1935 October
From LJT to Annette
The Club
Darjeeling
Oct. 16th 1935
My darling Annette
This seems to be an unlucky year so far as School is concerned. Its bad luck for you and Richard being kept back so long, when you are both working for exams –
I wonder whether you are going back to-morrow. I do hope you did not get the disease. It was clever of Auntie to think of sending you to Auntie D –
Visitors etc. have taken up so much time, that I have no more left in which to write – so can only send you my dear love
Mum
From HPV to Annette
Darjeeling
Oct 16th 1935
My dear Annette
I was glad to hear of your safe return from your French trip and of its having been so comparatively successful. I had had a fear that in some ways it would prove tedious: in fact I doubt if anyone could persuade me to go off and stay with strangers, French German or Armenian for that matter.
The trip is ended. It is not for me describe it. Indeed I doubt whether the details stick in my memory even now when we have so recently returned. The weather was propitious and the views superb. We were lucky to get so many views at this time of year when clouds are still thick and the rains not ended: almost every morning was clear and we had occasional glimpses of the snows in the afternoons and evenings. The one real soaking was on our first night in tents. The tent which your mother and I had leaked like a sieve: the floor was a sea of mud and gloom was spread around. Eventually she crowded into the small tent which the two girls shared and I slept balanced on top of five store boxes with a walking stick thrust into the ground on each side to give me warning if I began rolling this way or that. It was not a cheerful beginning: but luck turned after that: and barring a few showers rain did not worry us. We were nearly at the foot of Kingchingjunga when we reached our journey’s end: but it was not very impressive because the lower peaks hid the higher. The other mountains however stood up superbly and cricked our necks for us.
The general opinion is that I look far far better than before I went out: but the trip was hard work and just about as much as I could manage: I was tired out each evening in the middle of it – and am still not feeling vigorous.
I return to find work cascading on my head. A committee about the Indebtedness Bill starts today: and I find any number of flaws in the Bill now that I look through it with detachment.
Much love
Dad.
From HPV to Annette
Darjeeling
Oct 22nd 1935
My dear Annette
One disaster after another: rotten not to be able to go back to school but twice so to have to stay in Witham (and in so saying I intent no lack of compliment towards your Aunt). I wonder if the gramophone records have really kept your German up or improved it: for I begin to fear that my own efforts on parallel lines have not achieved much.
It is over a week since our return. Still I feel slack. We went a walk one morning when I achieved a thing that eighteen days’ tramping did not – getting a blister on my heel. Retribution of walking in shoes and thin socks. On Saturday we rode to the top of Tiger Hill three hours nearly which for me was 1 ½ hours too much. The next day we went out in a car eight or ten miles and then walked for seven, eventually picking up the car again after a picnic lunch. All this must have wearied me: for yesterday (after the Government House Garden party) I felt so lifeless that I came away from the Knight Errants dance which is the dance of the season, twenty minutes after it started. Maybe a bit of a chill helped for I have sneezed lustily today.
All this week my Indebtedness Bill Committee has been sitting – and talking around it and about. It looks as if we’ll never finish: slow progress and mostly what we have been doing is to make various bits of the Bill unworkable. Too large a committee (26 members) and too many lawyers. Interruptions are frequent: for instance a lunch today for the Governor which went on till 3.15 or later so that we did not sit this afternoon. Meanwhile my ordinary work has gone to blazes! alas!
Much love
Dad.
From LJT to Annette
The Club
Darjeeling
Oct. 23rd. 1935
My darling Annette
Your letter about Auntie Do and the house-work, entertained us very much. We might add a new clause to the Litany “From being slaves to our houses, deliver us good Lord” – Meditating about living in England when we retire, I was thinking the other day, that above all things I shall aim at making all house-work as simple as possible. I think it should only be a brief background to the rest of ones life – but what there is of it should be well done. We shall have some sort of a chance, settling into a fresh house and having to fit it up entirely. It will be interesting to see what we make of it when the time comes –
I do hope you did not get mumps! I am all of a fidget to hear – It will be so sickening if you miss half this term as well.
I am glad you like the idea of going to Germany – Herbert Richter I think has already to ask his parents, who live in Dresden, whether they can find a nice family with whom you could stay. If he has not already done so, I will get him to do it directly I go back. He seemed delighted with the idea – and said it would be so nice because his parents would be able to see something of you.
My letters to you have been so hurried the last few weeks that I don’t believe I said much about France. Your experiences were interesting, and I am glad you found it worth while on the whole, though there were moments when you were left out in the cold. I have heard of that sort of discurtesy from French people before, in spite of their elaborate manners.
I am writing the personal letters first this week, as Dad is working in this – our little sitting-room and I think the bang of the typewriter may disturb him. I have not done much of the Journal of the trip. I have been doing such a divil of a lot of work about the porters – I am only sending 1 copy of the instalment of the journal to you, and will you pass it on to Rosemary? I am glad the Poppet is Captain of the Prep.
Mary Tenduf La (Ledan La) was having tea here yesterday and asked a lot about you and Rosemary – She says she should much like to have snaps of you both. If you get any at anytime, will you send me copies for her? You can debit the cost to me. I thought of you yesterday and wished you well – Best love. Mum
From HPV to Annette
Darjeeling
Oct 30th
My dear Annette
We descend to Calcutta this day: and time too. For it has been dully chilly and dispiriting (“it” – the weather, not Calcutta) and I have become abject. Also there has been a festival lasting some days with incessant banging of fireworks: and as you may know fireworks are tolerable only if one causes the bang oneself or is responsible for it.
The Committee has ceased, finished its labours. And time too – if I may repeat myself. They put me off work for a fortnight: for when one has concentrated intently on one subject for some five hours it is not easy to set to and concentrate on another. And ever since the Committee cleared off (two days ago) I have done little – owing to noise, chilliness and general disorganisation. Packing has taken quite a time on this occasion. I am waiting now for the bedding to be done up so as to get into the bedroom and see that the bearer doesn’t litter up my suitcase with oddments not needed on the journey.
That is done: and I have come to the conclusion that my liver is at fault. Nothing else would explain plausibly the irritation which the operation of packing my suitcase aroused in me. If you ask, why liver? the reply may be, ‘owing to the working of conscience’ – the feeling that I ought to have got a certain job of work finished days ago.
Poor Peg! and why I started spelling her with a small “p” I know not.
Two days ago Parke Hamilton came in: no one more expert, or more keen, than he in the matter of photographing these mountains. He proved conclusively that we were altogether out in our identification of the mountain below which we camped at the head of the valley below the Guicha La Pass. Instead of being one of the giants it was an insignificant little peak: and the glacier up which we gazed with such awe, instead of coming down from the enormous peaks of Kalim and Talong was on a mere subsidiary ridge. Also we did not even see these enormous peaks from the top of the pass as we had believed ourselves to have done: and that explains why it was so difficult to identify them by their shapes. Definitely a lesson in not being cocksure.
Much love
Dad.
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
Oct 31st 1935.
My darling Annette
I feel so impatient to hear whether you have escaped the “plague” I do hope you have, and thank goodness Auntie sent you away to Witham. Curious, is’nt it? what a dull hole Witham is? I have never been in any Place, even a small village, that gave me quite the impression of dullness that Witham does. I am glad to hear that you made yourself a useful guest, and brewed pickles for the family. Its a grand thing that you have learnt so much about cooking, for its beyond count valuable to know how to cook. I am sure that though I know quite a lot in theory, I shall make many sad mistakes before I learn how to cook in a practical way, and quickly.
It seems odd to be back on my own typwriter again. I like it better than Dad’s little office one, for that has no margin release, and if one wants to print an extra letter one has to fumble round behind. Also the bell rings very late, so that with it I was always running off the edge of the paper.
I was interested to hear what you thought of Holloway College. I have only seen it from the road, while flashing by in a car, and even seen so, it looks tryingly ornate. However it seems to be comfortable inside which is really the most important thing. How much longer has Joey got there?
Its interesting to hear that you were attracted by the cactii that you saw. They are so easy to get and to grow out here, but they are a class of plants that don’t attract me much. Many of the flowers are splendid when they do bloom, but they generally look as if the plant had made a mistake and as if they don’t really belong. There is a blue china pot full of a small type of cactus, in one of the houses over in the Botanical Gardens, which has been growing in that same pot ever since the days of the John Company without being moved. All they do is to thin it out a little now and again. I look on that with some reverence. I like things that live steadily on like that, and make links with the past.
Poor Auntie! What a time she is having, is’nt she? I wish I could do or arrange somthing to help her. I feel sort of responsible, as it was Richard who introduced the plague into the house.
For the last several days, the conviction has been growing in me that I must resign some of my Guide work. I want to give up being a District Commissioner, and just take my company. I have got a lot of writing to do for the Himalayan Club Journal before Christmas, and Biswas wants me to write an article about what I have seen of the flowers of Sikkim for some Botanical publication. Then I was to try to write one or two articles about these trips for magazines. Last year I was really too busy, and found I was neglecting my home things, and never had any time for reading and I think that is a mistake. It wont be easy to get the authorities to accept my resignation, but I am detirmined to be firm.
One of the great pleasures of getting home is settling back to my own writing table. Its the thing I miss more than anything when I am away.
Bless you, my dear. I hope you are back at School. and that the eye is not giving trouble and that all is well
Best love
Mum