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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

1934 February

From LJT to Annette

14/1 Rowland Rd
Calcutta
Feb 1sr 1934

My darling Annette

After all my efforts in getting my Health Week Exhibit and all the arrangements for the Himalayan Club dinner finished yesterday, so that I could devote the morning to writing mail, I had a long visit from my friend, Margaret Ogle, who is leaving for England to-morrow and who had heaps of things to tell me and advice to ask and one thing and another, so that I got all behind with my letters – Capt. Kingdon-Ward was in for lunch and wanted to find out about boats to Khulua, on the way to Barisal – so I have been doing a lot of telephoning for him. Do you remember anything of our trip by boat from Barisal to Calcutta via Khulua? You were only 3 years old then, so its extremely unlikely that you do.

Well! The photos have come – but I don’t really like them, though its interesting to see how much you have all grown up. I don’t like the lighting of them – Its so very hard – don’t you think? Dont tell Auntie this – for I would not for the world disappoint her, when she has taken so much trouble for me.

The letters from you all this week, seemed to tell of an orgy of parties and treats – Have you ever had such gay Christmas holidays before?

Thank you so much for your little gifts. I have put the lavender amongst my hankies and Dad is very pleased with his hanky.

I have done an extra copy of the family letter for Rosemary this week – and shall always do so in future – Its scarcely any more trouble – and will save you the both of taking yours over to her.

My dear – I’m so sleepy – I was not in bed till 1.30 last night. (a very long cinema with drinks afterwards) – 12 o’clock the previous night after a dinner party and 12.30 the night before after a dinner-party here – and to-night is the Himalayan Club dinner – I’ve had such busy days too, that I have had no time for rest – so I’m just jolly well going off to have a short rest now

Best love, my darling
from
Mum

From HPV to Annette

Calcutta
Feb 1st 1934

My dear Annette.

Of the three photos, which arrived on Sunday, your’s in my opinion is the only one at all good: unless indeed there have been great changes in Richard and Rosemary. This one of Rosemary is the first which I have seen to show clearly the change in her method of hair dressing. I prefer the old: but she is right in changing now.

Not much to tell of. Yesterday I sold the Hugophone French records: those were the 12 inch records and I had nowhere to keep them. It seemed extravagant to buy a special box or case for three records and I don’t want to buy more records of any kind. I had used only one of the Hugophone records and sold them for practically what I paid. The purchased saved customs duty of 25% and carriage: so it paid him too. A lot of people seem to have bought French or German records lately. But it is not easy to use them in these open Indian houses. The week has not been a good one for me. Out of sorts with acute stomach ache. I could not lie up for the first few days as Council was on: but on Friday I was hounded out to see the doctor and spent the evening and Saturday in bed. The worst of these things, or of going to bed, is that afterwards one feels a wreck.

Council is on again: but I have no subjects for discussion – no laws to pass: and so it has not been such a burden to me.

The weather is very changeable. Yesterday was muggy: I have put on today a light suit: and now I must get out a thick one before I go to office.

Much love
Daddie.

From LJT to Annette

14/1 Rowland Rd
Calcutta
Feb 8th 1934

My darling Annette

It feels, for me, almost like the end of term when exams are over and the holidays ahead – The Health Week has been hanging over me for so long and is such concentrated work while it is on – and this year, combined, as it has been with so much Himalayan Club work and with having Capt Kingdon Ward staying in the house it really has been a bit heavy – I have made up my mind that i Wont do it next year – This will only be a small line of thanks for your letter – as I have so little time – The holiday letters have been great fun and we are grateful to you all for writing to us at such length. It makes such a difference to us to hear in some detail what you are all doing and thinking.

Its no good my trying to write you a proper sort of “talky” letter this morning, as I have not time – You have all been rather scamped of personal letters lately, because I have been so busy – but I hope the rush is over now, with the Cold Weather Season drawing to its end – and I hope to have much more time for quiet things. School goes well, I hope – The trees will be thinking of budding and I should think the crocuses will be in bloom by the time you get this. How lovely England is in the spring!

Best love, my darling
Mum

From HPV to Annette

Calcutta
Feb 8th. 1934

My dear Annette

Another week of no happenings. Except that I played tennis on Sunday. We had people in to play: two out of the six fell through and I had to make up the number. They were good players and I felt much out of it. Being continually snowed under by files and reading against time all day does not make for excellence in games. But anyhow my eyesight has gone off a lot since I came out from home this last time. To recount blessings: the liver mucks has again worked marvels, in conjunction with the iron tonic: it has removed me from a state of wormishness with great speed.

More news – there was a garden party at the Governor’s on Friday. It started rather late and the day was a cold one: so the proceedings did not go with any noteworthy snap. The miserable girls in the thinnest of garden party frocks shivered: or rather the breeze made the clothes flap coldly and it looked like shivering.

Much love
Daddie.

Family letter from LJT

14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
Feb 14th 1934

My dears

With what surprising swiftness things happen sometimes. I am now the owner of a horse, and the idea was not even on the horizon last week. A man in the I.C.S. has gone sick, and is going on leave at short notice. He rang me up on Monday afternoon to say that he wanted to find a home for his old horse, which is now very venerable, but has been a beautiful animal in his day, a race horse brought out from England, but now not able to gallop any distance on account of being “gone in the wind”. He will give ma lot of pleasure as a hack. I had been thinking how much I should like to have a horse to rise if, as is most probable, we are going to be down here through the hot weather. At the same time that I got this offer, a friend was with me, who will take on the horse when I go home for the summer holidays, so everything has fitted in beautifully. I went for my first ride this morning, and Gilroy, as the horse is called, was absolutely full of himself, as he had not been ridden for some days, and it was hard work preventing him from going off at a gallop. I am going to be very stiff to-morrow I fancy. He is a big animal, with big paces. I have been feeling as excited as a child over this the last two days, and have found it quite difficult to settle down to work or write, I have not owned a horse since before Richard was born, though I have once or twice kept other people’s for them.

Having told you that, to me, exciting piece of news, I must cast my mind back, and see what I have been doing during the week. There has been a pleasant feeling that the great rush of the cold weather finished with the Health Week, and though I still had a busy day on Thursday, I have since been able to settle down and clear off a lot of things that had had to be put aside, till I had leisure for them. Capt Kingdon Ward left on Thursday, and I quite missed him after having him in the house for a whole fortnight. I enjoyed his visit very much and only wish I had not been quite so busy during that time. I had one or two people to a last lunch party for him, and he went off about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, immediately after which an old friend Miss Cooper, who was art mistress in one of the schools in Darjeeling years ago, came to tea, before giving a lecture at our Guide officers Club on Birds, at which I showed illustrations from books thrown on to a screen, like lantern slides, by means of our Club Epidiascope.

Herbert went off to Ranchi on that same evening, his last piece of work in his old job, for he made over to his successor on Tuesday. Friday was a day blissfully empty of social engagements till the evening and I was able to get down to a lot of Himalayan Club work, and really was busy with that, most of the day and with arranging and sending out invitations to a lunch party and a couple of cocktail parties, which I see with joy, polish off my “visiting list”. In the evening an elderly solicitor who is quite one of the “City Fathers” of Calcutta, and who incidentally is very much “of the Country”, but a nice old chap, called for me and took me to dine in China-Town, a thing I have never done before in all the years I have known Calcutta. I had only once been in China Town before, and that was in the morning. It is far more effective at night. Driving along the tiny narrow streets, where there is often not room for two cars to pass, its odd to find oneself suddenly looking into Chinese interiors instead of Indian ones. The Nanking Restaurant where we went, is a spacious and spotlessly clean two-storied building the tope floor of which is a big room, with a row of little cubicle like rooms, each holding a table and chairs for four, all round, and each with a little green curtain to draw across the entrance to screen one from the public gaze. We preferred ours open so that we could see what was going on. Two young-looking and extremely polite Chinamen were in charge but I was a little disappointed to be waited on by Indian khitmatgars. An enormous Menu of both European and Chinese dishes was put before us. We wanted Chinese food of course, and chose crab and asparagus soup, fried crab, followed by a mysterious dish called “chop suey”, which was a delicious concoction of all sorts of things, including finely shredded and fried potatoes, and shredded omelette, and heaps of other things I could not recognise. We finished up with preserved lichis and cream. There was birds nest soup and all the curious dishes one has heard of, as well as heaps of which one has not heard. I thought I would not be too brave to begin with and certainly the food we had was most delicious. I looked afterwards at the stuff from which they make the birds next soup, and its appearance is most innocuous. It looks rather like fine tapioca.

After dinner we wandered round two or three of the shops, which are generally tiny little places downstairs, and invariably have several big rooms upstairs full of China, carpets, jade, crystal, and oddly enough now, cups and mugs of Bakerlite or one of its equivalents, which looked thoroughly out of place.

I spent a long time on Saturday afternoon at the Flower-Show at the Agri-Horticultural gardens, and made quantities of notes, as well as meeting several of my rather odd friends, such as the Government house gardener, and several Indians who in different billets in the Botanical Gardens and such places. That evening the French Consul General was giving an “At Home” and dance at :Peliti’s for the officers of the French ship which was visiting Calcutta. G.B.Gourlay and Dr Richter dined here and escorted me and we spent an extremely pleasant evening, though we did not meet any of the French officers barring having a few polite words with the “Commander”. The French Consul General here is a bourgeoise old fellow, and does not move in the sort of social circles we do to any large extent. In fact the only place I ever meet him is at Government House. Its odd that most of the other Consuls General are of such a different class. The Germans, the Italians, the Dutch, the Swedes and the Americans one meets everywhere, and they are all charming and very cosmopolitan people. The French officers were quite a nice looking lot, but not up to the Germans in phisique.

Herbert arrived back on Sunday morning, rather tired after a disturbed but frightfully funny night in the train. I cant really describe it for it would take too long to give you character sketches of the huge fat Mohammadan, the thin Jew, and the quaint little Anglo-Indian house-agent, with whom he had to share the first-class carriage for the home journey. They are all quite eminent men in their way, and all Members of Council, and on this occasion all engaged on the same job of visiting the Lunatic asylum at Ranchi of which they are Governors or something of the sort. Herbert’s account of the talk and the doings on that journey make it sound a worthy rival to that famous journey in Alice in Wonderland (or was it Through the Looking-Glass?)

Herbert and I went walking out at Tolly on Sunday afternoon, and finished up as “G.B.’s” Chummery for tea, and I finished the day by dining out with Dr Richter and going to the Symphony Concert, where a choir was added to the orchestra and gave us a very creditable performance of Mendelssohn’s “Hymn of Praise”.

Monday was really a holiday, but Herbert as usual worked in office all day, only consenting to come out at 5 o’clock, to go to a Thé Dansant party on the French ship. It was rather fun, but nothing like as well run as the similar sort of party given by the Germans. I was glad to find that I had not forgotten how to speak French. I suppose the last time I was on a French War Ship was when the French fleet came into Portsmouth in 1905 or thereabouts.

Under a sudden inspiration, we took our Guides to the Zoo on Tuesday. Its an easy thing for us as a side gate to the zoo is next to the side gate of the school. The kids enjoyed it and so did we.

I spent a long time in the Survey office one morning with the man who is drawing our map for “Tours in Sikkim”. I have been doing a fair amount for the book this week, and am going up to the Printing place this afternoon to slip in some late corrections which have just reached me.

This letter has stretched itself out. Sorry it is so long. When one is giving a sort of diary letter it is apt to become a bit verbose.

Our best love to you all
LJT


From LJT to Annette

14/1 Rowland Rd
Calcutta
Feb 14th 1934.

My darling Annette

How quickly the holidays seem to have flashed by in spite of the number of things you packed into them. You seem to have competed for gaiety with the Calcutta cold weather – Your first letters from school just came at the moment when I felt that the rush of the Cold Weather was over and that I can now settle down peaceably to do various quiet jobs of writing – and sorting out the Himalayan Club files, which I do not consider are well arranged. There are several things that Mr Percy Brown and I have promised one another to do together – such as going to visit Kali’s Temple and spending an afternoon at the picture gallery in the Museum and things like that which one never seems to have time for when the cold weather season is on.

I wonder how nearly your St. Monica’s is like my St. Monica’s – Reading Vera Brittain’s book has made me wonder that. When she went back to take some classes at St. Monica’s after the War she thought the standard of work higher than when she and I were at school.

By the way – I had to talk some French on the French sloop – Bourgainville – on Monday and was glad to find myself not too rusty – I am going to tea with a little French woman on Friday and shall probably talk French with her too – I wished I had more opportunities of talking – I am always meaning to do a little work with the gramaphone records every week – but it never seems to come off – I am always too busy about other things. I expect you will be able to speak a good deal better than I do by the time I come home.

Its after dinner and I am lazily curled up on a sofa – writing on my knee – Hence the very rickety script – Hope you can read it.

Best love, my darling
from
Mum

From HPV to Annette

Calcutta
Feb 14th 1934

My dear Annette

I have exhausted all matters suitable for letter-writing in letters to Richard and Rosemary. (You may inquire of yourself why I should not repeat them to you. I do not know why.) Namely snores in the train by a Muhammadan “title holder”, a Jew house-owner and a Eurasian house-agent. I had been to Ranchi and was returning. A poor night, thanks to them. The earth quake had split the walls of a drawing room at Ranchi from top to bottom so that it had to be pulled down afterwards, but none of the china or other ornaments were broken.

On Monday, with the idea of seeing if I remember any French, I went to a “gouter” at 5 o’clock on the French cruiser which has been here for a visit. French has departed from me – but then I don’t believe that really I talked any while I was abroad – not to speak of, anyhow.

I have handed over my job as Local Self Government Secretary but am still doing some of the work. There are masses of it pending and I felt sorry for my successor, a Bengali named Dutt, senior to me in the service. He is famous under the name Dancing Dutt because he is trying to revive Folk dancing:- difficult because their dances in Bengal were mere ungainly shuffles.

Your photo postcard of the swimming bath was interesting. I was aghast to find how many girls were in it when I looked closely at it. It looks a good bath. Sensible.

True about the French book. When such a book is dull read it for the phrases. Not that I remember them when I do this: but it makes it more interesting.

Your jumper-making industry amazes me. Also your learning bridge: both very wise: I applaud them. Why is bridge not taught in schools?

Enough! Too much even.

Much love
Daddie.

From LJT to Annette

14/1 Rowland Rd
Calcutta
Feb 20th 1934

My darling Annette

I have had the new Selfridge photos framed and hung up on the wall of my bed room, where I can look at them as I lie in bed and I like them ever so much better now. They do look nicer hung on the wall. I don’t think they are photos to look at close too. You and Rosemary, at any rate, look very cheerful in them.

It must be a bit of a bother being house treasurer – but good practice for the future. Its an awfully good thing to get in the habit of being able to look after money and accounts in a methodical way. Dont you love William de Morgan’s books? I think best of them all, I like “Alice-for-Short” There’s a man in there who used to remind me so much of Uncle Roy. There’s something so naturally and simply true about all his books – I shall be interested to hear what you make of the barbola work. I have a friend in Darjeeling who does it rather well and finds it useful for all sorts of things.

One of the things I am much enjoying about having the horse to ride – is that it gives one times to think. So far I have been going out by myself, and in the busy Calcutta life, its really a pleasure to get away alone for an hour or two. Of course I am often alone in the house – but then I am always working in some way and my mind is occupied with definite things.

This morning I was wondering to myself what are the best qualities to fit one for life – and I think that adaptability, is one of them. Its an enormous boon to be able to enjoy and be interested in, all sorts of lives – and not to be disturbed by having to change habits and customs. Broadmindedness is another great help – and by that I don’t mean a laxity of ideals, but an ability to share other peoples points of view and to find things in common with people brought up in widely different ways and walks of life from oneself. The life I have led has been good practice for that. Actually, I believe unselfishness and self-control are two of the qualities that make the deepest foundation for a happy life – Does this sound like a sermon? I hope not.

Best love, my darling
from
Mum

Thanks so much for the p.c of the swimming bath which interested us much.


Family letter from LJT

14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
Feb.22nd 1934.

My dears,

There is a definite feeling that we are slipping rapidly into the hot weather, and one has been almost on the point of turning on a fan several times lately. It is not a bit unpleasant yet, and the trees are all putting on their spring green, and some of them, like the crimson silk cotton trees, and the brilliant “Flame of the Forest” have burst into glorious flower. Again this year, we are getting a lot of amusement from watching the birds nesting in the trees round about. The crows and the kites nest in such very visible places, and there are rival establishments in a big tree that we look into from our dining-room window, which are always full of activity.

Talking of birds, Percy Brown and I spent a most interesting afternoon on Saturday. We went to visit the country house and aviaries of an Indian friend of ours. He is the son of a well known and immensely wealthy Calcutta merchant, and has therefore been able to indulge his almost passionate interest in birds in the most delightful fashion. He has a delightful house standing in a big and beautiful garden about 8 miles out of Calcutta, and he has huge aviaries, with trees growing in them where the birds live under almost natural conditions, while a certain number, such as hornbills and storks are wild, or I should more correctly say, quite tame in the garden. The bulk of his collection are Indian and Himalayan birds, which makes his collection particularly interesting, to my mind. I felt that I learned more about the Indian birds in the hour or two that I was there than I had done in many hours poring over books.

My French had a little airing on Friday, when I went to tea with rather a charming little French woman. She cant talk much English, which from my point of view is all to the good, and she was most entertaining, particularly in her views of how badly the French are represented in Calcutta. On Saturday night, when I was enduring a very dull “duty Dinner” and playing the round games which I detest afterwards, I thought of the proverb, “A dinner of herbs where love is etc” and reflected how much I had enjoyed Mdme Le Francs simple entertainment, enlivened by her gay and witty mind, compared with this rather elaborate entertainment, where everyone, I think was a bit bored.

Herbert and I had rather an amusing lunch with a party of Americans at Tollygunge Royal Golf Club on Sunday. Our host was the head of the American Bank in Calcutta, and other guests were the American Consul-General and his wife, who are delightful people, with the air of quiet good breeding, which Americans often lack so sadly. The talk was good, and it was delicious on the verandah of the Club, where we lunched, so altogether we enjoyed ourselves very much. We went straight over to our own Club, Old Tollygunge, and rested and read the papers there, till 4 o’clock, when we bathed and had tea, and then went for a walk.

There have been some delegates to do with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, out here, and I was asked to meet them at a tea-party at the Lake Club, a pretty spot on the banks of the Dhakuria Lake just outside Calcutta, on Monday afternoon. One of the Delegates was Gertrude, Lady Decies, a most amusing old dame to whom I talked for a long time. She is a woman who has knocked about all over the world, and who has a keen sense of humour, so she is remarkably good company.

Guide work has been rather to the fore this week. and Himalayan Club goes on quietly in the background at the moment. I have been riding every morning and much enjoying it, and I have actually made myself cope with the question of some thin cheap frocks for the hot weather, as my last year’s ones are rather decayed. What a boon it is that cotton materials are so varied and so pretty now. I was amused by an old man the other day, who said he could remember the good old days in India when everyone drove about in buggies, and all really nice women wore white pique. Going in to a shop to buy the dress materials I fell to buying a hat too, just because I liked it and not because I seriously need it. It is very pretty wide brimmed straw, the colour of ripe corn, and has the two remarkable qualities that it was cheap and that it fits me!

Herbert is finding settling into his new job a bit bothersome, as everything about it, including his office and staff are no nebulous at present, but I have no doubt he will soon find himself. He comes home very tired from Council. What a curse the Reforms, and ideas of Democratic government are, to the people who are ruling the country.

Time to stop now, I think.

Best love to you all
LJT

P.S. I have booked a passage home on the Cormorin, leaving Bombay on Jul: 7th! Lor! How sick I shall be!

From HPV to Annette

Calcutta
Feb 22nd 1934

My dear Annette.

Still poised between the old job and the new. And a bit peeved about it. My successor, the miserable Dutt, finds things very hard and comes trotting along to me to explain: and though I do not mind when it is a matter of saving him from reading masses of old papers I become a trifle fierce when he is merely asking me to read and explain new papers instead of reading them himself.

Council is on: and in spite of leaving the post which led to my being a member of it, I continue to be a member. This is definitely a nuisance and I shall be intensely relieved when it is over.

Relaxation this week: work on Saturday afternoon till about 4.30 when I had a bathe at Tolly (not a great success as there was a cold breeze): tea on the lawn and a stroll down the golf course: both very pleasant and restful. A visit to Brother Harry’s where they were playing Corinthian Bagatelle – not a game which appeals to me: and so home. Sunday morning saw me working till 12.45, then out to lunch with some Americans whose other guests were more Americans: an amusing little entertainment: then over to Tollygunge and after half an hour and bathe and tea and a stroll. The breeze colder even than Saturday and the bathe for me very short: I feared rheumatism. – No more by way of festivity this week. Except that last night your mother cast on a screen by means of an epidiascope enlargements of old photos: a good way to see photos. The epidiascope has a very strong light which shines down on the photo: this is reflected very brightly in a looking glass placed at an angle above it and thence through a lens cast on the screen.

(Diagram inserted)

Enough. Much love
Daddy

From LJT to Annette

14/1 Rowland Rd
Calcutta
Feb 28th 1934

My darling Annette

From your last letter, I get the impression that there was lots doing at school – though my own memories make me think that the first week or two of the spring term is usually rather dull. I wonder whether you or the mistress have won over the roses on your mirror and I also wonder what you wanted to do on it.

Vera Brittain’s book is a curious production – Its one of the most egotistical pieces of work I have ever read. I don’t mean because it is about herself – an auto-biography must be that – but because she reveals in almost every sentence that she looked at everything so intensly from her own point of view and had no ability to put herself into another person’s place. She was like that at school. Her impression of St. Monica’s is, to my mind, quite untrue. Its an example of how people get out of a thing or a place very much what they put into it. In spite of all this criticism, I was tremendously interested and moved by the part of the book that actually deals with the War. The begining and the end I could scarcely tolerate. The amusing thing is the way she talks as if she were quite a well known literary character, when in reality scarcely anyone seems to have heard of her.

I wonder how you liked “Angel Pavement”. I think it actually a better book than “The Good Companions” though not such a lovable one. That’s a book now, to help one to see a little of other people’s lives. The spotty young clerk, whom nobody really wanted (I forget his name.) must exist by thousands.

I must get hold of “Vanessa” to read – now the hot weather is coming on, I shall have a little more leisure for reading. I have just been lent a book called “The Budha and the Christ” which looks very interesting, but will take some reading I fancy.

I am just about to write to a hotel – called the Hotel des Dunes at St Jacut sur Mer, where Auntie Arla and her boys used to spend the holidays very often.

I would rather have liked to have taken you further South (round the corner on to the real Atlantic Coast.) where we should not be likely to meet so many English people – but that means a longer railway journey and a good deal more expense. However I think I shall write to a hotel at a place called Morgat near Quimper which was very strongly recommended to me – and see how prices compare –

Best love, my darling
from
Mum