1935 March
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
March 6th 1935.
My darling Annette,
There was a lot of “meat” in the letters you wrote to Dad and me last week. I am glad you are going to try for the “Sick Nurse” badge in Guides, because it is one of the most useful – I am awfully glad I took the “Home Nursing” course when I left school, because it has been enormously useful to me to know something about the elements of nursing, and I have had to make hospital beds and change sheets with the patient in bed and so on quite a lot. You seem to have almost as many irons in the fire as I have. I certainly could not take on writing a play at short notice, as you seem to be prepared to do. I wonder whether the comic won the day against the serious.
Dad is pleased to hear that you are passing on the good news of Hornibrook and also that you are working up your own muscles for the gym competition. Its excellent for you to keep in training. I love feeling that my muscles are in good trim and that I have not got too much superfluous meat on me. I am in very good training now from riding regularly.
I rather like the sound of Mdlle Pinault. Knowledge picked up in the rather inconsequent way that she seems to choose to impart it, often developes a real taste and liking for things which hard study does not.
Sometime soon I am going to summon up my courage and write to Madame Gott about the summer holidays. It would be awfully nice if she would consent to have you. I only hope the pound wont keep on dropping or it may prove impossible to send you abroad on account of expense.
Have you heard any news of Auntie Doris lately? Its ages since I heard from her and I would like to know how she is, and whether she managed to get a maid. I hope June’s swelled glands did not come to anything.
Best love, my darling
from
Mum
The enclosed I thought rather a good map showing the Indian independent states.
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
March 6th 1935
My dear Annette.
I have just remembered that I shall be 48 on Monday. That is my only news. Except maybe that the lizard in my bathroom chases flies on the wing, snapping at them: a thing unknown before in lizards: and quite ineffectual. The world is full of beetles (small) and flies (smaller) this evening. They get into my hair: which is much too long. reminding me of my hair cut at St Jacut: not too good. Virtue has been with me in the matter of the gramophone: I have run it almost every morning and thereby attained sufficiently familiar knowledge of some six records not to be able to remember anything on them and yet to be bored stiff by all of them.
Work is very heavy and I am tired out. My jaw is healing up. Amazing how slow a tooth-hole is to disappear: I wonder why porcelain teeth cannot be jammed in when the tooth comes out and be kept there. It would hurt a bit, maybe.
Yes, I have done too much today.
Much love
Dad.
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
March 12th 1935
My dear Annette.
Did I ever tell you how Mr Lees, the big-chested man who (as he said) rescued Rosemary from downing or (as she said) interrupted her agreeable crawling on the bottom of the swimming bath, - how Mr Lees had the amusing trick of biting like a shark? A friend would be diving: all the other friends would say “Bite ‘im, George” or whatever his name is: and he would dive down below him, turn underwater, give a nip with the teeth and come up laughing merrily. I had heard before that once beneath the water he mistook the persons and bit in the seat not a friend but a girl unknown to him – so that he straightway dived into the bath and swam 40 feet under water: but I had not heard before that the socalled strange girl was Mrs Bishop who is rather eccentric and quite Christian – sciencey. This pleased me enough, as the Babus say. Hearing some people had moved into the flat above Mr Lees, she wrote thus “Be careful of the man below you – he is mad: he bit me in the seat.” which coming out of the blue caused them to yell and scream with laughter.
I have been to the dentist these two days and become equipped with a new false tooth of a certain impressive solidity. Also I have exhausted all my various tonics. Also, I hit myself on the knee when swinging Indian clubs and sprawled whimpering – a most painful 3 minutes-worth, without a trace of lameness stiffness or bruise afterwards. What more? I went out to breakfast on Sunday, followed by a bathe, followed by a lunch, out, followed by a tea out, with music: to which I listened. Just think of that, now!
My Bill has got over another hurdle. It has passed to a select committee by 59 votes to 21. But I was annoyed during the debate to see how few people really supported it. They will attempt to spoil it later. That is three obstacles over: acceptance by Government of Bengal, acceptance by Government of India, acceptance (in principle) by the Legislative Council: there remain avoidance of too much alteration in select committee: and getting it finally passed by the Legislative Council in a workable form. The papers received it well but are rather changing round. Reuters asked me if I could give them some special information as they thought of booming it in England. But I told him nothing doing. However it may get into the papers there. – I should like to work it all up a bit but have to switch off onto other matters. The dictionary says that the word “onto” common in speech is rarely used in written English. Strange to say, it kept on coming into my discourse on possible works, looking so quaint that eventually I looked it up.
I have gone back to the first Linguaphone course – a record with a crack right across it which goes click click click monotonously. Also I returned to the Dame aux rubans – which is a book of marvellous merits: you may remember I learnt two chapters of it by heart. Not that it did any good to me. If only it all stuck! or if only I could remember bits of it all in times of need, after it has stuck. Stuck too fast, maybe.
However.
Much love
Dad
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
March 14th 1935.
My darling Annette,
By sheer bad management, plus a little laziness, plus some interruptions I have really not much more time that to say how-do-you-do and good-bye in this letter. I was very pleased with your account of the “Omnibus Believe it or not” book, and feel that copies might be served out with advantage to many people in Calcutta, before they go to parties. I wonder whether it gave you subjects of conversation for the whole term. It ought to serve well to agitate the conversation at Highways too, not that I have ever noticed any lack of talk round that friendly dining-table.
Luckily you will be so busy packing and generally finishing up the term when you get this that you wont have much time to notice that I have written a mingy little letter, therefore, goodbye, my dear, and my and blessings upon you
Mum
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
March 20th
My dear Annette.
My distinction has been taken from me. I now lack my antrum tube. Not part of me: but the silver tube which the London specialist prescribed. The man out here frothed with indignation: and told me to have it cut away from the plate and to leave things so unless something went wrong. So here I am: and the consequence has been that I have had to visit the dentist frequently to get the plate remodelled. Item, the other consequence has been that I have been saved a lot of pain.
My sin has found me out. Owing to my starting my scheme, I have had let loose upon me a world famous Italian hydraulic engineer, who designed the Russian hydroelectric works and for that matter the Grampians scheme. He talks no English. I do not know what will come of it except worry. All the cranks have descended upon me too.
It is a nuisance not being good now at learning things by heart: I have devoted considerable pains to the linguaphone records and find none the less that I am far from knowing by heart the records which I have been hearing. However fixing your mother with a glarey eye if there is such a thing, I recite bits to her with the cadence of the gloomy Monsieur Bourgeois, the speaker in this lot of gramophone records.
When bathing: when diving above all LOOK ABOVE THE HANDS; till the time comes to go in: and then look down. In this way you will attain grace. Youths at the club were diving over a handkerchief spread on a stick. 5 feet high, I should say.
What more? I have tried tennis four times. Unusual. I have bathed once: not with great pleasure because I can’t stay in long without chilliness. I have done a great deal of work with nothing to show for it. And I have written I a hundred times in this letter. Farewell. Love
yours
Daddy
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
March 20th 1935
My darling Annette
Your story about the “Snowy peaks snore into the sky” went down very well at the big Guide Commissioner’s dinner which I attended last Monday. I am feeling more cheerful about my Guides now, for they seem to be working much better, and also I have got two very nice and very capable young women to help me. It will make such a difference!
What a bit of luck it is that you had had the measels, so did not run much chance of getting it again. Its a nuisence when a term gets upset with illness as this last one seems to have been at St Monica’s.
Its interesting that you have had a talk with the lady who lectures about careers. I always think if you can get a billet as a secretary to a politician or a journalist in rather a big way, or someone who is dealing with all sorts of subjects, it might be very interesting. Its always fun being behind the scenes when big things are going on. Besides the technical training, one of the first qualifications required by a secretary of almost any sort, is an ability to keep his or her mouth absolutely shut. its sometimes frightfully difficult when one knows something, and cannot speak of it. I knew of our transfer from Jalpai a week or two before we were allowed to speak of it, and I felt such a hypocrite when people asked me to do things or go and visit them in the Duars in a few weeks time, and I had to make plans and talk just as if there were no change coming.
You have an easy style in writing. You might even have a shot at becoming a journalist yourself! However all this lies very much in the future. You have first got to pass exams, and we have to see how life goes, and whether we can afford to keep you at the ‘Varsity.
I should think it very likely that the fact of finding the Concours exam so much easier is due to reading a good bit of French, I am sure it is an enormous help. It keeps the words well up in the top of ones mind. They get buried so easily when one is not constantly using them.
Dad has been very industrious with the French gramaphone records lately, and even takes the gramaphone into his bathroom and runs it while he is bathing and shaving, a practice I should not advocate in a country where many people share a bathroom.
I hope you will have nice Easter holidays. Dont think I am neglecting you by letting Rosemary have riding lessons if it can be arranged. I thought that would be something for her, by comparison with the proposed arrangements for you to spend some weeks in France in the Summer, and for Richard to join that reading party in the Lakes. It will be much nicer riding now that in Summer, and as presumably she will be dependent on Richard to take her over, it obviously is best for her to do it when he is home.
Best love, my darling
from
Mum
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
March 28th
My dear Annette.
Behindhand with letters and with everything else. Because:
out to dinner on Tuesday night
had people to dinner and went out to Ron Kaulback’s lecture last night.
Council on which means a frantic hurry every morning: the Ministers giving me worry (which is probably Babu English – but I can’t tell the difference now) because they have become scared about the jute: and work in arrears. Work is bound to be in arrears since I have not the knack of pulling miracles out of a bag. The Ministers’ scare is due to their discovery that the difficulties which we prophesied about jute restriction are real: why they should bound about and chatter, when it is too late to do anything except wait for anything that is going to happen I do not know.
Verdict on Ron’s lecture favourable: very favourable. He talks clearly, has a light touch, and every now and then is amusing. His slides were good and his manner a mixture of diffidence and assurance which pleased his audience. Yes: a good show. My verdict adds “but why go to any show when you’re dead beat to start with?”
Much love
Daddie.