1936 April
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Rd
Calcutta
April 1st 1936
My darling Annette
I am glad there are compensations for not going to Germany these holidays. I hope to goodness this trouble will blow over and the nations will be friends again, so that perhaps you will be able to go in the summer.
Your idea of writing a story about King Arthurs Knights from the point of view of a contemporary yokal, seems to me rather good – Do you get the story back? I’d like to see it, if by any chance you have got it. Richard has also mentioned a bit of his work that I should like to see – an essay called “Cogs or Craftsmen” The “Bolshie” master at Haileybury seems to have been interested. I’d rather like to know what Richard is thinking about those sort of things. After all – its knowing what people are thinking that keeps one in touch with them – Its the line of difference between acquaintances and friends too. A person – to my mind – begins to rank as a friend, when they begin to let you see what is really in their mind. There are such lots of people one knows for years in a vague sort of way and yet does not know what is really in them.
Poor Dad is falling into another of his fits of black depression I am afraid – Its so hard to know how to deal with them and how to help him. Unfortunately just at the moment when he was in the state to feel depressed and worried about anything at all, I flew down to an island on the sea coast in the Sunderbands – and it seems that he was really anxious and rather annoyed with me for going – He says its one thing to fly over country where you could be reasonably sure of making a safe forced landing – but another to fly over forest and rivers – Actually we flew very high over the delta country and Mr Mathews says that had the engine conked out, there was no moment at which he could not have volplaned or glided oacross the Matla river to the rice fields or onto one of the sandy beaches. it was a marvellous trip – but I’m sorry I went if it worried Dad. I think it would have been wiser of him to have said so before instead of after.
There! Having got my little worry off my chest – I shall stop and write to the Rosey Pop –
Best love, my darling from Mum
Family letter from LJT
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
April 2nd 1936
My Dears,
I am sorry I did not get a letter written to you all last week, but I was bowled over by an attack of food poisening, at least that is what I am pretty certain it was, and I suspect tinned mushrooms. At any rate I spent an extremely uncomfortable night on Wednesday of last week, took a large dose of castor oil in the early hours of Thursday morning, and did not feel a bit like hammering away on the typewriter later in the morning. The attack was short and sharp. I was perfectly alright by Friday.
Since I last wrote to you, it has been definitely settled that we are to go to Darjeeling, so we are leaving Calcutta on the 24th of this month, and I suppose we shall be away about a couple of months. I am hoping to slip off into for two or three weeks of wandering in the mountains and have found a friend who will come with me. She is a dear woman, Helen Martin, wife of another I.C.S. man. I dont suppose we shall have any male companions, as there are no holidays then, and I dont suppose any of our menkind will be able to get away. Its only the military people who seem to be able to get lots of odd leave.
The weather is getting hottish, but it is’nt bad at all. There have been a number of pleasant things going on, of which I think the best have been some lovely flights. Sunday week ago we flew to a place called Jessore, where this is a landing ground of sorts. Its about 80 miles away, so took us about an hour. We circled round the town searching for the landing ground but could see nothing that looked like it, then Idris made a circuit of the town about a mile out, and eventually spotted the “areodrome”. Its white circle had been practically defaced by the weather, and there was little to distinguish it from the surrounding rice fields. Actually it is a good landing place, nice and smooth and with heaps of room. We just landed and took off again almost at once, as there was no one we wanted to see in Jessore, and anyhow we were three miles or more from the town. On the outward journey we diverged from our course to avoid a rain storm, and coming back we climbed to between 6,000 and 5,000 feet to go over the tops of some clouds, and arriving over the areodrome at Dum Dum at that hight, Idris switched off the engine and we took five minutes to drop in a huge spiral, and land like a bird. Lovely! Another day we flew down the river for about half an hour to see a bore coming up, caused by the unusually low spring tides. We met it down below Budge Budge, and circled about over it for twenty minutes. It was interesting to see how it got broken up on the sharp curves and sandbanks of the river, and reformed itself again. It seemed to be travelling incredibly slowly. When we had seen enough of it we flew back to Dum Dum, motored to Cossipore, and had to wait about three quarters of an hour there, before the bore arrived! The plum flight has been this week, when we flew down to the uninhabited island of Dalhousie, which on the sea coast of the Sunderbands or Ganges Delta. It took us an hour and five minutes to get there, and about half of the way was over this strange country of the Delta, which is thick forest, cut up with a network of rivers. We were flying high again, at about 6,000 ft. and it was most amusing to see how exactly the map in my hand corresponded with the earth below. I might have had the pattern of a jigsaw before me, and the puzzle laid out below. We landed on a great stretch of hard sand beach, with the forest on the one hand, and the white breakers curling in on the other, and breakfasted off ham-sandwiches and oranges and tea out of a thermos. We wandered along the edge of the sea and watched the armies of scarlet crabs going down in big parties to the edge of the sea, presumably in search of food. They always got alarmed when we came near and scuttled up the beach again to their holes. We spent an hour on the beach and then started the plane again, and climbed up into the sky above masses of little feathery white clouds which were blowing in from the sea. We were back at Dum Dum at 9.40, and it seemed almost incredible that it was still so early and we had done so much.
I seem to have dined out quite a lot, in a quiet way, and Herbert has come out once or twice with me to people whom we know well and from whose houses we can go home early.
There has been a lot of Himalayan Club activity going on. We had a committee meeting last week, the last one before G.B. Gourlay’s departure. He went off last night on his six months leave to England. We went down to the station to see him off. I shall miss him very much. I am so accustomed to having him at the end of the telephone to consult when any difficulty on Himalayan Club matters (I dont know what has happened to the typewriter. It seems to be missing out letters)
We bathe most evenings now, when Herbert comes out of office. Thank goodness Council is over, which makes the day’s work a little shorter for him, but he has got very tired this week in spite of that. In fact I am afraid he is on the verge of one of his bad fits of depression. I can only hope he wont go too deep into it. Its a good thing we are going to the Hills in three weeks time. We have been playing tennis singles on Saturdays and Sundays, as I was keen for Herbert to play some tennis again. He decided last week that he was in sufficiently good practice to start playing with other people again, and the Carey Morgans had asked him to play with them this Saturday, and now he has twisted a tendon in his ankle or something, and it is swelled and painful and I fear he wont be able to play. There seems a fate against his taking up games again.
My best love to you all
LJT
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
April 2nd 1936
My dear Annette.
A busy weekend. Interview with the Governor which I had asked for and which was to have led to great things but I handicapped myself by forgetting to turn up and had to be telephoned for. On Saturday. Followed by a lunch in honour of the Public Health Commissioner who is retiring: twenty minutes late, having been kept by the Governor. Then tennis: it felt as if I were picking up the trick of it again. People to dinner. Sunday out to Tolly for a bathe: then I sat waiting for your mother who had gone on to see some people on Himalayan club business and was delayed: that was rather a blot on the morning. In the afternoon I had to go to a teaparty at an Indian gentleman’s: a nice little man and as such things go a nice little tea party – but distinctly that was a blot on the afternoon. Mr Matthews in to dinner. The next morning your mother went flying with him to an island in the Sunderbands to my intense annoyance, and I discovered that I had strained a tendon behind my right ankle. This has become a nuisance: I bathed that evening and may have given it a twist anyhow the ankle has been swollen ever since. It is sad that whenever I make an effort to become fit something intervenes: usually the colitis and stomach ache – in fact I have a touch of that again now.
Work goes badly. Gone the days when I could dash stuff off rapidly, it seems: drawing up the rules on which I am working is more like doing a jig saw puzzle – with permission to design new pieces where that would help. The fact is that when we pushed through the Debtors Bill we put on one side every nasty problem saying “We’ll settle that by rules” and now th time has come for settling it, things do not move
Much love
Your’s
Dad.
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
April 8th
My dear Annette
I have used up on Richard my only bit of news – Captain Turbells tying an eye shade under his nose to keep his lips from sun burn in the Himalayas. Would that I had seen it! Not that any mechanism or eccentric act would be unjustified as a precaution against sun burn of the lips: for they swell up like marshmallows and crack like chestnuts. Grisly.
Diving, but that too I recited to Richard. This hot spell 102 or 103 has made the baths popular – the standard of diving is far worse than it used to be. People flop in huddlesomewise: revolting the judicious like foolish virgins. Many of them in fact are not like but the very thing. It grieves me more that I have given up almost all the ingenious stunts which I learnt with such labour five years ago. Somersaults, back dives, - any dives off high boards – little remains to me: but that little is neat. Like a female bathing dress. It must be a poor thing to make a living by cabaret work in rather less: there were two girls and a man doing stunts thus arrayed in the club tonight.
I dropped the typewriter off the table today on to the floor as I was packing it up, to to office: whether any harm had been done I did not stay to see but (on the chance that it has) is it not a woe? af fit occasion for howling and teeth-clashing? The office typewriter: I should say “an”. I had been doing Government work on it; hammering out forms. To design a form is not easy: this one is for applications by illiterate debtors and has fifty one columns besides some to which no numbers have been given: it has been worked over for weeks but the more we simplify it the more columns it gets: the law lays down that certain information must be given and there is no help for it. (Eight sheets of foolscap! for the illiterate! by gum.) The income tax people will feel sick with envy when they see it.
Is my temper bad? – I don’t know. Patchy. I have even been gay: but it is like lightening playing: there is gloom in the back ground. If you ask of my ankle: it is no better: less painful but more puffed.
Farewell.
And tell me: did you finish all the German records? learn them by heart? enjoy them? or what?
Yours
Dad
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Rd
Calcutta
April 9th 1936
My darling Annette
Its interesting to hear your views on the teaching of Mdlle Pinault and of Fraulein Kolb. The ability to inspire interest is a wonderful quality – Miss Heath-Jones had it to an amazing degree. She was very bad at teaching the subject that was set. If she was supposed to be lecturing on William the Conqueror, she might quite likely give a thrilling account of the American Civil War – Halfway through she would remember – and we would say “Go on – go on – We will look up about William in our prep time”. No teaching we had was more valuable – Things – people, ideas came alive as passed on through her mind – Do you remember a favourite story of Dad’s about the Don he best liked working under at Oxford, who at the end of a set of lectures said “Well gentlemen, I am glad to think that I have taught you nothing this term that will be the slightest use to you in your examinations”. I think I have told you before that Mr Mathews has this ability in talking of scientific and mathematical things – It came out in even a wider sense on Saturday evening when he was talking about flying home. So many people say “Oh, its really rather dull – You don’t see much – “
To Idris it was something very different – He could see history stretching backwards into the shadowy far away times – and his imagination carried his ideas forward into the history of the future, as he flew over country after country. He said that on three occasions when he has flown over the bridge of Ctesiphon he has been the only person to look at it – His ideas about the economics of the world he had flown over were immensely interesting too. How did the desert countries of Rajputana produce wealth for their kings to build wonderful cities and palaces? Who ever thought of building the town of Hyderabad – Sindh – in the middle of the desert – and why? He says you have only to fly home once to realize why the countries of Western Europe became so important – because 75% of the rest of Asia and Eastern Europe is either desert or uncultivatable rock and mountain. His talk made me long more than ever to fly home.
Its interesting for you having these international arguments with the French woman and the German. If only France were not so full of hate!
Best love, darling
Mum
Family letter from LJT
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
April 9th
My Dears,
It has been rather a quiet week, and I have been able to get through a lot of work. I have now got the most satisfactory feeling that, if I die to-morrow, all my affairs, both personal and outside jobs, will be found in order. It is very pleasing, as I have never really caught up with things since I got back from the Hills last November. I am hoping that now I may be able to finish up the accounts of the two trips I made last year, and which have been put aside for so long. One reason for this happy position is that I have found a girl who before she married was a secretary-stenographer, and who is glad to do odd jobs now, so I am having her one morning a week to do work for the Himalayan Club. Its the most enormous blessing, and as she is quick and intelligent, she is able to do all sorts of things that a Sabu typist would have to be shown in detail.
There have been more travellers through this week. Last Thursday I took Lady Pole-Carew out to tea at Tolly, and armed with my guide book, maps, and my collection of photos of the Sikkim flowers, helped her to plan a tour. She had been given an introduction to me by Mr Shipton, and was quickly put in touch with me here from Government House, where she was staying. She is quite an elderly woman, and very nice – On Monday I was occupied with rather different types, a couple of young sappers from Poona, whom I have helped with arrangements to go climbing in Sikkim. There was not really much to do for them, but they asked me lunch with them at the Great Eastern Hotel, and we had a long talk about their plans and chances of getting up the peak they are out for. They obviously have an idea that I am an expert mountaineer, and I found it very difficult to disabuse them of it.
The Vissers are back in Calcutta, rang me up yesterday, and are coming to tea at Tolly to-day, and I am looking forward to hearing about their last year’s trip to the Karakorams, and also to their impressions of how things are going in Europe. They are only just back in India and are sure to have been travelling a lot and meeting interesting people.
The hot weather has come in good and proper the last three days, and it has been 103° at Alipore Observatory, which means a good deal more in the middle of the town. On the first of these hot days, I was out all through the hottest part of the day. It was the occasion on which I lunched with the two young climbers. I then spent the early part of the afternoon, buying five wrist watches for the Everest Expedition, in response to an S.O.S. from Mr Kempson, interviewing our Himalayan Club Equipment Officer at the Geological Survey Office, and then driving out to Cossipore and spending the later part of the afternoon pegging out a design for the surroundings of the new pond in his garden. I was very pleased to meet Herbert for our usual evening bathe at 7 o’clock. The swimming bath has been very full the last few evenings, as generally happens when the thermometer soars up of 100°.
Sunday, the day before the hot spell set in, was a most beautiful day. There was a tremendous strong south breeze blowing, and although we are sixty miles inland, it seemed as if it came straight off the sea. I went for a long ride for a couple of hours with one of the men who lives in G.B. Gourlay’s chummery. We met Herbert and another man at Tolly about 8.45 and bathed, and then had breakfast, and sat under the trees talking about LIFE and other matters till 12.o’clock. the wind only just began to get a little hot about that time.
I have actually done no flying this week, but we have a plan for flying down to the sea at my old haunt of Digha, in Contai on Monday morning. Being Easter Bank Holiday it seems the right thing to have an outing. We hope to bathe and have breakfast there, and I am looking forward to it very much. I hope Herbert will not be nervous this time as apparantly he was when we flew to Dalhousie Island, for on the way to Digha there are possible places for a forced landing all the way. Apparantly what made him nervous the other day, was the thought that we were flying over swamp country where we could not land. Actually Idris flew so high that he says if for any reason something had gone wrong with the engine he could have glided across the river on the west of us and landed on the rice fields, or gone south and landed on one of the sandy beaches.
Herbert’s ankle is still worrying him, and he has not felt like trying tennis on it. It is a nuisence! I think he will let the little Japanese bone-setter have a go at it during the Easter Holidays. I was afraid Herbert was in for one of his bad bouts of depression last week, but after being on or just over the verge for two days he suddenly came out of the glooms and has been fairly cheerful since. We had a nice little dinner-party of HD and Winsome and Hugh and Phyllis Carey-Morgan on Sunday, and we dined out with Hugh and Phyllis on Tuesday, so Herbert has been quite gay for him. On Tuesday night the dinner-table was laid out in the garden under the light of an almost full moon, and it was so pleasant dining out-of-doors.
The Governor and a good many of the members of Government have gone up to Darjeeling. We have stayed down the extra fortnight because Herbert says he wants a little quiet time away from the Ministers, in which to get some work done. I am rather sorry he would not go away for Easter, but he says that he had that holiday at Puri so recently that he wants to do some work during the Easter holidays.
My best love to you all
LJT
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
April 13th 1936
My dear Annette
Letter writing when the two persons concerned are far from one another is like a conversation in which each party pursues his own thoughts aloud, without regard for the other’s remarks. It is in vain that I ask myself whether there is any profitable comment to make on the topics which you raise. My mind is a blank: and I return to my invariable and stereotyped account of what Harry calls the doings.
First: the ankle. It is now adorned with scraps of brown paper. These were clapped on by the Jap masseur whom I visited on Friday morning: they are probably magic but may be belladonna plaisters of a sort. He gave me fifteen minutes for Rs 5/-. First digging his fingers in and observing whether it hurt (it did) and where it hurt most: then rubbing: then playing round with an electric battery which does not inspire much faith in me: then manipulating the joint not too savagely: and finally with pride applying the brown paper. Also he advised sleeping with a hot water bottle and keeping the ankle on it; which strange to say I have done not unsuccessfully, though the effort of remembering to keep the foot in position tends to keep one awake. Also he advised my not using the ankle more than I could help: so I have refrained from diving in the proper sense – merely plunging in with no upward spring: and floating about with the brown paper held out of the water. Very dull. Possibly the ankle is a bit better. But it is still puffy.
Misfortunes pile up. Last night, tooth brushing, I lost a large bit of stopping out of a heavily-charged-with-stoppings-back-tooth. At 10.30 I went to the dentist. An easy job, he said: and therewith pressed so heavily on the drill that the back of the tooth came clean away: hence a good deal more drilling became necessary, rather painful, and my energy was sapped. It was not great anyhow because I had had little sleep: having lain awake for some hours. Hot night: thoughts of work: the knowledge that your mother was going on another long aeroplane flight this morning:- take your choice of reasons.
It occurred to me about 12 today that I had not heard of her return. I was in office: phoned the house and was told that she had not rung up: then Mr Matthews’ house and learnt that they had not returned. And it became clear that there must have been some sort of mishap. Actually she had telephoned to the house at five past eleven but another servant had answered. it was a long time before I got through to the aerodrome and longer before the man there would reply sensibly: I asked if Mr Matthews was back from his flight and the man persisted in thinking I said “after his flight” i.e. after he had left the aerodrome in his car, having landed in his plane. Hence it was at first apparent that he had not returned. How heartily I dislike those flights!
What other subjects have I? Work – it goes badly. The weather: hot and dusty.
There is a festival on. All the Bengalis are gay. They throng the streets buying toys and there is music: drums. The gods are kept awake by gongs and bells. It is their new year. All are happy: I am not: for my teeth ache a bit, and my stomach too – owing to my eating a slice of cake at tea?
Yet we have done a lot this week. There was plenty to write about: it is not clear why I have not written of it.
Much love
Dad
Family letter from LJT
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
April 17th 1936
My Dears,
Its been a hot week, though not unusually so for the time of year, and the prospect of going to the Hills next week is pleasant. I am just going into the detail of the arrangements for Mrs Martin’s and my trip. Checking over tents and ground sheets and so on gives one a nice thrill of anticipation. There is a good deal of work involved in making the arrangements for one of these trips, but it has become fairly easy routine to me now.
We have really been doing quite a number of things since I wrote last week, partly because the Easter holidays were on, and Herbert was more or less from work for a few days. We had some guest to one of those rather nice swimming evenings at Tollygunge. One meets out there about 7.30 p.m for a bathe, after that drinks under the trees, followed by dinner on the lawn, and after dinner by dancing. Winsome had a nice party on the Saturday night. They had a large number of guests, the men in Tennis kit, and we had drinks in the garden, followed by a cold buffet dinner laid out on the verandah, to which we helped ourselves, and took our well-stacked plates back to our tables in the garden. Later in the evening we had a few fire-works and an Easter-egg hunt. It was delightful out under the stars, and the whole thing was a pleasant change from the ordinary dinner-party. The Sunday morning ride with one of the men from G.B.’s chummery finished up at Tolly, where we met Herbert for a bathe, and Harry and Winsome joined us for breakfast. Its very difficult to do anything else on Sunday morning when one bathes and breakfasts at Tolly. One has generally been up late on Saturday night, I have always been up early, and ridden for a couple of hours. The bathe and a large breakfast on top of that puts one into a sort of somnolent state so that one is content to go on sitting under the trees on the lawn indefinitely. Altogether we had a full day on Sunday, for we had to lunch out, and in the afternoon we went out to see the beautiful aviaries belonging to an Indian friend of ours near Barrackpore. He has such a wonderful collection of birds, but perhaps wants one to see too much, and Herbert found it a bit tiring. On Easter Monday Idris Mathews flew me down to our old sea-side haunt of Digha beach in Contai. We left Dum Dum at 6.40 and it took us just on one and a half hours to fly there, as we had a steady wind against us. As we landed on the beach we saw a crowd of people in the sea, who did not look at all like ordinary fishermen, and who turned out to be a party down from Midnapore for the Easter holidays. I knew one of them, the Superintendent of police. The rest, four men and three ladies, all belonged to the regiment which is now stationed at Midnapore. I think they thought it rather amusing having someone suddenly appearing out of the sky like that. We soon joined them in the sea, and then took our picnic breakfast up to the bungalow, leaving one of Mr Weale’s police orderleys on guard over the plane. It was really heavenly down there. There were great big breakers rolling in, and a wonderful cool breeze blowing. We tore ourselves away with regret. It was necessary to leave, because we had to take off before the tide came up too far, and also because at this time of year the air gets very bumpy after about 10.30. As it was we stayed longer than we meant to, and did not take off till 10.15 and got back to Dum Dum at 11.10. It was a bit bumpy but not very bad. Actually I rather like a few bumps, though I dont know how I should like them if they went on for hours and hours. It was twenty years since I was in Digha, but it had not altered in the slightest little bit. There is still the great sand beach, with the wild sand-hills, covered with screw pine and prickley pear, running inland for half a mile or so, backed by groups of cocoanut palms. In a grove of Kashuarina trees, stands the little bungalow, and there is nothing else, no village even for some miles.
We got back to find that Herbert, poor soul, had cracked the stopping out of a tooth, and had spent most of the morning having it put in again. Not a very enjoyable way of spending his Easter Bank Holiday! He has been once or twice to the little Japanese bone-setter to have his ankle manipulated, and it is better, but still does not feel fit enough to play tennis on.
Do you remember my telling you about a rather eccentric Dutch Countess who was sent to see me by Mr Kempson of the Everest Expedition? She passed through here about a month ago, en route for Sikkim. On Friday she telephoned to say she was back and would we both dine with her at the Great Eastern Hotel that evening. Herbert said he did not mind and off we went. The poor lady had fallen into every sort of disaster, chiefly as far as I could see through not taking my advice and the advice of the people I put her on to in the hills, but in spite of all that, she says she enjoyed herself enormously, and wants to come back again another year. The Vissers, who had been here for a few days the previous week, had said that her name was not Dutch at all, and it turns out that Mr Kempson made a mistake, and she is Danish, so now I have one more country in the world where I have a “contact”. We fetched Countess Frijs the following morning and took her swimming at the Saturday Club, and sun-bathing on the roof, and brought her back here to lunch. I wonder what our forebears, who were so frightened of the tropical sun, would have said if they could have seen troups of people in the scantiest of bathing dresses lying in the full blaze of the mid-day April sun, with their heads in the shade of a chair or an umbrella. They would probably have expected us all to be dead before evening. The Countess came back to lunch with us, and amused us vastly. She is quite definitely what might be known as a “character”.
We have just had two more ladies of rather a different sort passing through on a return journey from Darjeeling. They are a Miss Hutchins and a Miss Dolling, the ex-head and secretary of Holloway College I gather. Miss Dolling has been a keen climber, and is an old friend of Eric Shipton’s who gave her my name. They saw me on their way up to Darjeeling, and asked us to dine with them now, but we persuaded them to come here instead. They are nice women and interesting. I think Herbert quite enjoyed their company.
It was a great pleasure seeing the Vissers again last week, and I was glad to hear that they will be in Calcutta next cold weather. They are both such clever and delightful people that they add very considerably to our circle of friends here.
I am tired of writing this news-paper of doings and I am sure you will be tired of reading it, so I shall stop. It will probably be a scrappy letter next week for I shall be rather busy shutting up the house, packing and generally preparing for our flit to Darjeeling.
I am sorry to see in the papers that you had such an awful Easter in England. I hope the weather is more seasonable now.
Best love to you all
LJT
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
April 22nd 1936
My dear Annette.
If Richard has become an open supporter of Pacifism he has concealed it: as for me I am all in favour of abstaining from the unpleasantness of warfare but I don’t so much mind other people having a whack at it and I am strongly against making any sort of fuss either way. Somehow when one lives among a parcel of maggots or common ‘ounds, swarming by the million, one loses the feeling that it matters very much if several hundred thousand are bumped off. Not that I do not sympathise with the Abyssinians: for it must be annoying when trying not to feel like scum to be knocked to blazes by people whom you know to be such. Perhaps they comfort themselves by feeling better than the Armenians. Difficult not to, I imagine. Curious how scum-like peoples are who being with A. Take also the Albanians and the Assyrians: you will quote the Americans and Australians, Afridis and Afghans, Austrians (but are they?) Airmen Apes and Archaeologists. It is hot and I am weary. Much work. Indeed I have done an unusual lot of this these latter days. Vainly toiling. Whether it will do anyone a happorth of good is another matter. Three late-ish nights running have done me in. People to dine, a visit to the movies (sheer wanton folly this) and people to dinner. Other occupations: people to tea at the Saturday club on Saturday and a breakfast at Tollygunge on Sunday. To lunch that day an old gentleman full of scandal. “Her father was a pilot – her a nurse of course; much older: but I always say these forced marriages come to no good.” Just like that.
We are off to Darjeeling on Friday evening. I was very firm about refusing to go at my own expense when the Finance member suggested it and about not going at all if I was to come down before the end of the hot weather as again he suggested. Roughly he said that it was a bad precedent and I agreed that it couldn’t be if it was an obvious ramp. It is annoying to have to move up just now when I have struck a vein and have been shifting work to admiration. Going up to the hills means that the office in Calcutta takes a holiday and that I work practically without assistance.
Enough, - this is rest day. I had to break off half way down page 2 last night, because I perished with sleepiness. Now, of course, I am rushed: always thus on mail day. it would be better if I wrote to no one.
Much love
Dad
From LJT to Annette
14.1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
April 23rd
My darling Annette
There’s rather an “end-of-term” feeling about this letter, since we are off to Darjeeling to-morrow, and I made my Guides over to my Lieut. on Tuesday (though in spite of that a whole bunch of Guide work cropped up yesterday.) and I make my Himalayan Club work over to Mr Cooke this evening – Of course a lot of that I take with me to Darjeeling. Its been beastly hot the last few days, which has made jobs like packing stores – superintending the mending of my tents and such things that cant be done under a fan rather trying – so it makes the idea of going to the Hills all the nicer.
It will be fun hearing how the meeting went off between you and Peggy and your respective brothers. Did I tell you that a new Townend cousin has turned up in Calcutta? She is a hospital nurse and a very distant cousin – daughter of Uncle Frank’s brother. She came to dinner on Tuesday and I had met her the previous week at Uncle HD’s – Sad to say she irritates me! She is so frightfully hearty and anxious to please, added to which she has a decided surburban accent. She also seems to me to have a queer way of not being interested about interesting things. We were having an enthralling conversation at Uncle Harry’s the other evening about the danger caused by kites and vultures to areoplanes and the Director of Indian Air Surveys was saying that it is so extraordinary that these birds don’t seem to hear areoplanes – and he wondered whether their ears are so designed that they can only hear sounds too high to be detected by the human ear – He went on to tell of various experiments he had made – all most interesting – but she tried to turn the talk back to gossip about people all the time. it was a bit the same here on Tuesday – We were talking about town planning with Mr Gurner, who is Chairman of Calcutta’s Improvement Trust – and of Monuments in Calcutta and the plans for a statue of King George with Percy Brown and so on with lots of things – but its evidently people –gossip – that she likes – not ideas.
I must stop now, my love – Dad says he thinks you look as if you would be ready to burst into laughter at a vulgar story – I don’t know if that’s a compliment. I rather think it is,
Best love
Mum
Family letter from LJT
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
April 23rd 1936.
My Dears,
We are off to Darjeeling to-morrow, and very glad of it, for the last three or four days have been both hot and damp. As always seems to happen at the last I have dozens of things to see to. The Girl Guide Headqts have chosen this moment to turn a camp that was to be training for Officers only, into one for Guides as well, at very short notice, and it meant an awful lot of work and time yesterday getting in touch with the heads of schools to find out what girls could go, etc, etc. Then on Monday morning Mr Tilman, the man who did the wonderful climbing on Nanda Devi two years ago with Mr Shipton, and who was out with the Everest Reconnaisance last year, turned up, and there have been odd things to do for him, chiefly in the way of putting him in touch with the people who can pull strings in the way of getting things through the customs and so on. He has come out as the advance guard of an Anglo American party, organised by Professor Graham Brown, who applied for permission to climb Kangchenjunga, and have been refused, so are going to Nanda Devi instead. They don’t arrive till June, so he is going to do a little mild climbing in Sikkim to try out some porters, and went off last night. He and I lunched at the Great Eastern with Mr Cooke, who climbed Kabru last year, and it was a most interesting little party. Mr Cooke got Mr Tilman to talk in more detail about the Nanda Devi show than I have heard him do before. I wonder whether you remember about it. Nanda Devi is a great snow peak lying about 70 or 80 miles north of Almorah, It is surrounded by a cirque of impassable peaks, which is only pierced in one place, and that is by the Rishi Gorge, where the rishi River has broken through. Mountaineer after mountaineer has tried to penetrate into the inner sanctuary at the foot of the great Mountain, but no one had ever succeeded in breaking through the guarding walls. Many people had looked hopefully at the gorge, but the walls of it were precipitous cliffs, and the bottom of it was filled by the torrential river. Shipton and Tilman, with three Darjeeling, with a few local shepherds managed to penetrate the gorge, and found themselves in a fairy-like world of flowery meadows with herds of burhel and other animals. Mr Shipton’s book about it is just out. Mr Tilman has left a copy with me to hand on to G.B. Gourlay when he comes back.
I have been doing lots of little things this week like going to the cinema, having people to dinner, having tea and bathing at the Saturday Club or Tolly. (Our mountain travellers always like that) but the high light once more has been a cross-country flight. Idris flew me up to breakfast with an old friend Bobby Taylor, who was in Jalpaiguri with us, and who is now head of the Police Training School at Sardar which is on the north bank of the Ganges 117 miles north of Dum Dum. We left at 6.30 on Sunday morning and flew up there in 63 minutes, helped by a strong south wind behind us. It was a different story coming back, as we were flying right into the wind, and it took us an hour and 50 minutes, and was quite bumpy, for it was getting late and hot, as we did not land at DumDum till 11.25. Idris did the prettiest landing at Sardar. It lies at the top of a long north and south stretch of the Ganges, which is huge here. The big open parade ground is on the edge of the river, and at the northern end of it are the Mess and the Superintendent’s house, backed by a tall line of trees. About half way along the line of trees was a gap like a gateway. Idris flew up behind the houses, did a sharp vertical turn, side-slipped to lose hight and get level, and then just popped through the gap and landed like a butterfly. Bobby Taylor had put terrific police guards round the parade ground to keep away the crowds, who soon gathered to look at this new and strange thing. We asked him to let the guards who had been placed round the extreme edge of the parade ground, go, and allow the people to come up within a few yards of little A.A.D. (the plane) to look at her. We enjoyed our two hours with Bobby very much. We inspected his garden, and horses had an excellent breakfast, and left with much regret. As it turned out we could easily have stayed till the evening for it was beautifully fine, but one can never be sure at this time of year.
Herbert had been provided for and had breakfast and bathed out at Tollygunge with some friends, and had not yet returned when I telephoned from Dum Dum to say I had returned safely. He has been very well and cheerful this week. One way I can tell is that he takes his corners so fast in the car. He actually suggested going to see Harold Lloyd in the Milky Way, and as I had already promised to go and see “The Ghost Goes West” on that evening with Walter Jenkins, Herbert took Mr Tilman to the Harold Lloyd thing, and evidently throughly enjoyed it. I am very glad he is going up to Darjeeling feeling fit. He so often goes up when he is feeling at the last gasp of exhaustion, and then feels miserable for several days. We get up there on Saturday, and with luck should be able to have a good day out in the open on Sunday, before he buckles down to work.
Helen Martin and I have been busy working out the details of our trip, with tents out on the lawn being mended and tested, and our minds full of food lists and the weights of porters loads etc. Its marvellous to think that, in four weeks time I shall be well out in the blue.
I am going to stop now as I have lots to do
Best love to you all
LJT
From HPV to Annette
Darjeeling
April 28th 1936
My dear Annette.
How enterprising you all seem in the bosom of Highways! all manner of things being done against time by all manner of people without the turning of a hair. Whereas I, out in a far country, live a life which changes not one whit from week to week except in so far that I have a diversity of winds, striking vertically up or down according to the changes of the moon or the whimsies of the body. Also at some times I sneeze and at others not. Now the former.
Yes, we are in Darjeeling. We left Calcutta in the heat and as each day has passed sine then it has grown hotter: far hotter. So maybe I should have been lamenting my fate had I stayed on. By which you may judge that I lament my fate having come away. Alas! I was working so sweetly in Calcutta without noise or undue interruption. And here the vein has – what does a vein do? – broken, maybe: been interrupted perhaps. it is not cold: but it is draughty and chilly like. And I have been quite unable to keep any bedclothes over me at night – owing to my habit of kicking them out all along one side and at the end. So that I sneeze and feel stupid. Moreover I am foolishly stiff: having done nothing to deserve it save walk to the office and back and round the Mall. On Sunday however, it is true, I went out to a picnic on a pony. But it was the most leisurely of jaunts: we hardly trotted at all and there was no galloping.
No changes here except some roofs painted green. They look all right from far away, but shickly from anywhere near.
But why moan? I gaze dolefully on things. There is this one thing to comfort us: my ankle has for no reason improved. Hardly swollen at all. But somethings abdominal have supervened: this night only, one performance – I hope.
Much love
Dad
Family letter from LJT
The Club
Darjeeling
April 28th 1936
My Dears,
Moving from one place and from one sort of life to another, always seems to make a gap, so I have the impression that it is quite a long time since I last wrote. Then I was dripping with the heat, and cursing the way the breeze from the fan was blowing the writing paper, and carbons about. Now I feel so chilly that I have told the bearer to light a fire, and he is crouching hopefully in front of the grate, holding up a newspaper in front of a few unpromising sticks and lumps of hard coal, arranged with the minimum of skill. Well! Its lovely to be up in the mountains again! Herbert, as usual, does not feel too fit. It always takes him a day or two to adjust himself to this place. Darjeeling is a most friendly spot to arrive in when one has known it of old. Directly one opens the car door, one is surrounded by familiar and friendly faces. There were a whole gang of my old friends the porters waiting for me, full of news of which of their friends had gone to Everest, and which to the French Expedition. Everywhere Darjeeling is full of old friends. The servants in the clubs, the people in the shops, the old coolie women standing about in the streets with their baskets on their backs ready to carry anything from a grand piano to a ball of knitting wool, all give one a greeting. Come to think of it I have known Darjeeling for twenty years, so it should be familiar by now.
We are very comfortable here this year. We have two rooms, each with its little dressing-room behind, and a little office room in front. One room we use as a bedroom, and one as a sitting-room, and each have our own office and dressing-room. I really need an office up here for I am always interviewing porters, and all sorts of people, and Herbert likes doing a good deal of his work at home, so that last year when we only had the one set of bedroom office etc, we were always getting in each others way.
Needless to say I plunged straight into the Himalayan Club work up here. Our local Hony Secretary came to see me the very morning I arrived as he wanted help over the problem of finding good porters for one or two small parties of our members who are going out on minor climbing trips shortly. There are so many men away with the big shows now, that we are hard up for trained men.
Poor Mr Tilman is still waiting here for permission to go into Sikkim for a few weeks. As a rule such permission is scarcely more than a matter of form, and all he wants to do is to take a few new porters up as far as some place where there is a snow mountain, to try them out and give them some training. He wired for permission, and got a letter back from the Political Officer in Sikkim saying that before granting permission he must know all his plans. There were sent off on Sunday with a request that the answer should be sent by telegram, but nothing has yet come and poor Mr Tilman is getting very depressed. We cant think what is happening in Sikkim, and wonder whether one of the several small expeditions that are in there this year, are playing the fool. Mr Tilman and I did rather a strenuous training walk yesterday. We dropped about twelve hundred feet down the side of the valley, followed a path contouring along the hillside, slightly on the up-grade for about three miles to Lebong, and there, instead of taking ponies for the thousand feet climb to Darjeeling, we walked it, and arrived on the Darjeeling Chowrasta, fairly dripping! Mr Tilman said he felt as if he ought to be at the top of Everest. He used to be such a silent man when first I met him, but he is quite chatty now. I hope his permission comes to-day. I wrote to Mr Gould, the Sikkim P.O. on Sunday, going surety for him, that he had no intention of doing anything but train his porters.
We went for a picnic to Senchal on Sunday. It was not as nice as it might have been because the ridge was under cloud all the time we were up there, and so we had lunch inside the bungalow, but our host and co-guests were all nice people, and the food was admirable, and the ride to and from was also very pleasant.
Walter Boileau was up here on Saturday and has promptly caused me to be roped in to help with the judging at the flower show next Monday. I am really not competant to do it, but then so few of us are, so we can only do our best.
My mind is much occuppied with the plans for my trip into Sikkim. A fortnight to-day we shall be off! I am looking forward to it.
My hope of being very quiet up here have not come to very much, for I have already been twice to the cinema and am going to a dance to-night.
Best love to you all
LJT
From LJT to Annette
The Club,
Darjeeling.
April 29th 1936
My darling Annette
Your letter about your future plans interested me very much. I thought Miss Capstick had told me that there was one scholarship exam in December and that if you were not successful then, you could have another shot in March. However – in either event, you could leave at the end of the Lent Term and go abroad till its time for you to go up to the Varsity. I wont write to Miss Capstick now, as she is sure to write to me about it and I will reply then. Of course I can see that its more convenient to have the same girl as Head for a year, but I think it is silly to make a hard and fast rule about it.
I was very glad, both to hear that you were going to stay with Mrs. Petrie, and that the much-talked-of day in town with the Christies had come off. You certainly were a pack of naughty (and inconsiderate) monkeys, not to let Auntie know that you would be late – and I’m glad your conscience did at least prick you about it.
Its amusing that you have made – or re-made friends with the Neeleys. Its quite natural that you should remember the Hamiltons and not them, for I think we spent three seasons in Darjeeling up in “the Barracks” at Ada Villa with the Hamiltons and you were always to-gether – and we used to quite a lot of them in Calcutta. By the way – if fate ever takes you down Guildford way, do look the Hamiltons up. They live at Warwick Bench Hous – almost on top of the hill which lies in the angle made by the Portsmouth Rd. and the road to Shalford.
I had a nice letter from Frau von Pflugk, in which she said that she quite understood the position, but hoped things would be happier in the summer and perhaps they would be able to welcome you then – Best love, my dear from Mum
P.S. Congratulations a very good report – I was pleased with Rosemary’s too.