1934 April
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Rd
Calcutta
Aril 5th 1934.
My darling Annette
It was an interesting letter from you this week, but I don’t know that there is very much to comment on in it, except to say that I hope your new eye is a success. I cant think how the man who makes them, every gets them the right size. It seems marvellous.
I have been trying to remember exactly what “Fortitude” is about – but though I enjoyed it most awfully – the story has quite faded from my mind. I have tried to read two novels lately, but have found them both too futile to finish. I have now just started a book about the Assam-Tibet Frontier, and those curious wild tribes, the Mishmis and the Abors, who are still so very primitive and would probably still rejoice in carrying home their neighbours heads as trophies after any inter-village quarrel, if the strong hand of British rule on the outskirts of their country were relaxed. it is the country than Ron and Capt Kingdon Ward passed through on their way up to Tibet which gives it a special interest for me. It funny what a liking I have taken for books of travel of late years.
I have just bought some rather pretty flowered sort of hair-cord voile to make an evening dress. Its in two or three shades of fresh apple green – yellow, orange, black and white – but the whole effect is rather pretty and I think it will make a cool and useful frock for the hot weather. The dhirzie has interrupted my letter- writing to try it on – which is always such a hot and tiresome business in the hot weather.
I suppose school is in a great state of fluster now, with all of you going home for the holidays to-morrow.
Mrs. King is coming to lunch with me to-day I have not seen her for a long while. She is always a little difficult to fit in to the ordinary party in Calcutta, partly oweing to her own diffidence –
Best love, my darling
Mum
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Rd
Calcutta
April 11th 1934
My darling Annette
The awkward thing is I have not got your last letter here to answer – Auntie Winsome carried it off by mistake and lost it – and I don’t remember exactly what was in it – and in my mind your last three letters have sort of telescoped up so that I cant sort them out. (Dad keeps reading things out which distracts me!!)
Dad is much more cheerful than he was – now that he is settled in his new office and that Council is over – It makes such a difference to him when he is not overtired I have great hopes of getting him to start golf again, now that he is not working quite so hard and that we have fairly long evenings.
I have been trying hard to imagine how tall you will be and what you will look like when I see you again, but I can only see you as you were when I last saw you in spite of photos, which tell me to the contrary. I don’t suppose it will take me long to get used to you when I do get home!
I am not sure whether I ought to send this letter home or to school – but I think you will probably be back at school – It will be going on the same boat with Uncle Harry and Auntie Winsome –
Best love, my darling
from
Mum
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
April 12th
My dear Annette
Writing letters as periodical tokens of affection has the disadvantage that often there is nothing of interest to put in them. So it is now. I returned from Delhi on Sunday afternoon after twenty four hours’ heat and dust in the train. It was 105 in Delhi the day I left, which was Saturday, and it was a lot hotter in the train. But when one expects it and does not resist it as a personal insult, heat does not matter much. I broke a bit off a tooth on a piece of chicken in the dining car. My suspicion is that any food left over is cooked and served again the next and the next and the next till it disappears, in the said cars. A small matter however. The dentist put it right yesterday.
It was coolish when I arrived in Calcutta and has not been really hot since. There has been a strong wind: too strong perhaps for it blew my papers about on my office table in a manner most annoying. I have bathed at the Saturday club these last four evenings. Using the low board only. It is so long since I went off the high board that I should like to practise when the bath was not crowded. Keeping the head right back is quite clearly one of the most important things in diving: till one ducks it between the arms for the entry into the water.
We must go round now to say goodbye to Uncle Harry and family.
Farewell. Much love
Daddie.
From LJT to Annette
14.1 Rowland Rd
Calcutta
April 18th 1934
My darling Annette
So glad the new eye is satisfactory – I suppose as they are hand done things, each one is just a little different – I’ve never done more than glance at just a few of the illustrated manuscripts at the British Museum – but even that little occasional glance has given me an impression of wonderful work.
I was rather disappointed to get no answer from you this week about holidays at the sea or in the mountains – Richard was indeterminate and Rosemary plumped firmly for the sea, so I am very interested to hear what your choice will be.
The question of the Old Man of the Assassins I leave to Dad – knowing little or nothing about it myself.
Guide work and Himalayan Club work have filled my mind almost to the exclusion of everything else this week. There seems to have been a lot of stuff to do with Guides and a great deal to do with the Club – most of which will go into the “family letter” as news. I certainly don’t have time these days to brood over the hot weather! There is far too much to be got through in the day –
I have been hearing quite a lot of German talked the last few days and bitterly regret that I made no attempt to keep up my German after I left school.
Its getting late and I think I shall go off to bed, as I had a very short night last night. I was not in bed till past 1 o’clock and got up at 6 o’clock to go out riding.
Best love, my darling
from
Mum
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
April 18th
My dear Annette
This I admit: I have just undone the top two buttons of my trousers for greater ease in letter-writing. It is all due to laziness: for I am writing at a low table of the wrong height for the sofa where I am sitting and the table is several inches too far from me. It would be too much labour to move, or to move the table: but it is hard on the stomach which is a vulgarism intended to avoid the use of the hearty word belly – spurious refinement says Dr Fowler. All due to laziness unless it is due to putting on fat. For I have put on fat: rolls of it round my ribs: I can pinch it if I bend slightly.
I have been meaning to ask you and the family in general whether you still adhere at all, or conscientiously, to exercise 1100. If you did not know it already (but one who has forgotten her Marco Polo is capable of anything) I should enthuse as to the good to be attained by adherence to the cult of neck stretching: but no harm in saying that of all simple aids to beauty there is none to rival it. Aids to beauty: I do not seek to mislead you into a belief that I am in any way attaining to it. But I noticed various youths and maidens in the swimming bath who reminded me of the uglinesses which follow upon the neglect of straightness. We have attended the bath regularly. No, I am not diving well: but a stranger came up and asked how I managed to keep so straight. What with much diving and with Muller in the mornings I have made myself quite definitely stiff.
The gramophone and the French I have not touched since I started for Delhi. It is the fault of the bathes: after them I lack all strength.
Farewell. Bless you. And Much Love
Your’s
Daddie
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
Avr. 25ième 1934
Ma chère Annette
J’ai reçu votre lettre si charmante et si inattendue: et je le regrette beaucoup. Madame votre mére m’a dit qu’il faut répondre en Français. Mai c’est matèriellment impossible. Si autre fois je connaissais un petit peu de Français (et vraiment je n’eu ai jamais connu les elements meme) je ne m’en souviens plus. Cependant je suppose qu’il est inutile de me lamenter et qu’il faut écrire.
Monsieur Gurner aussi a reçu de sa petite fille, Francesca, une lettre écrite en Français: elle se termine avec ces mots, “je suis dans mon lee et j’ai une place gorge.” Ces mots je trouve bien touchant et ils seront pour moi une exemplaire. L’audace ne manqué pas à Francesca. Mais, moi, j’ai honte des fautes que je suis en train de connaitre et je sais bien que je ne suis tellement vaute de m’exercer de mes disques gramophoniques que maintenant vous avez le droit de mépriser ces efforts.
Vous pouvez déviner mes nouvelles. Cette semaine j’ai fait tout ce que j’avais fait la semaine dernière. Tous les jours je me rends dans mon bureau pour faire la besogne. Je fais beaucoup de calculs: et malheureusement ce n’est pas mon fort que de maucer les chiffres. Il me faut calculer combien des gens de la classe paysanne pourrant payer leurs dettes si par moyen d’un loi expres nous rédusions l’intérêt des dettes et donnons de temps pour le payer aux créanciers. Je trouve le problème tout a fait difficile. Nous n’avons pas absolument des fondements pour établier nos calculs. D’ailleur, je sais bien que nulle part les telles lois pour régler les dettes et sauver le peuple pressuré ont ils réussi. Ce sont des palliatives: mais des quantités de raison de la politique nous forcent d’essayer quelque chose de ce genre. A mon avis, nous échouesons pitoyablement: mais j’éspère que mes dessins au sujet de l’irrigation des terres, que depuis des annêes sont devenus presque incultes, dêtourneront l’attention de la foule. Pourvu que le government de Bengale les approuvé. Mais il a pris congé et je ne sais pas si son remplaçant aura le cran d’aider me projets. Nous verrons.
Le soir nous allons au piscine pour la natation: et nous sommes amateurs de plonger et de nous britter contre le cheval de caoutchouc – s’il n’est pas plutôt un chameau. Une bête très rétire et très difficile.
Much love
Daddy