1933 October
From LJT to Annette
Rockville Hotel
Darjeeling
Oct 4th 1933
My darling Annette,
Many happy returns of your birthday! I rather think this will reach you one day after it. I hope you had or are having a nice time and a satisfactory birthday cake. We shall be thinking about you on the day.
I made an attempt to communicate with you last week, by writing post-cards to you from Jorpokri, and giving them to a man we met on the road the next morning, and asking him to post them at Sukis. I make the mistake of getting picture post-cards, and the man was so interested in them that I greatly fear the temptation to keep them for himself will have been too much for him. I shall be interested to hear if they ever did turn up
Your letters the last few weeks have been very interesting. I can scarcely find a word to express my interest in all the doings connected with your eye. “Passionate” is the only one that seems at all adequate, but that does not quite fit. I am just longing to hear how it looks when you get your proper eye in. Its very interesting to hear that the same family have been making glass eyes for several generations. My poor little Annette! It has been a hard time for you having to put up with that disfigured eye, but the doctors all said that it was so much better to wait till you were fairly big to have it done.
I must scurry on over this, as it is getting late, and I have spent so much time over the account of the trip, and the family letter. Will you let Rosemary have the account of the trip to read, or read it to her before sending it on to Auntie Doris? She might like to see the family letter too. I don’t know whether you generally show it to her.
I hope you wont mind if I end this now or else I shant have time to write to Auntie. Best love and may you have a very happy “15th” year
Lots of hugs and kisses from Mum
From HPV to Annette
Darjeeling
Oct 4th. 1933
My dear Annette.
Just back from the trip in the mountains. Most enjoyable. Weather very favourable seeing what time of year it was: masses of flowers on the higher hills: and superb views. Not so much of the snows – though there was one morning when from Kinchenjunga westwards all the snows stood out clear and magnificent. But the hills in the foreground were very beautiful. The birds also were worth seeing. Vaguely I wished that I knew something about them but I did not, and do not, wish it strongly enough to set to work and learn about them. The marches each day told on my feet a good deal: and I was tired each evening: but why not? after sitting in office all day for months it was not surprising. Laziness and reluctance to start work again is the result – I ought to be in office now: though it is a holiday. When one gets on one takes no count of holidays. But the feeling that other people are gadding about and enjoying themselves is there at the back of one’s mind.
It is strange how little one brings away from a trip. A few mental pictures. I had done half of this trip before: 16 or 17 years ago: and I count myself to have a good memory for places: but I remembered very little of it. Merely a few corners: and the bungalows.
Interesting letters lately from you all. It is no easy matter to comment on them and express the interest which they have aroused. But continue the good work.
Much love
Daddie.
From LJT to Annette
Rockville Hotel
Darjeeling
Oct 11th 1933
My darling Annette,
What splendid news it is about your eye. I hope it is quite comfortable by now. Your account of the man making it was most interesting. Lovey was here to lunch yesterday, and was most tremendously interested to hear about it all. She is leaving the Homfrays and going to the Pinnells, who have two little boys, next month. She is looking most awfully well and seems cheerful.
I am wondering how you are getting on with the beginings of German. There is a fearful lot of grammer to learn, is’nt there? Apart from that I think it is easier than French. I had a long letter from Madame Muret a few days ago, which took me some time to read, not because I did not know most of the words, but because the French style of writing is difficult to decipher, I find. Its funny that I should be talking about French, because Dad has just rung me up on the phone to ask me to look up a word in the French dictionary. He has a certain number of official letters from the French colony of Chandernagore, and they always write in French. The word in question is “fériés” which means “holiday”. Do you know it? I did not.
I am sorry to write rather short letters this week, but I have spent some time on the account of the trip, and also the weather is so lovely that I have been tempted to stay out of doors a lot.
Will you let Rosemary see the last part of the account of the trip before passing it on to Auntie Doris? If you think Rosemary is interested in the family letters too will you let her them each week?
I hope the term is going well, and that you are making an effort to “suffer fools gladly” and so begin to earn the praise “being thyself wise”
Best love, darling.
from
Mum
Photo of Dad à la Tom Mix enclosed.
From HPV to Annette
Darjeeling.
Oct 11th
My dear Annette.
As it will be only eleven days to your birthday, I perceive that this letter will not be in time to convey my good wishes for it. It makes me to think when I calculate to what an age you are growing. The best of luck, my child!
I’m glad that you have this business of your eye safely over and I hope that you’ll find the glass eye a success. Extraordinary that they should make each one specially. You see to have been busy. Tell me, à propos of your remark about borrowing books, have you read all of the French books that I left at home? as books, it is to be feared, they are not in the highest class: but as quarries from which to extract words and phrases they have merits. This morning in bed I went back to the gramophone book (I have neglected French of late) and realised with a shock how few of the phrases, even of the records which I had learnt by heart (and mostly forgotten since) I was able to use. However if I had started younger!
“Noos!” as Uncle Harry says. My liver has reverted to a normal state and I now view the world without savagery. Work is as ever – a cascade of it. A curious phrase occurred in a letter from Madame Muret to your mother which arrived two days ago. Her villa had “une vue impregnable “ “impregnable”! I suppose a vew that always satisfied: one of which you never could have enough. Any how I suspect that the epithet would apply to my work. I never seem “to get round to it” – that is, I never manage to tackle the arrears woing to the urgency of the new stuff. Heigho! – is it any wonder that my liver turns against it?
A glorious day today. As I write I look out on the Bhutan snows with clouds half hiding them. The mountains dim in the distance are many shades of blue. The sky is clear.
A pity that we did not have it so for our trip.
Much love, my dear, and I hope your birthday is auspicious and happy
Your
Daddie
From HPV to Annette
Darjeeling.
Oct 15th 1933
My dear Annette.
I danced for the second time this year on Monday: quite enjoyed it too. It’s a big occasion each year: the unattached men give a big show and the whole club is decorated pleasantly. Each of the hosts has a banner worked in silk with his coat of arms or crest on it and these are hung out from the walls on either side: very effective. On the day before the dance we all went along and helped decorate. This was somewhat tiring: I was bending over a balcony most the time, tying things. My dancing is not good. Strange that though only twenty years ago I learnt to waltz, I cannot in the least remember how to do it:- having learnt in fact I never did it. We stayed till the end: 3.30 or so, I suppose. And though I had the energy to rise early yesterday I was dead beat by night. To bed at 9.30. – For me an adventure and an experience this dance business. I think it would be better if there were no sitting out: but perhaps one would collapse without the rests. – It occurs to me that you’ll think that word is vests but it is rests.
Much love
Daddie
From LJT to Annette
Rockville Hotel
Darjeeling
Oct 17th 1933.
My darling Annette,
Your first letter from school was very interesting. What a big place St Monica’s is growing. It was cute of you to draw a plan to show us where the additions are. I hope you have got a nice bedroom to manage. Its trying if you get someone who is “Bolshi”, and has no respect for rules, but remember that the last thing you must do if you want to have authority, is to allow yourself to show irritation. If a person is inclined to be insubordinate, the fact of your getting irritated pleases, and gives them a sense of power. Directly they find that they cannot irritate you, but that you are quietly detirmined to keep order, you will gain respect.
Dad and I are both so pleased that you are doing special French with the half French girl. It should be most awfully good for you, for you will be hearing a pure French accent only, and will get accustomed to working and thinking in French. I am thinking seriously about taking you all to France for part of the holidays next year, I think about three weeks on the coast of Brittany would be nice, don’t you?
It seems to me that you will be having rather a full time-table putting German in as well. I wonder what you will give up. I should almost think that Drawing would be the best thing, for unless you are specially good at it, it is not of much use afterwards. However you and Miss Capstick will no doubt have settled the matter satisfactorily. (Forgive these mistakes! I am trying to look at the keys as little as possible, and keep on hitting the wrong notes!)
Mrs Gurner and I have been out for a riding picnic to-day with a few others, and getting back about 4 o’clock, she cam and had tea with me in my little sitting room, by the fire, and we had a long gossip about our children and about St Monica’s. Poor Mrs Gurner! It was a frightful wrench, leaving Auriol when she was so tiny. She loves to hear the tiny scraps of news of her that Rosemary sometimes gives in her letters.
We had a hearty laugh at your idea of the expression on the face of a hyperthetical thief who, having stolen the case with your spare eye in it, opened on his arrival home! There was a mention of a man, in a book of travels I read the other day, who, when he was out in the wilds, used to take out his glass eye and leave it to guard his possessions, which were always perfectly safe.
It was nice to hear that Auntie was having a rest and holiday in the Isle of Wight. If any one in the world deserves a holiday, it is she! She not only works hard, but she gives up her mind and energy so tremendously to other people. I sometimes wonder how often in a week she thinks of her own comfort or convenience before she thinks of other people’s. I believe it is practically never.
For a wonder I have just been reading a novel, which I don’t often seem to do now. It is called “Pekin Picnic”, and I enjoyed it very much. It left me with much more of an idea of Pekin and the country round it, than I had before, and it is full of human and charming ideas. I learnt a delightful fact about the Chinese goddess of Mercy, Kwan Yin. The story goes that she was just about to enter the gates of Paradise, When she heard the cry of a child in trouble. Inspite of being told that if she turned back, should would lose her chance of Paradise, she insisted upon doing so, and helping the child, so she was taken as the emblem of Mercy. I have known her all my life, for we had a very nice porcelin image of her in my old home, which I think Uncle Bous now has.
I hope the term is going well. I always think that the Autumn term is the easiest one in which to work hard, because there are fewer distractions, and the weather is not as a rule very tempting out of doors.
Its not worth starting a new page so I will just say goodbye on this. I hope you will like the photos I am enclosing.
Best love, my darling
Mum
From HPV to Annette
Darjeeling
Oct 18th 1933
My dear Annette.
Never shall I understand all the arrangements and the technicalities of your school: but no harm. Your falling down the cement slope at the beginning of term is symbolic of a desire to return from the heights of “A” to the more congenial if lower atmosphere of the gym: a proof of innate modesty or maybe of original sin. The arrangement by which you work with the French-mothered girl sounds a good one – if she is at all a pleasant girl. Today looking at the linguaphone book and glancing at some Put into French sentences at the end, I realised how little French I knew. I have forgotten the gramophone records that I knew almost by heart: but I realise that I never really knew them – i.e. the words out of that particular context would never occur to me. Perhaps when the new gramophone arrives I shall resume familiarity with them.
More energy than usual this week. A brisk ride on Saturday afternoon: and another on Sunday – a picnic. A pony full of vigour and surprises. One of the type that gallops all the harder when you pull the reins: so the problem of stopping him when he starts bolting is not an easy one.
Work as ever, heavy. I neglect it badly – i.e. instead of pushing it through I spend far too long a time over particular files. Problem if one can’t bear to let sloppy stuff pass and if there’s too much work to make it possible to put it all through on the same standard – how get it done at all?
The glorious weather has left us for the moment. Mists and clouds have come back. However the air is drier and more invigorating.
Much love, my child
Yours
Daddy.
Family letter
Rockville Hotel
Darjeeling
Oct: 25th 1933
My dears
This has been rather a busy week in the social line. The Grass-widowers and bachelors of Darjeeling, gave their annual ball on Monday, which is a big affair. They call themselves “The Knights Errent”, and base most of the decorations of the Gymkhana Club, which they take in its entirety, on the idea of a feudal castle. The decorating on such a scale is always a big job, so the dance is always on a Monday in order that we can have the Sunday which is a holiday for the men and a day on which the club is little used, to do the work. I have helped for a good many years now, and was there all Sunday and part of Monday as well. The dance was a great success, as it always is. It is one of the few nights of the year when Herbert stays up late. He danced every dance, I believe, and we finally struggled into bed about 3.45 A.M. I got up again a 7.30, and went out for a ride on a proper big horse, feeling much refreshed thereby. As soon as I had had my breakfast and a bath, I had to buckle down to a lot of jobs. A party of seven of us are going down to-day to stay at a rest-house, a couple of miles above the Teesta bridge, or order to be able to attend the opening of the splendid new concrete bridge, to-morrow. As usual I am doing supply and transport, and I had to see to the packing of our food, bedding and clothes, as the coolies had to go off at 7 o’clock this morning, in order to be at the bungalow by tea-time. We are leaving directly after lunch, and motoring the first 12 miles, which is as far as a big car can go, and from there we walk 7 miles down to the Pashoke bungalow. As soon as I had delt with my own affairs, I had to go down to one of the local cinemas, where our senior Mohammaden Member of Council was giving a tea party and a cinema show to about 150 guests yesterday afternoon. He asked me to help him with all the arrangements, and I was helping him with his plans last week, and spent 2 hours with him on Monday morning, seeing to the “lay-out” of the big Marquees which were pitched alongside the hall for the tea. The reason for this party is popularly supposed to be to try to outdo the other Mohannaden minister. Faroqui, (incidentally his son-in-law) whom he thinks is outdoing him in keeping in the public eye. Faroqui is giving a big lunch down at the Teesta Bridge to-morrow, so Ghuznavi gave his party yesterday, showing a film of the opening of a canal, which took place in August, which was under his department, and where he gave a big show. just to remind us all of his doings. The film was really very good and interesting, and was followed by Ralph Lynn in “Mischief” which most of us had seen before, but which is amusing.
There were heaps of planters up for the dance on Monday, and it was fun seeing so many old friends. I had a tea-party for several of them on Monday afternoon at the club, and I had a very big party for the Saturday afternoon thé dansant at the club on Saturday. I have been lazy about entertaining since I came up this time, and owed hospitality to lots of people. I have done a lot of dancing the last few days, for I dined out and went to the club dance on Saturday night.
A very old friend of ours turned up here a few days ago, a certain Mr Wells, whom we used to know very well in Barisal, and whom I had not seen for 10 years. I have so enjoyed seeing him again.
We had tremendous rain on Friday and Saturday of last week, about 4 inches in the 2 days. It was a blessing to me in a way, for I shut myself all day, and rewrote the section of the “Tours in Sikkim” about the trip we have just done. The weather is lovely again now. and I am looking forward to the next three days, when we shall be out, amongst the hills most of the time.
I shall have to start thinking about packing directly we get back from our Pashoke trip, as we go down on Monday, and I have an awful lot of stuff up here.
Harry and Winsome and family are down at Puri, enjoying the sea breezes, and I hear that Charlotte is flourishing.
Every one is remarking how well Herbert looks. He seems to show it more now than he did the first day or two after we got back from the trip, when I think he had a slight chill.
I don’t think there is anything more of much interest to tell you.
Best love to you all
From
LJT
From LJT to Annette
Rockville Hotel
Darjeeling
Oct 25th 1933.
My darling Annette,
Thank you for your letter. So you have had to give up drawing! I am a little sorry that you have had to stop geography, but it is a thing about which you can pick up quite a lot in general reading, especially if you get the habit of being inquisitive about places you hear of, and of looking them up on the map.
How is the French with the half-French girl going? I wonder whether you will find it difficult to keep up at first.
“Brother Saul” is a very interesting book, don’t you think? Your taste in books has tallied with my own lately. I liked Judith Paris, and I liked the first one of that series still better - - - “Rogue Harries”. I suppose you will read “The Fortress” now and then you will be ready to read “Vanessa” which I believe is to be published this Autumn. I have just embarked on a most interesting history of American, but I am afraid I shant have time to finish it before I go down. I had no idea that over a long period of time, party after party of colonists tried to settle on the coast of America, and were wiped out by fights with the Indians, by the appaling hardships, and by disease, Even the Pilgrim Fathers and a few other parties, who went about the same time, lost about half their numbers in the first year Or two, till they got really established, and began to “increase and multiply, and replenish the land”.
In a new “Book of Ideas” which I purchased a little while ago, I found a thing which I have been wanting to know for years, and that is how to tell the difference between a fir and a pine. The top of a fir tree is cone-shaped, the needles grow singly on shoots, the cones are rather papery in substance. The top of a pine tree is flat, the needles grow in bunches and the cones are woody. I have got Mr Homfray the tree expert or “silverculturist” to the forest department to verify this.
I did some rather jolly stalking with my guides on Thursday. We went down into the woods below the school, and I was surprised to find how near they could creep up to me without being seen or heard.
How is June this term? I have not heard from Auntie Doris for a long time, so have no news of either of them.
Best love, my darling
From
Mum
P.S. I thought of your birthday when I was at a dance on Saturday night and Dad and I drank your health in our early morning tea on Sunday 22nd.