money from Government for them and the Guiders mostly get what oddments are necessary – The result is that they lose books – ropes – bandages, note-books – flags etc. without a qualm, and with a serene faith that they will be replaced. It makes me very angry with them – I am sure it indicates a forcible argument against communism. The average man will not work or care for things which are not going to be his own property or yield him some direct result –

Do you find it very difficult to put in the necessary work as a Patrol Leader – I should be interested to hear how the job strikes you and how you tackle it. It seems to me that a P.L. must be two things – She must have a sense of responsibility and she must be willing to help other people in her patrol (or anyone for that matter.) however dull and stupid they may be –

I must get on to the family letter now.

Best love, my darling
From
Mum

From HPV to Annette

Calcutta
August 30th.

My dear Annette

“Every one remembers the remark of the old man at the point of death – that his life had been full of troubles most of which had never happened.” I don’t because I had never heard it. But how wise! how admirable! (I read this yesterday in Churchill’s book of essays). I believe indeed that the only troubles which worry me are those which don’t happen or any how haven’t happened: for when a thing has happened – there you are, no need to worry about it. But when in the middle of the night I suddenly think that something may have gone wrong – well, there you are – it may have gone wrong and it may still be possible to stop it. All this means that I have been fearfully busy and awesomely bad tempered.

No news? Charlotte’s – I was going to write criticism – it should be Charlotte’s christening. Quite a lot of people: no howling till just as the service was ending. A crowded tea at the house afterwards. Otherwise the routine of work – bathes most days – and tumbling into bed dog weary as soon as possible. Council draws near its end - and what I shall do then, heaven knows. Masses and masses of arrears.

Much love
Daddy