1935 June
From HPV to Annette
The Club,
Darjeeling.
June 5th 1935
My dear Annette.
Yes: I have come to the same conclusion. French novels are dull; on the whole. Essays and travels are far better reading as a rule. The fact is that I care not two hoots for feelings of the heroine. Of course the odds are that I miss all the finer points owing to ignorance of the language but I don’t know that I like fine points very much.
By the way: not “comparatively”: - forgive my mentioning the first slip that I have seen in a letter of yours for a long time: Richard is far less careful. Let me tell you that long association with Bengalis is beginning to destroy my sense of what it English: if asked whether a phrase is or is not a Babuism, I now hesitate. It is a matter of giving a slight twist to everything.
Your mother comes back next Monday. I shall be glad when she arrives: for the weather has been putrid here and I suspect that she has been camping in snow. It will be interesting to hear if she succeeded in the enterprise and got over the Sibu La. It was the wrong side that she meant to tackle: the steep side. An animated week for me. A teaparty on Thursday: Miss Pearce’s. It turned out to be amusing. Mrs Margunda(?) there. I didn’t, I confess, talk much to Miss Pearse (and I wish I knew how she spells her name) but the talk was fairly general. That same evening dinner at Government House. And dinner at Government House again on Monday: before a ceremonial Ball for the King’s Birthday. Incidentally it rained and it thundered. – On Saturday, be surprised to hear it, I went to the movies. The Hare and the Tortoise, which I thought admirable: and a George Arliss picture which was punk. But in addition I worked like blazes over the week-end - Saturday afternoon, all Sunday and all the King’s Birthday too – to finish my note about the Debt Bill. It is, in a way, finished. Now to get the approval of all the great. A dull job.
Much love
Daddie
From HPV to Annette
Darjeeling
June 12th
My dear Annette.
Not a letter but the nearest thing to a Christmas card that you are likely to get from me. I have been overworking till I felt sick and the results which have gone to be printed may for all I know be pap: after a bit if one works too hard on this sort of thing one loses capacity for thought and criticism.
The news of the week is your mother’s return. She had abstained from involving herself in avalanches: it had occurred to me suddenly that anything was possible. Her calf which I felt with envy is like the village blacksmith’s arms: except in shape and maybe colour. In case you don’t realise it from her letter know that her feats of endurance and enterprise are to be ranked among those of stalwart men.
Much love
Daddie
From LJT to Annette
The Planters Club
Darjeeling
June 11th 1935
My darling Annette
Once more I have become a more or less civilized being, and gave all my trekking clothes (extremely grubby!) to the Dhobi this morning – Ones feet feel queerest, after wearing great heavy nailed boots, with two pairs of thick woolen socks inside them, and puttees on ones legs, thin stockings and shoes seem incredibly light. Dad is envious of the hardness of the muscles in my legs. They do seem to be rather iron-like – and so they should after the distance I have walked and climbed. I arrived back here yesterday, travelling by car from Gangtok, which I reached the previous evening – Darjeeling greeting me with typical mist last night, and pouring rain to-day – Dad is looking infinitely better than he was when I parted from him rather over a month ago and I think if he had not been over-working so badly, he would probably be quite fit – or if he would stop working for a week now he would probably pick up wonderfully. I think he is pleased to see me back safe and sound. He had an idea at the back of his mind that I might get lost in a snow drift or fall over a precipice, I fancy –
This letter is to go by Air Mail and wont contain an account of the trip, except to tell you that we had a splendid time and no mishaps – The weather was kind, on the whole and very kind when we were under canvas – I accomplished all I set out to do – Investigated suitable hut sites – gathered a lot of local information – saw the most marvellous flowers – and in short, enjoyed every minute of it. My two companions suffered slightly from head-aches, but not badly and it was not surprising considering the height, for we camped at – 16,500’ – 17,500’ – 17,500’ – 17,000’ (Crossed pass 18,130) and camped again at 15,000’.
Accounts of the trip will follow more leisurely by ordinary mail – I hope they wont bore you – The mountains and the mountain people interest me so much, that I am always in Danger of boreing other people with them
I’ve three letters of yours to answer – all of which reached me in different places, through sheer good fortune. A Tibetan gentleman – the Personal Assistant to Mr. Williamson, made a very rapid journey to North Sikkim, doubling some stages with fast ponies, and brought us letters to Thanga. My little Bengali Botanist who did not come round over the high passes with us, but went back down the Lachen and met us up the Lachung, having picked up letters at Chungthang, where the rivers meet
Another – the last batch, were waiting in Gangtok. – It was great fun hearing of all your doings, while I was “out in the blue” – and I am awfully pleased that you have been made a prefect. Having a certain amount of privacy and a certain amount of authority, adds a lot to the pleasure and interest of life, does’nt it?
Its rather nice that you and Richard have been made prefects the same term. I hope Richard’s promotion is a sign that he is outgrowing his absent mindedness – Your plan that you and Peggy should meet in the holidays and introduce your brothers to one another, seems to me a very good one – I will stand you all a lunch and either cinema tickets or theatre tickets of a not too costly variety – such as the Upper Circle – or any thing of a similar nature that you fancy. Where does Peggy live? I can remember whether you have ever mentioned it.
About the question of giving up lacrosse and taking special tennis coaching instead, two or three questions arise in my mind – 1) Cost of the said coaching - ? 2) Can you have tennis coaching in the Autumn and Winter terms? 3) It would be too expensive to go on having tennis coaching indefinitely and what would you do for exercise on the days when you were not having coaching – or after you have finished it?
I have no objection to your’e giving up Lacrosse- but I think its good for you to have some sort of hard exercise, don’t you?
(Dad has just given me a “small snootle” of barley sugar – and crumbs of it have fallen on the paper – I hope they don’t make it sticky!)
At the moment I feel rather disinclined to pick up the threads of Darjeeling life again. I should like to shut myself up and write up my notes of the trip and so on while it is all fresh in my mind. There are people I much want to see in Calcutta, chiefly GB.Gourlay and Herbert Richter, who know the part of the world we have been in and are keenly interested in it all – but we don’t go down to Calcutta for another ten days. I gather that we are very lucky not to be doing so for the weather is said to be frightfully hot and sticky.
Good luck in your exam whenever it comes off!
Best love
from
Mum
Family letter from LJT
The Club
Darjeeling
June 17the1935
My Dears,
We have just had the air-mail letter from Grace telling us of the trouble with Annette’s eye, so we are naturally feeling a bit worried about her, and terribly sorry for her disappointment in not being able to take the School Certificate exam. I hope we shall have good news of her soon.
I have been trying to get on with the account of my trip, but what with doing the accounts for it, and Hari Babu’s accounts, and our own family accounts for the time I have been away, plus arrears of correspondance, and still more, endless interviews with Everest porters, [which have to be leisurely, if one is going to get any information out of them], I have found it very difficult to get down to it, so I probably shall not finish it this week.
I made Herbert come out of office at 4.30 on Friday and Thursday, and we went for good long walks, getting home about 6.0, to a very late tea after which we sat over the fire at home, instead of going out to the Club. I would not let him work yesterday either. (He is fond of working on Sundays) Another man, Mr Martin, suggested that we should take a car down to a bungalow called Badamtam, 10 miles from Darjeeling, and all steeply down-hill, and walk on 3 miles from there to the river, where we could bathe and have a picnic lunch, climb up to the bungalow again, and drive into Darjeeling in time for tea. We carried through the first part of the programme most successfully. It was very hot down by the river Rungeet, at an altitude of about 1,000 ft, and we were glad to plunge into the pools where a small river draining off the great stretch of forest and tea-gardens above joined in to the big river. The water from the small river was warm, that in the big one icycold, as it comes from the great snows, While we were bathing they evidently had a heavy rain-storm on the heights above, for suddenly the water turned a rich reddish brown, (the colour of the soil) and came rushing down in spate. We had great fun wrestling with it as it lept over small rapids and waterfalls. Herbert liked to try to sit in the middle of a small fall, and then his grip would give way, and he would be swept on to the bar of soft sand at the junction with the big river. I thought it would be unpleasantly hot climbing up the 3 miles and the 1,550 ft to the Bungalow, so sent the coolie whom we had hired to carry our lunch, to see if he could hire three ponies of some sort to carry us up the hill. He came back and said that there were no proper riding ponies, but that we could have pack ponies, with pads on their backs. We accepted these gratefully, and ordered them to be at the bridge at three o’clock. (I forgot to mention that there is a fair sized village the other side of the river, i.e. in Sikkim) There was no sign of them at 3.o’clock, but they rolled up about twenty past, and in spite of a lack of stirrups, we managed to spring on to their backs, and went up the hill in a dignified procession, nose to tail. We got to the bungalow about 4.15, and packed ourselves and our baggage into the Baby Austin, and started for our 4,500 ft climb to Darjeeling The Engine was not running too well, and after two stops, it konked out only two miles above the bungalow. We thought we would walk on a bit, and expected the car would catch us, but as we went on and on, our hopes grew fainter and fainter, finally after about 4 miles, just as it was getting dark and we were within less than a quarter of a mile of the end of the big cart road from Darjeeling to Lebong, and debating what we should do if we could not pick up a taxi at Lebong, we heard the glorious sound of the car behind us. It still was not running too well, but got us home about 7 o’clock, when we startled the Club staff by asking for tea! Herbert was a bit tired, for those four miles were jolly hard work, since they comprised a climb of about 3,000 ft, and we were dripping with perspiration from the exertion. In spite of everything, I think the whole day out with no thought of work did Herbert good.
The Walter Boileaus came in to lunch with us on Saturday, and I was so pleased to see them again. I am going down to spend Wednesday night with them, and see how my little god-son is getting on.
We were at rather a amusing tea-party at the Gymkhana Club on Saturday evening, and danced a bit. The club seems to be very empty. Fewer and fewer people come to Darjeeling as it gets easier and easier to go home. Also I think that fans, and swimming baths, and the exceedingly rational women’s dress, or lack of it, all help to make the hot weather so endurable that more women stay down than used to.
We go back to Calcutta on Saturday, and it will be very nice to be home again in many ways, and to have a ride on Tip-it Up, and discuss my trek with all my mountain cronies, as well as seeing the two girls again, and looking at their photos, which they say have come out well beyond their wildest dreams.
I am meeting my dear friend Agnes Majumdar to-day, whom I have not seen for two years. She is one of my Indian friends who was brought up in England, but had not been back for a long time till last year, so I am looking forward to hearing her impressions of modern London.
The Governor wants to hear about my trip, and has asked us to dine quietly with him on Thursday. He is going to pay a visit to Bhutan this year, and I want to persuade him to take my little botanist, Hari Babu. with him. H.E. himself is very keen on Botany, and most knowledgeable about plants.
I am sorry I am typing badly this afternoon. I think it is because I have been at it all the morning, and have got a bit tired and careless.
I hope the second instalment of the North Sikkim tour will not reach some of you before the first! It was a pity I could not take the typewriter out on the tour with me.
Best love to you all
LJT
From HPV to Annette
Darjeeling
June 19th 1935
My dear Annette.
If one can write one letter of any number of pages, there should be no difficulty about writing two, on consecutive days, of a smaller number of pages: but there is. Like making two miniatures instead of one big painting. I have been told however to repeat for your benefit, or loss, the following schoolboy howler: I am reluctant to do so – for you may have heard it and you may not think it worth the writing – also I have used it on Rosemary. After all this parade you’ll be astonished to hear no more than the following
“Calcutta stands on a very twisty river: it is called the googly.”
And that is that. It is a bad think to repeat a tale or anecdote of set intent: if it doesn’t merely bubble up, so to speak, at the moment, it is a flop.
One reason why staying in Darjeeling in cloudy weather is not good is that one looks across at clouds instead of upwards at them: it give one a spiritual twist or crick in the neck. Such is the weather now. But in Calcutta apparently they are still frying or stewing, according to the amount of fat they started with. Your mother has just started off for the Boileaus’ teagarden to stay the night: it is so much lower than this that I suspect possibilities of healthy sweats. I on the contrary am very soon to start off for the Governor’s there to attend a discussion of my draft of the Debts Bill. It is strange that I should drift into the job of law-maker like Moses whom I never liked. Mr Dash very tall and thin and maybe two years my senior in the I.C.S. used as a boy to float about a river in a beer cooler – a thing like half a barrel lengthways: I set abroad the rumour that he was found in one like as among bullrushes: this has improved his credit as showing that at least he started well. But, to resume my narrative, (quotation) never has anyone before had to deal with two bills of major importance at one session: except about terrorism and there the subject was the same. I begin to feel that I shall welcome the end of them – and then I start writing another Bill by way of change and relaxation. Also the labour of extracting money from the Finance Dept will begin: a little matter of £5,750,000 to start with. Put like that it is a bit daunting. But I had to remind the chief engineer the other day that a scheme which he was debating would cost £20 millions and might be washed out for the time being. The whole thing might run to £50 or 60 millions: spread over forty or fifty years of course. But I perceive that I am in for a laborious time: for who will believe that my idea will produce 10% or more of that per year?
However I should not drift off into such dullnesses.
Accept this letter as a token of affection
Yours
Dad
From LJT to Annette
The Club,
Darjeeling.
June 19th
My darling Annette
As I have just written you quite a long letter by Air Mail, I don’t feel I can write another by ordinary mail – that is to say not a proper one. “Lovey” came to tea – the Pictures and dinner with me yesterday – and was greatly concerned to hear about your eye trouble – and sent her love and sympathy. She is looking so well – and has such nice rosy cheeks.
Best love, my darling
from
Mum
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
June 26th 1935
My dear Annette.
What would a refreshment room waitress think if one demanded the opening and the cooking of a tin of sausages on the ground that the dinner ready was sure to be uneatable? - in England, of course. Yet that was what we did on our arrival at Siliguri after coming down from Darjeeling on Saturday evening. Very good too: six large sausages: with mash: and a tin of pears. Between the two of us except that Mrs Roxburgh ate two pears: luckily I slept like a log afterwards. The journey down the hill, in an open car, was notable. In primis, I didn’t feel sick – we had been to a lunch party and I took a liqueur brandy there for precaution’s sake: and wisely. Next the views were superb. Cumulus clouds sailing past far below us – rain clouds on our level which we dodged for the most part (but the hood had to go up twice) – and in the intervals panoramas of foothills and miles of absolutely flat plain. We became benevolent and thought well of things.
At this stage your mother went off to bed, announcing inability to keep awake: and so I went off too. The difficulty of writing in the weather is that there is no way of keeping the paper from shifting about in the breeze of the electric fan. The rains have started in theory but actually there has been very little rain: and the air is sticky, the sun hot.
I did a great deal of work in Darjeeling with good results: not that it will do any good to Bengal eventually, for the most part, but it bluffed the Government. My revision of the Relief of Indebtedness Bill was preferred to that produced by, and urged by, the Economic Enquiry Board: chiefly because I took account of finance and they did not. My own Bill, the Development Bill, is being attacked at this moment by the people who have lands near the Damodar Canal: they now realise that I aim at making them pay twice as much as they pay now if they choose to take water and at giving them no choice. There has been a drought in the country where the Damodar rises and no water is coming down it: so the canal is empty. Which makes no odds to my machinations but worries the irrigation people.
Every day since we came down we have bathed: and I have resumed physical jerks and contortions. It would be an agreeable pastime to you maybe to follow the system Hornibrook as on the St Jacut beach.
Much love
Dad.
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
June 27th 1935.
My darling Annette,
It was great fun getting a typed letter from you, and I think it is most enterprising of you to have learnt to type without looking at the keys. I wish I had!. I am simply aching for more news of you, but am hoping as usual that “no news is good news”. My poor darling! It must be terribly boring for you not to be able to read or sew. I suppose you thank heaven for the wireless. I have just remembered a ridiculous film I saw once where a man, who has not the slightest idea how to cook, thinks he will make a cake from the instructions which are to be given over the wireless. He switches on at the right time, and starts of quite well. A mischievous small boy creeps up unseen, and switches over to another station where a broadcast about physical exercises is being given. He keeps on switching back and forth from one station to the other, so that the miserable man is sifting the flour one moment, and doing press-ups the next.
I will give Uncle Harry your message about tatting him a beard with ear flaps. It just happens that they have not been in here since your letter arrived. Auntie Winsome is looking very well, and is much slimmer. I gather she has been playing a lot of golf. I am starting golf again after a long interval to-morrow. I wonder how I shall get on. I am terribly bad at it.
The amount of clothes I am wearing down here now is a bit of a contrast to what I was wearing a month ago to-day, when we were just leaving the last bungalow for some days out in tents. Really we are very lucky these days in India in that fashion allows as to wear the minimum of clothing. Getting rid of stockings and corsets has been such a boon. There is a slight tendency amongst the men to wear more comfortable clothes, but they are awful cowards about it.
I have lots of work ahead of me. I want to write a few little articles about “Side Tracks in Sikkim” for the Sunday editions of the “Statesman” which has a sort of magasine section. I have to write up the more technical aspect of the trip for the Himalayan Club Journal, and I have lots of rough notes I want to put in order and type to keep for future reference. Another quite big job I have to do is writing up the Porters Register for the Himalayan Club. I collected lots of information when I was in Darjeeling and photographed several men.
The Governor is keen that I should collaborate with the Botanical Department and produce a book on the flowers of Sikkim, but I don’t feel I have the knowledge, and any way there would be years of work in it. I don’t feel it is any good producing a book on flowers which is supposed to be of a popular nature, unless it has coloured illustrations, and that would mean months of work by an artist or a colour photographer. Of course it would be a frightfully interesting thing to do, and it is badly needed.
Well I must write to my baby, Rosemary. She seems to be full of all sorts of works at school. and for once in a way, wrote a really neat letter last week. It is a great pity that her writing is so untidy.
Best love to you, my darling. I think of you a great deal, and wish I were home with you.
Mum
P.S. I enclose a few Jubilee stamps in case they are of interest to you or your friends.