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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

1935 September

From HPV to Annette

Calcutta
Sept 3rd 1935

My dear Annette.

It is the worst of letter writing that if one does not read through one’s results they are illegible and if one does it takes up too long. I have wasted half an hour in which I might have written much to the family, reading over two letters which I have typed during the week – three pages and four – just to see that they made sense. It occurs to me that were I wise I’d whack off duplicates on the typewriter and kill the three of you with the one stone. But it requires much assurance to make copies of bilge: so I merely toy with the idea and do nix.

I have had a compliment from your mother: she says that my mind was (is) pure compared with that of a French writer: merely because he said a certain green in a painting was a sickly green, a colic green, a green of yesterday’s spinach. The undoubtedly have minds like tootte-oots in France: but it doesn’t much matter what one says if the phrasing is neat enough.

I am alone tonight. Having flatly refused to go out to dinner: now I find that it wwas a dinner to meet the Governor and so I have probably sinned a deadly sin. Actually I am not over tired these days and there is no good reason why I should not go out to dinners: but if once I start, how shall I stop again? Also my temper is not of the best. It is the case that everybody else is singularly perverse.

What is there to say of the doings which across seven rivers and five seas will be of any interest? The dentist continues cutting bits off the false teeth and now they are actually beginning to cease causing acute pain: in time they may become perfect. He has reached the stage where having cut down through the vulcanite he is beginning to file away the gold. I go there frequently and sitting in the chair, while he is out in the workshop filing, I study the habits of birds and curiosities in the way of trees. There is one of which the flowers spring direct from the branches – in fact that is the only curiosity within sight: but the birds are many.

This week saw a whole bunch of letters arrive: almost all mentioned Peg: the universe in those parts revolves round or revolts from her: like the feather bed for which the battle of Poitiers was fought in the White Company. A namby pamby book: but I thought the bit about the feather bed good. For me I find Peg amusing these days: a buccaneer. Talking of which I believe that one sun-bathes better through one’s clothes than without them: being set the task of powdering your mother’s back while she dressed tonight I complimented her on the equable and delicate tan that she has achieved: riding in a shirt. All I have got is prickly heat on the neck: not since long: and it is in no way connected with tan: for I never go out in the sun, except in the car to office.

I have tried on my new marching boots: heavy: resolute looking: full of nails. Thus equipped one builds empires.

Much love
Dad.

From LJT to Annette

14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
Sept 5th 1935

My darling Annette,

I wonder, I wonder – I wonder whether you will be able to go back to school. My poor Dear! How tired you must be of being deprived of the joys of reading. I am glad the typewriter is a success. Will you take it back to school? I am also glad that you find the German records of use. I do think the French ones were useful to me, and I know I could learn a lot off them now, if I could only find time to sit down and use them. I am just wondering whether I could make a great effort to learn to type “blind” in Darjeeling. I am sure I should not make half so many mistakes if I did. Its really a question of putting aside some time for it.

It was interesting about those German boys escaping from Germany. I hope they will make good, and get decent jobs in England, for it shows some pluck to get out of a country like that. Did they tell you much about the training camps? I wonder whether they are still going on. I don’t seem to have heard anything them for some time.

I wonder how you will like being almost top dog at school. Ones last year or so is rather fun I think. At least I know I enjoyed mine.

Do you know I am so sleepy. I cant hit the right letters, so will you forgive me if I go and have a sleep before I go out? I have had several late nights, and am always up by 5.45, and for the last three days I have had no sleep in the day. I am going to the 6 o’clock show by Uday Shankar to-day, and I don’t want to be sleepy then

Best love my darling
Mum

I wish you could see the pleasure with which Dad reads your letters – You always describe things in a way that makes him laugh and he likes the way you express yourself –

From HPV to Annette

(typewritten letter)
Calcutta,
September ** 11th

Curse. It annoys to start with a manifest error.
Not but what I always do.


My dear Annette,

Everything before this may be regarded as an aside. It is interesting that I should hit the keys so quickly that the wrong letter comes first and the right one not at all. What to say! That is a Babuism which is really eloquent. First I may Oh Oh Oh and also Blow! Why should it be so impossible tonight to hit the keys in order? It is beyond doubt the weather that may be blamed. Stinking hot. Sticky. Tiresome. Little rain except when it is likely to be a nuisance. Not enough to be good for the crops. Had I heard last week that there was a prospect of the Damodar Dam or rather weir bursting? just my luck so to speak; when it is important to me that the blinking thing should be as cheap as possible so that I can persuade the Finance Department to allow me to put other schemes through, then and at that very time the dam develops cracks in important places and there is fear that it will heel over and be buried in the sand at a cost of maybe 20 lakhs to the Government. I told the Chief Engineer to go back to bed (he had just risen from a bed of influenza) because he “could not hold the bridge up with his hands”: a metaphor of course; he replied that he once held up an embankment that way. He was walking along the Damodar embankment years ago at flood time when a man came running and screaming that there was a hole – and there was with the river pouring out in a spout through it. It was useless to run for help because there was none possible near. So the Chief Engineer said Show me. And when he saw it he said there was no hope of blocking it unless that were possible from the outside and he groped with his hand in the flood water where there was a swirl. Luckily the hole was only a foot or so down the front of the embankment and so he was able to do something heroic. He said to the man Get over the edge and put your seat in that hole – and stay there till I bring help. I asked Did you get back in time? and he replied Oh! the flood went down in a couple of hours and we were able to do the repairs then. The Chief Engineer is a Bengali and he pleased me much with this new version of the boy who saved the dyke.

Have I cursed the weather yet? If not take it as done now. I prefer to ascribe to that rather than to my natural instincts or perverted upbringing the vileness of my temper these days and the weariness that so easily overcomes me. True the proximate cause is liver (maybe) but there must be something in the background to give that liver its chance. Bad temper is a sufficient cause but I ascribe the bad temper to the liver. It is due in a way to overworkbut (two words) I am not doing so much as would normally have effect. Look to the bright side of things. Apart from the family to which Rosemary called my attention once when it was necessary for me to distract my spirits, there is the fact that I have been diving rather well these days. Your mother has refrained from that and other good works for some days for the reason that she has been having a do or dose of fever, induced by her saying the other day that she had had fever two years ago before setting out on a trek at this time of year and might do well to take quinine prophylactically. Better today, but she insisted on going out to supervise someone’s garden and again on going tonight to a concert. That is why I am hammering on this thing because it is not my custom to use it in the evenings when she is in.

The departure for Darjeeling is postponed because the Finance Department dug up a rule that no officer could be called up to Darjeeling twice without the sanction of a Joint Meeting which corresponds to a Cabinet Meeting. Rather absurd; and it would probably have been all right to go in anticipation; but I dislike the idea of putting myself in such a position and I shall stay here till there has been a Joint Meeting, which will be on Monday. The house has been humming with mountaineers, your Waller who has been climbing in the Karakorums, and various people interested. There a dinner and lecture about it to which I did not go and he has been managed so to speak by your mother, who has fixed him up with cars and arranged entertainments for him. There is now on this verandah a sleeping-sack thing, an axe, and a khud stick which is a sort of alpine-stock. Strange to think that probably you do not know what an alpine / whenever I hit that key by accident as then, it goes down explosively and makes me jump. . . . alpine-stock is like. Alternatively the khud-stick is like Oberon’s spear, being a bamboo with a spike in the end of it. Alas! what with the paper blowing up under the punkah so that the keys hit the back of it as often as not and my nervously jerking at the wrong key more often than not this is becoming a labour. I shall write to Rosemary with a pen. it might be more amusing for her indeed if I did not write at all.

Farewell. I await your reactions to the German records. Wo’nt Won’t it be annoying to me if you really manage to learn anything useful off it? for though I have learnt quite a lot of the French lot they do not seem in any degree to (those errors are due to my making mishits at the Back Space key) to have lent me eloquence or freedom of speech.

Much love.
Your’s
Dad


From LJT to Annette

14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
Sept 12th 1935

My darling Annette

Thank you for your long letter – I am awfully glad that you were able to go to France after all and I hope it was a success – Its rather an adventure, setting off to be with complete strangers – but that’s good training in itself I am always sorry for – and I think if I am quite honest, I also slightly despise, the women who go about bleating of how dreadful it is having to travel out or home, without their husbands and who make the wretched men trail all across India to meet them or see them off at Bombay. I sometimes think a good shaking would be very salutary.

I was talking to Herbert Richter a day or two ago about sending you to Germany in the Easter holidays and he is going to write to his people who live in Dresden, to ask them to make enquiries for a family with girls and boys about your age, who would take you as a paying guest for a few weeks. He seems pleased with the idea and says he would so much like you to be near his parents – so that they could see something of you – I think it would be nice too – I am very fond of “Herbert II” as we call him and I am sure he comes of a nice family.

It will be interesting to hear how much of a help you have found the German records – Auntie said that you and Joey seemed to be going ahead with them.

Dad and I were interested in what you had to say about Richard. We too, hope that he will soon outgrow this extremely earnest stage. The young man Waller – aged 23, who has spent most of his time here the last two or three days, was surprised to hear that Richard was going through this earnest phase now and said he thought it usually came just after leaving school – Anyhow it seems quite a common complaint with boys – like measels or mumps. For some reason it does not seem to affect girls so easily. Perhaps they have more natural common sense –

I am sending this to school – hoping you are back there –

Best love
Mum

From HPV to Annette

Calcutta
Sept 16th 1935

My dear Annette.

Moved by shame at the thought that all of Highways have taken to typing blindfold so to speak, I decided to start an effort that way yesterday – which was Sunday. My child, it is agony. Forsaking the instructions in the book I set myself to work up muscle in my little fingers and whanged away with them till a sort of cramp set in. Thereafter the same with the other fingers in their turn with the same result: and at the last the wrists gave in too. When I reflect that all this and more must befall those who learn to play the pianoforte, I no longer wonder that the two of you decided against it. It would be a pity not to have the energy to push on with the typing game: but when at last I came to the exercises, my fingers refused to perform even the first of them and I earned the contempt of your mother.

Talking of contempt, you should hear the opinion expressed regarding our Government by an Engineer from the Panjab who has come down here to examine the Damodar weir. We are all that is incompetent when it comes to getting things done: that is the result of being bankrupt. When you have to spend pounds it is no use looking at the four sides of a penny. But the habit sticks. There is apparently no immediate risk of the weir breaking but he says that it wont tlast another year unless we spend a further 10 lakhs or so on it. A big of a knock for my schemes maybe: but this man has got practical experience from the Panjab which goes in favour of my views. What I had been arguing as theory, he knows from practice.

It is good to hear that Sir John Parson’s verdict was favourable. Miserable creature, have you totally forgotten exercise 1100, neck-stretching and retching-judging the time? I ask merely on the off chance: because it is not really to be expected that you should adhere to beautiful postures when lying in a tyre or life buoy. How perishingly cold it must have been if you had but had the sense to know it.

I hope the stay in France went off well

Much love
Dad


From LJT to Annette

14/1 Rowland Rd.
Calcutta
Sept. 17th

My darling Annette

You can guess how thankful Dad and I were that Sir John gave such a good report of your eye and that you have been allowed to go back to school. I do hope you wont have any more trouble with it. Uncle HD says he can sympathize with you for there were long periods during his school days when he was knocked off work on account of his sight.

It will be exciting to hear about France – I hope the visit was a success –

Forgive more, my darling – I have so much to finish off before we leave for Darjeeling to-night –

Gav’s rendering of the family conversation is grand – It has given us and Uncle HD and Auntie Winsome infinite pleasure.

Best love
Mum

From HPV to Annette

Darjeeling
Sept 25th 1935

My dear Annette.

Your birthday and my laziness combine to do me out of this morning’s walk. Each day I have arisen at 6.30 (or rather had some tea then and arisen five or ten minutes later) and gone out for a walk of an hour or an hour and a quarter (yesterday) before breakfast. Striding along: boot-busting or getting my new boots broken in to my feet and vice versa: also getting some muscle into my legs. During the day I have been plugging hard at Water Hyacinth (notes and proposals for a Bill) and these last two evenings have seen me totally done up. Going out before breakfast means that by the time I have bathed and changed I am almost an hour in arrears on the day so to speak though I don’t know why – it must be because meals in the club take so much longer than at home: leisurely service and a general atmosphere of everyone being on holiday and time not mattering over much. The mail letters must be written this morning: and all references to your birthday must be written this week or in retrospect – since it will be too late to have beautiful thoughts about it when we return on the 14th from Sikkim. As to beautiful thoughts all that occurs to me on the subject is the remark from the Brush up your French book – “Je pense que le temps file diablement vite et je deveins vieille dame” – with necessary changes of gender (for me) or person (for you). All this makes me realise that properly considered it is a very short time since Moses and the Amalchites: a fact which will not help you in life. Console yourself by the thought that you have pushed into your sixteen years a good deal more than I had done in to a similar period: though it may not be true for, if emotion is what counts, my bad temper must have helped me in the competition.

On a walk on Saturday afternoon we saw a large snake which I at once pronounced to be a good one: of snakes I know nothing except that about 3 in 800 (individuals not types) are poisonous. It nipped up the hillside and disappeared: large means three feet on the occasion: colour a rather jolly brown. It was a brown pony that I had coming up from Lelong(?) (we walked down there by a circuitous route and ponied up) and I caused an argument by announcing that I chose it because we had had a car that colour. Your mother says that there never in the world was a brown car – and of course that is true. But there are suggestions of brown about an old black cat which sufficed for purposes of creating an affectionate atmosphere round a horse. Also on that day we saw a thing like a kingcrow but blue, and a small wood-pecker of colours especially scarlet on the head surpassing Solomon and his imaginings. If I could remember the names of birds for two minutes together I should find these walks interesting: for we have seen a fine variety of all sorts, particularly small ‘stute birds. However the savour of such things does not travel across oceans and I waste my time talking of it.

To think of you being back at school. Anyhow good luck. Also many happy returns of the birthday when it comes: and a long and virtuous life

Much love
Dad.

From LJT to Annette

The Club
Darjeeling
Sept 25th 1935

My darling Annette

We feel quite lost without a letter from you – we always find your letters so entertaining – You were just over in France when the last mail left which explains why we did not hear – I am looking forward to hearing what your visit to France was like.

Peg wrote us a most entertaining letter this week – She has a pretty turn at describing things and a light touch. In fact, as a group I think you are a remarkably good lot of letter writers – Even Rosemary, now and again, when she has done anything special, bursts out and writes quite a good description of it.

You may be surprised to hear that I am writing this in bed at 6.15 a.m. I have been extremely busy and kind friends will pop up to see me when I am busiest – My darling Mrs. Majunder turned up about 6 o’clock yesterday – and the Walter Boileaus were in for dinner and did not go till nearly 10 p.m., by which time I was far too sleepy to write letters –

I am thrilled about this trip – but feeling a little responsible, with 7 people to look after.

Best love
Mum


From LJT to Annette

The Club
Darjeeling
Sept 25th 1935 (?2 letters with same date?)

My darling Annette

Many happy returns of the day! I have written a line to Miss Capstick to ask her to provide a birthday cake etc – so I hope everything will be in order – I also hope that Auntie used her well-known diplomacy to find out what you wanted for a present, or whether you would like money.

This is being written in advance, for on the day when we should write for your birthday, we shall be away out in the high mountains.

Like Richard, I was inclined to be earnest minded when I was sixteen – but I don’t think every anything like as much as he seems to be. Your letters don’t sound a bit as if you are in danger of suffering from that complaint. I was glad to hear from someone – Auntie, I suppose, that you had not grown much this year. There are two enormously tall girls – both over six foot, out here, and all the mothers who have young daughters and hear that these said daughters are growing fast, are immediately filled with fears that they will grow like the Sachse girls - ! Best love and good wishes for a happy 17th year, my darling from
Mum