1935 July
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
July 3rd 1935
My dear Annette
A weary sort of day. Hellish hot and smells of cheese, sort of thing. Actually it smells of bad eggs. Moved by compassion for my poor scalp I bought some of my sulphur mucks: and have been mixing up the stinks and washing my hair with the daily. I expect that all my grey hair will fall out and all my other hair become golden: almost. Anyhow the result is sure to become something good. Weariness is my portion. Last night we had a show here: the Sikkim recent-trip photos upon the epidiascope – not very good because the electric lamp in the machine had gone wonky and it wasn’t strong enough to produce a good reflection, but the guests stayed till twelve. I forgot about this when I woke and felt no sense of grievance. But I spent all the morning at a Cabinet meeting, recording the decisions, and there was not fan over the table where I sat: I stayed late in office: Mr Fawcus insisted on talking to me after my tea when I wished to read an agreeable murder story – corpse on the first page: the real stuff: (I’d call any story that, which I wrote: a good title) – and then I did too many dives not very successfully. It is strange how difficult it is to allow both legs to hang perfectly straight down, pressed together: yet when one does it by chance, it seems perfectly natural and quite easy. I have been diving rather well, for me, these latter days: and, so, overdoing it.
Now I sit with small black beetles (- so big) getting into my hair in spite of all the sulphur; sucking in a sad way at a bit of barley sugar. Last night or the night before I had the gramophone out and listened to a conversation about Lyon. It is splendid that the French had the knack of enthusing about such perfectly sordid themes: prevents them brooding to some extent: though I can’t think why anyone wants a republic – or democracy. Here we are starting democracy, votes and such: and no one has been able to think of a dozen commonly known objects which could be printed on a ballot card (instead of names) for people who can’t read to put crosses against when voting: for example the couldn’t put a *bicycle because many parts of Bengal have never seen one: and cows tigers and such are out of place because the candidates who took these symbols might get an advantage or be prejudiced. As they haven’t enough nous to learn the rule of the road, I doubt if they’ll get far with democracy: but they know the rudiments i.e. have no compunction about making what they can out of votes.
I had some bright thought about news when I started this letter but it has faded from me.
Much love
Dad
* also it is suggested that all the voters who voted for the bicycle-man would expect to be given bicycles.
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
July 4th 1935
My darling Annette,
It is fun getting your type-written letters. I think it is clever of you to have learnt so well without being able to look at your own work to correct it. I am still longing for news. I do hope it will be good. I wonder whether you will be able to go to France. Perhaps you could go to the place near Paris, the details of which I sent to Auntie, later in the holidays, if the doctor thinks you are not quite ready to go away at the begining of the holidays.
Mrs Wrey is an amusing and charming person, is’nt she? I was interested in what you say about not meeting many people. I suppose it is true in a way, but I think possibly most people don’t meet a great many outside people during their school days, partly because when they are quite young they are more interested in doing things than in talking to grown-up people. You are probably getting on to the age now, when you will begin to find people and their views about things, and their experiences, interesting.
Dad and I could not help laughing at your account of how you and Auntie Mokes did not know how to get the oven hot to cook the dinner. I picture you both getting more and more hot and bothered! I should not have been able to do it myself. I know nothing about working a kitchen range.
Miss Capstick wrote me a nice letter saying how sorry she and all the staff are about your eye, hoping that it will be quite alright by next term, and that you will be able to take the exam at Christmas time.
There were two funny incidents at the swimming carnival last Friday. They had a fancy-dress relay race for “chummeries”. Four men had to enter, and each swim a length, handing a “token” to the next man. One man was dressed like Charlie Chaplin. He dived in and did not come up for some time. He seemed to be struggling along on the bottom of the bath, and we all got very nervous, thinking that perhaps his hat had got banged down over his face, and that he was drowning. He came to the surface, only to sink again immediately. The third time he came to the surface one of the officials dived in, and began to life save him. He managed to struggle free and splashing through the shallow end, handed to the next relay man, not the token, but a big iron grating about 1 ½ foot square, which he had got up off the drain at the bottom of the bath. The reaction from anxiety was most amusing. Everyone howled with laughter.
By the way I had forgotten another funny thing. One of the men in that race had dressed himself in a good old fashioned pair of white calico drawers, with frills below the knee, a vest, and a grey wig, and when he dived in he almost immediately swam out of his drawers! Luckily, in the cause of decency, he had taken the precaution to put on a little pair of bathing drawers underneath.
The other incident which I was thinking about was just at the end. One of the men who was judging, was standing at the edge of the bath, and suddenly we saw him, and a lady both struggling in the water, and hastily fished out. Both were in evening dress, but luckily in both cases it was cotton. They were both very angry. The man said the woman had pushed him in, so he caught hold of her to save himself, and she slipped and fell in too. She denies the pushing, but most people think she did it, for she is a detestable creature, who very often takes more to drink than is good for her and is noisy and altogether horrid. The crowd were greatly delighted because she went in with a beautifully arched pair of eyebrows, and came out with only a few black smudges.
I have been busy this week! There seem to have been an endless number of things to do for Guides, and a lot of people who wanted to see me, and odd jobs of shopping, needed for the house, and my own clothes to be attended too, in fact I have hopped on from one thing to another, without a moment to write any more of my journal, much less embark on writing any articles, which I want to do – I hope time is’nt hanging too heavily on your hands –
Best love, my darling
Mum
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
July 10th 1935
My dear Annette.
If the time passes for you as quickly as it does for me you have nothing to complain of, except monotony of course: the whole reason that each day is not exactly like another is that some days I eat chicken for lunch and some days cold beef. The difference really is that I eat pickles with the beef: to hide the taste of the mustard.
Moreover onions have the merit of making one sleep. Lately I have slept rather well except for dreams: but, curiously, I wake at inappropriate places in the dreams, always with a mild surprise (1) to wake at all (2) to find it so extremely late. Always I have a sort of idea that I shall do some work before breakfast: but what with twitching bristles out of my eyebrows, doctoring spots, cleaning my real and my false teeth and such like, I find like Cinderella that I’m not fully dressed when the clock strikes.
Incidentally I have been trying to remember why that young lady took her shoes off at the ball. Not much of a tale. It reminds me that a button shot off my trousers when I sat down in an easy chair after dinner. If it had been a fairy tale the town crier would go round shouting that anybody’s trousers that fitted the button could marry the princess and their owner with them. All my trousers are too tight now. Fat? wind? or shrinkage? take your choice. True, I’m a stone heavier than I used to be: but I often feel it would be two stone but for the wind in me. Brother Harry has an Indian drug for it: if he can get it down without blistering his mouth it does him a power of good: probably it blisters the very seat of the complaint.
All this is a digression. To my news! First, in case you’re still wondering, I never do any work before breakfast. Item the lizard on this verandah has been drinking gin: a cocktail party was in full blast when I arrived here this evening and some gin had been spilt: now the poor beast is tearing about chasing snails on the wall and little bits of matches on the floor. Tolly races; on Saturday. If you ask what I won – I backed nothing and so regard myself as well up. Every race sees me gazing solemnly at the horses but I don’t know one from the next. However I saw a lot of people. Every day almost has seen me dive: one day I did a dive which felt really good and I’ve been working vigorously at it since: probably it was bad really.
This week is going to be a knock-out. Both my big Bills come on soon: and I must get proposals together and have Government orders on the them before next Wednesday: did I say a knock out? I suspect I’ll do some sponge chucking before the seconds are out of the ring.
Much love
Dad.
May I congratulate you on your typing?
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
July 11th 1935.
My darling Annette,
I do congratulate you most heartily on the way you have taught yourself to type. I don’t see any mistakes at all in your last letter. I cant think how you have achieved such a degree of accuracy without being able to see your mistakes in the beginning. However wearisome these weeks have been, I am sure you will always be glad that you learnt to type. Auntie says that you have given a new lease of life to the dogs by taking them out for walks.
I am impatient for news of your eye. I had rather hoped I might hear this week. I hope Auntie has written by Air-mail.
Your comments on the emptiness of Norfolk agree with my own impression of the only occasion on which I motored through Norfolk. and I think that emptiness is one of its great charms. I like a country with very few people in it, and its so hard to find in England. France is much emptier. in all the parts I have been in to, except just behind that Breton coast where we were last year. I suppose directly one gets into the industrial areas in the east one sees more people.
You are not the only people who have had mushrooms. There are lots out here just now, and G.B. very often brings us in a lot on his way to office. As he lives outside Calcutta, the little boys bring the mushrooms to his house to sell them. They are jolly good!
Did I mention last week that I am reading a fascinating book by Freya Stark, called “The Valleys of the Assassins”. The writer, who is apparantly an unmarried young woman, wandered all about Persia amongst the mountain tribes, who, in some places are so wild, that no Police can go amongst them, and she seems to have got on excellently with them. Its rather the same way that Kingdon Ward seems to wander off amongst tribes who are supposed to be most dangerous, goes and lives calmly in their villages, and seems to get on excellently with them.
Best love, my darling
from Mum
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
July 17th 1935
My dear Annette.
By exercise of will and the practice of yoga I abstained from spitting in the eye, vomiting, or kicking in of stomachs. The result is weariness. From which know that there has today been a Cabinet Meeting about my Bill. Gutless is no adequate word for two of the Muhammadan and one of the Hindu Ministers. White livered would be a complimentary term. – They hadn’t even the spirit really to oppose: merely talked and droned and blithered. Now I, reporting, was at a side table without a punkah and my temper became as foul as their breath: to use more truth than elegance. If I were not refined and unspotted by the world I should at this stage burst into coarse language. I didn’t get lunch till two. – The fact is that the opposition to my Bill is inspired from inside the Cabinet – by those who didn’t like it but didn’t like to say so openly. – It had been an excessive labour getting ready for this meeting. There are ill Hodge the Irrigation Department Secretary (mine is an irrigation department Bill) – Gladding the Finance Secretary – and Fawcus the Revenue Secretary. Hodge with blood poisoning in the leg – Gladding with a septic throat and fever – and Fawcus with a septic leg and fever: he says its the same thing as Gladding’s throat. The symptoms are black patches and swellings: I have spread a rumour (1) that Gladding bit him in the leg and gave him a sore throat there (2) that he has suppressed varicose veins and (3) that he is suffering from squirrels’ leg, because when playing he runs furiously round and round the squash court. The two last diseases are new to science. – Result all the stuff that the three of them ought to have done about the Bill has fallen to me to do. This in a way suits my book: less opposition. But it is a nuisance – and my Assistant the whole Rai Bahadur has been away with fever – my stenographer with complaints of the bowels. There is too much work to be done by a given date: and I shall have to jettison some good things in the Bill in order to make sure of some better.
All this week, much work. Every day except Sunday when I took a holiday off diving because I was tired out and devoted it to the Bill, I have been to the baths in the evening. Hot and mugsome weather. When I refrain from badtemper I am fairly well. Your dear mother full of energy it rouses me to complaint at times: though why she should slack because I’d like to, I can’t tell you. Much love
Dad.
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
July 18th 1935
My darling Annette,
You cant think what a relief it was to hear from Auntie that Sir John Parsons is satisfied with the progress of your eye. I have been feeling a bit anxious, you know! I am so much wondering now whether you will be able to go to France.
I am sorry to hear that Gavin has been caught for going to the flicks in Hertford. I rather sympathize with the D.P. Its always an extremely difficult position when you know that something is going on which should not be, and have to judge where the line comes between doing your job of seeing that rules are obeyed, and falling into the vice of tale.telling. The Anglo Indian children who make up my Guide Company, are little devils for tale bearing, I am constantly having to jump on them hard for it. Its curious that they don’t seem to have anything like the same sense of honour as children brought up in England, and frightfully little sense of responsibility. They are frightful about the lack of care they take over their own belongings or other people’s, and the careless way they treat books and all such things. One of our objects in having this patrol leaders camp is to try and teach them some sort of responsibility.
I am sorry to hear that the wood has been cut about so much. I hope they are not going to cut it down altogether, for it was such a pretty spot.
There does not seem to be a great deal to write about this week. I have been so concentrated on the Himalayan Club and on Girl Guide work, that my mind is rather blank of everything else.
You need not post this week’s family letter on to Auntie Doris, as I am sending her what would normally be Rosemary’s copy.
Forgive me for not writing more. I am rather hoping to get through my letters quickly, and write a little bit more of my Journal.
Best love, darling, from Mum
Family letter from LJT
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
July 18th 1935
My Dears,
It has been another busy week. We had a Himalayan Club Committee meeting on Thursday evening, and got through an immense amount of work. We came to decisions on several subjects which have been in debate for ages, and actually worked through the whole agenda, which we seldom manage to do. Its true that the meeting went on from 6.30 till 8.30, but it was good to get so much done. All the decisions we came to, meant letters to write for me, and there were long minutes to write out, so I devoted the whole of Friday morning to getting rough drafts done, and took them to G.B.’s office on Saturday morning, for his approval, and for his office to type for me. He, and two other men stayed on to dinner after the meeting, one of the others being a Mr Allsup, who is now stationed in Shillong, and who was the founder of this Club, and who is a madly keen mountain enthusiast. We got every table covered with maps and photos after dinner, and throughly enjoyed outselves with the evergreen subject of the mountains of Sikkim. Herbert sloped off to bed about 10.30, but the others stayed on for ages. They admired Barbara’s photos of our trip tremendously, and I felt proud on her behalf for all three are men who take fine mountain photos themselves.
Herbert has been very busy, (too busy!) preparing his bills for the “Joint Meeting” (equivalent to our Cabinate Meetings) which took place yesterday, and he was pretty tired when he came in last night. However he is keeping well in spite of the work so far. The weather is not exactly helpful. It is frightfully sticky and most days there is scarcely any breeze, which is unusual at this time of year. It is more like September weather.
After accepting an invitation to lunch out at Tollygunge Club before the races on Saturday, I began to regret it on Saturday morning, which was very hot - - -the sun shining brightly after heavy rain the night before. However it rained again before lunch, and the sky conveniently clouded over, and a breeze sprang up, so it was delightful out at Tolly both at lunch and for the races. I enjoy the Tolly races. The jockeys are all “G.Rs” and one knows most of them personally. One meets all ones friends in the Club enclosure, and the whole thing is a friendly sort of affair.
G.B. with whom I generally ride on Sunday mornings, was away for the week-end, so I rode with Hugh Carey-Morgan, another man and Marian Atkins. To begin with we did not start till 7.30., which I don’t like at all. I generally ride at 6.30, but sometimes G.B. and I start at 6.o’clock on Sundays, because we like to stay out for 2 hours or more. And to go on with the party are not in the habit of going as fast or as far as I like doing. As it was Hugh said that Marian and I had taken him further and faster than he had been for years! We went out to the Salt Lakes hoping that perhaps the water had not yet crept up to the embankment but it had, so we had to content ourselves with riding along the Bund, and later got out on to some fields which have not yet been sown with rice, and got a good gallop across them. I sent my horse out to Regent’s park yesterday morning, as G.B. and I wanted to go across Tolly’s Nullah, which will soon be too deep to ford. We had a splendid ride, and covered a lot of ground in a short time. There are a tremendous stretch of fields out there which one can still gallop across, and we let the horses out coming home, and covered a mile in a very few minutes.
Did I tell you that we are running a training week-end for guide patrol leaders out at Barrackpore on the 26th of this month? I have been busy about various arrangements connected with it, and I am going to be busier still next week. The children are very excited about it.
Herbert and I went to the 6 o’clock show of the Pictures, on Sunday, with one of the senior Business men here, who is on the Council, and back to dinner with him afterwards. There was one other I.C.S. man there, a barrister, and two more “Kings of commerce”. The talk ran mostly on Indian politics and was most amusing, but not at all the sort of thing that the Labour party at home would have liked to have heard. The film we saw, by the way, was Noel Coward in “the Scoundrel” We like the first two thirds of it, but the last part is distinctly trying.
Winsome is back, and has enjoyed her visit to south India, in spite of the fact that it was rather hot travelling. She had not seen her grandfather since she was married. She says it is interesting to see how little he has changed in these ten year and how much she has.
Golf has been a bit disturbed by rain, which has chosen to come just about 4 o’clock in the afternoon which has been rather tiresome. Luckily it was fine for my Girl Guide rally day on Tuesday. It is so much nicer when we can meet out of doors.
Plans are going forward for our trip in the autumn. I do hope nothing will happen to stop it. Rex Fawcus has been laid up with some sort of fever or flue, but has the telephone beside his bed, so we have been able to have long conversations about our plans.
Everyone is getting busy in their gardens, for this is the time for moving things and planting shrubs. I must try to find time to go out to see Mr Mathews garden at Cossipore, which I helped him to re-design. He is home on leave, but has left the plans with one of the men there, and I said I would go out and have a look now and again. He has been digging a pond which will be rather exciting.
I am afraid this is a singularly dull letter. The things I have been doing this week are mostly things in which I am very absorbed, but they are not interesting to write about.
Best love to you all
LJT
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
July 24th 1935
My dear Annette.
Really your typing is a thing to admire. When I reflect that even looking at the keys I mae mistakes in every second line I cannot refrain from ejaculations of contrition and of self contempt. We thought that probably if you use a typewriter now and get into the habit of it you’d go on using it and that therefore it would be more economical to buy a new one. Moreover I dislike second hand things which have a habit of going back on one.
This week has not seen any slacking off, as I had hoped. In fact I worked violently all Sunday morning and, more or less, ever since. The Development Bill is giving me a great deal of work, which I should not mind very much if it did not promise to come to nothing. There is a strong suspicion that one of the Ministers is secretly organising an opposition because he want to avoid taxation of his own tenants. Anyhow there has been a concerted move against essential details and I fear that Government will weaken. If they do it means my disgrace, and probably my departure. it will not be worthwhile staying on and working myself sick when all chance of anything good has departed. However there will probably be wigs on the green first.
Quite a festive week: so to speak. We had a whole crowd in to dinner on Friday to see the Sikkim photos on the epidiascope: and more in afterwards. I was to go to be at 10.15 but while we were still at dinner, one of the after-dinner guests, warned not to touch the electric bulb in the epidiascope, at one gave it a prod with the result that the wires fused and not only the lamp but the electric fans ceased ceased work. The best thing would have been for everyone to go home as the promised entertainment could not come off and it was sweaty hot. But they stayed on. So I stayed on too to help things move: it would have been a betrayal to go off – and anyhow what was the use of going to bed with no fan and the door closed against a through breeze? At 12 the fans were put right again and then people left.
On Saturday I went out to the races, late of course but in time for tea. On Sunday, as I said, work all morning. But out to tea and bathed at Tollygunge in the afternoon. On Monday we went to dinner at the German Consul General’s when your mother got her Red Cross: a most affecting ceremony: I was much moved thinking how noble I must be to have so obviously noble a wife. But home at 11.15 luckily. Yesterday I went to see an invalid before dinner – a man of whom I am fond: so that counts as a festival. Also a man came in to dinner. And today there are people coming in to dinner. Alas! for I am dead beat. So dead beat that at the swimming bath I only dived in, swam to the end, swam back and went out. (In part, because I have split my bathing costume between the legs: there is a popular prejudice against that sort of thing). But they are nice people coming: and I shall let them amuse one another and not exert myself.
What more? Nix, I think.
The Heenie guinea pigs roam at large in the next garden. They are so strange a sight that hawks are discouraged. And the cats which so often have failed to injure them through the wire of the cage have now the idea that they are invulnerable. I view them with interest in the morning while I shave.
Much love
Dad.
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
July 24th 1935.
My darling Annette,
We get a lot of entertainment from your letters. I think hear and there you have inherited a few of the comic cuts out of your Father’s mind. I hope you will be pleased with the “hukkum” to get a new typewriter. I believe you will find it of such infinite use. I don’t know what I should do without mine now. It is such a boon when you want to make copies of things, apart from anything else.
Uncle Lionel is rather a pet, is’nt he? He has been awfully bad about money all the early part of his life, for he was always spending more than he could afford, and then having to beg or borrow it from other people, but he has so many charming qualities, that one cant help being fond of him.
Peg’s holiday on the Broads sounds great fun. Your comment on the small babies sailing in boats brought so vividly before the eye of my mind, the picture by Arthur Rackham in Peter Pan of Peter sailing in a tiny boat, and I think lots of other tiny boys in tiny boats, but the background has gone rather misty.
I am not going to write any more, for I have only a limited time left, and I still have Richard and Rosemary to write to.
We have been pleased and proud to hear from Auntie how well you have put up with this business of not being able to use your eye, and what good use you have made of your time.
Best love, my darling
Mum
P.S. You need not send the family letter on to Auntie Doris this week – as by mistake I have made an extra copy and will post it direct – but send next week