1936 June
From HPV to Annette
Darjeeling
June 3rd (1936)
My dear Annette
Last night I was guilty of folly: to wit, I sat in the smoking room after dinner till well past twelve. So this morning I am dim: not tottering but as one withdrawn from the world. Dinner went on till nearly 10: we didn’t go in till after nine. A youth, known to brother Harry and met by me in Calcutta, turned up in the afternoon: Peter Carter. A pleasant curly haired (definitely kept so) but rather fleshy youth. Taking pity on his condition which was loneliness I led him to the Gymkhana Club, where indeed we had no luck, since the many people there were all in one large cocktail party into which I could hardly butt , with the idea of introducing him, because I had refused to go to it in the first instance. We left at eight but he could walk only at a snails pace having had a leg badly skinned while riding: hence delay in getting to and delay in having dinner.
But why I should go into such detail, I don’t know. Rain continued all the week. I walked one evening round Bird Hill in thick mist which was a wetting as rain and less easy to ward off since it came underneath an umbrella. I walked one afternoon over Jalapohar and back via Ghoom. And I walked one evening round Bird Hill. The last two walks in company and at half the pace. The second of these two was on Sunday: during the afternoon it poured and it pelted: and eventually despairing (and reluctant to retire to bed, the only alternative as it then seemed) I removed my garments and did physical jerks with fury. In consequence I am now very stiff: everywhere: even in the ankles.
I have done a good deal of work: in a faltering sort of way: for what use will any of it be? And I went to Wings of Song – but I mentioned that in the Circular.
Now I demand myself when your dear mother will return. If up to programme she reaches Singhil this day: and, if so minded, would be in Gangtok in two days and here on the third. She would be so minded only if dispirited by the rain and the leeches. There is a break in the clouds today: and I suspect that she will regard and return via Gangtok and by car as a confession of failure.
Much love
Dad
From LJT to Annette
The Rest House
Dikchu
June 4th
My darling Annette
It was terrifficly exciting to find 2 lots of English mail waiting for me at Chungthang, after three weeks without any news of you – Mrs. Martin, who has a daughter of 15 ½ followed by 4 sons (and the cook persists in calling her “the Miss Sahib) confessed that she had been feeling a little anxious lest any thing should have gone wrong – and was vastly relieved to find that all was well. Now do you know, I had had no fears of that sort – partly I suppose because I have such confidence in Auntie. Of course there was yours and Richard’s adventure with the broken down car, coming back from the dance – I perfectly understand your feelings, but at the same time I think you did absolutely right – Once it is firmly established that you can be of no use – and that even, in a sense, your presence is an incubus – its far better to give in and take the line of least resistance – which in your case meant going home.
The outstanding thing to me, in your letters, is that you have been to a new place for your glass-eye and that it is an improvement on your earlier ones. I always feel so much about your eye, that I find it difficult to speak about it. It must be a great blessing that it feels “safer” than the previous ones.
It seems highly emancipated that you are now able to go up to town and take both yourself and Rosemary about without an escort – Its a great blessing, for its not always easy to have someone on hand to take you about – I guess that I shall be coming home to a very grown-up family next year and am rather looking forward to being “looked after”, rather than “looking after”. Even Rosemary has changed a lot in her photos – and got much more grown-up looking – She has lost all the roundness or squareness of baby hood.
Since we got in here at 12.15 or so, I have had quite a nice lot of time. After lunch I had a bath – a very leisurely one and then I manicured my feet and hands and generally had a tidy up previous to emerging into polite society to-morrow Next I delt with the porters – Half are going direct from here to Darjeeling with the tents and half have to come up to Gangtok with us. I arranged everything – gave them advances and attended to their various ills – all of which took till about 4 o’clock. Next I brought my terribly long “journal” to a close – I feel a bit guilty about it and hope you wont feel bound to be interested if you are not. I shant be a bit offended if you don’t read it – or skip large patches. I love these mountains and the people that live in them so much, that given the time I’m afraid I just flow on about them –
Tea arrived and we drank many cups, being thirsty in this hot place – I checked and ammended the notes I have written on the two strange passes we have crossed – By that time the cook appeared with two “churgas” (big bamboo pots) of marwa and Mrs. Martin and I sat talking and sucking away through our little bamboo pipes just like two old bodies in a pub. Marwa is good stuff when drunk warm. Its very distinctly more intoxicating than beer, but varies a good deal in strength. What we had last night made us very sleepy – To-night’s was evidently less potent – and also I had a long night last night and am not half so sleepy to-night.
I’ll be glad to see Dad again, but I always feel strongly disinclined to plunge back into social life, when I have been on one of these treks.
I’ll probably add a bit to this when I have seen the letters that are waiting for me – Good-night for the moment.
Darjeeling
June 8th
I arrived here at 3 o’clock on Saturday and found Dad looking very well. From his letters he seemed to be very tired – but actually he seems pretty fit. Its good to see him again and that, plus the fact that the Rains have broken make me resigned to leaving the mountains.
There were another batch of letters waiting for me here and more came in yesterday – Your last Report shall be sent to you directly I get back to Calcutta. I don’t remember exactly what Mdelle and Miss Cap. said, but I know they were both good and as far as I remember – Mdelle’s almost fulsome. I’m sorry to hear that Rosemary is so bad at French. I wonder if one can say anything to her which would help to alter her attitude – because that of course, is what is holding her up. She’s quite sufficiently intelligent to be able to learn easily if she had the “emotion” of wanting to. Memory, I believe, is largely made up of “emotion”. If one wants to be able to do a thing, one can remember the facts necessary for it in a way that one could never do without the desire to be able to do it. Its a pity the “auras” of you and your form mistress don’t seem to be the sort that mix well – It just is so with some people. Whether its a difference of character or some more subtle variation of spiritual make-up I don’t know, but one quite definitely comes across it at intervals in life, just as, happily, one comes across the reverse – There’s a kinship of spirit with some people, which easily bridges any gaps in differences of age or sex.
Dad is getting copies of my Journal typed, but they are not likely to be ready before next week at the earliest – so, for the moment I will just tell you that we have had a wonderful trek – crossed three snow passes, the last of which is’nt a proper pass and has never been crossed before and all this without any sickness or mishaps, except that two of the porters overate on a feast of mutton we gave them, and had to be dosed with Epsom Salts –
Best love, my darling
from
Mum
P.S. I am telling Auntie that I think it would be a good thing for you to go to Germany in the Summer holidays – You do want to, don’t you?
Family letter from LJT
The Club
Darjeeling
June 9th 1936
My Dears,
Here I am home again after a wonderful trip, on which we crossed three snow-covered passes, over none of which there were tracks. One has only once been crossed by a European, and that was at the end of the last century, the next has been crossed probably a dozen times, and the third one was’nt properly a pass at all but a col. and on the far side of it we had to cut steps in an ice wall and clamber down it. However, for the detailed account you will have to wait for my journal, which, marvellous to relate, I managed to keep up to date, and of which Herbert is letting his typist do some copies this week. We had no illnesses, accidents or misfortunes, and enjoyed every minute of the time we were out. It was great fun getting letters at the little village of Chungthang, three marches north of Gangtok, which is the most northerly PO in Sikkim, to which letters are carried twice a week by runner.
The weather having broken in the lower valleys, we decided that it was not worth while trekking back to Darjeeling by an unknown path across the mountains as we had thought of doing, had the weather still been fine. Instead we climbed up to Gangtok, and stayed a night there, leaving by car the following morning. We shared the same big car to Teesta bridge, about 3 ¼ or 3 ½ hours drive from Gangtok, and there we parted, Helen going on down the cart road to rail-head at Siliguri, and so to Calcutta, while I changed into a Baby Austin, and went up the steep mountain road to Darjeeling in exactly 2 hours. They had sent me a bran new car and she took all those frightful hills and turns like a bird. Herbert was waiting for me on the balcony of the Club (Always known as “The Quarter-deck”) It looks out over the place where the cars arrive, for in Darjeeling they are only allowed to come so far on one special road, and no further. It was good to see him again, and to find him cheerful and well. His friends tell me that he has been enjoying the most morbid imaginings about what might have been happening to me, and suppose I had been carried away in an avalanche, how he would set about going to find my corpse! I arrived at 3 o’clock, and almost immediately sent for the barber and had a hair-cut, and then washed my hair and had a bath. Next I sent to the chemist’s shop across the road for a box of sun-tan powder, for when I tried to powder my face with my own dark rachel tint powder the result was most lamentable! On top of my tanned skin it gave a sort of mauvish tinge resembling the Anglo Indians who try to modify their darkness with light powder. Having thus refreshed and fortified myself, we had tea and set forth to see Charlie Chaplin in “Modern Times”. We laughed a lot, but of course there is no special reason why the film should begin or end. From that point of view its not a patch on the “Kid” or “The Gold Rush”, but the detail of the production is excellent.
On Sunday morning we did a thing which I had not done for years, and I don’t suppose Herbert has ever done. We went down to the Sunday Market and took photos. I had about ten exposures in the Leica camera which Dr Jenkins had lent me (There are 40 on a spool) and I wanted to finish them off. It was quite amusing down there. You do see an extraordinary mixture of types.
Walter Jenkins took me to see “Becky Sharp” on Monday night. Funnily enough it was the first film that I have seen which has been entirely in colour, and I thought it very good.
This is not much of a letter I am afraid, but I am somewhat cumbered up with arrears of correspondance. Any how you will have more than enough of me next week when you get the Journal of this trip. I am afraid it is fearfully long, and I pray those of you who are not interested not to feel it is a duty to wade through it.
Best love to you all
LJT
From HPV to Annette
Darjeeling
June 9th 1336
My dear Annette
Of course the news of the week – or say the event of the week – is the return of your mother looking fit as anyone could and bursting with happiness and excitement. I thought that she might be back for lunch, but eventually after waiting went off and had mine, leaving spies to call me if she appeared on the road below the Club, so that I might be there to greet her, pretending not to have fed. All unnecessary stratagems, for she did not arrive till just before tea or maybe earlier – three o’clock, say. She retired into a bath after a haircut, and had a shampoo too. A regular spring clean. Then after tea we went to see Charlie Chaplain and laughed hyena like: but without satisfaction. Not a film that I should wish, or even maybe consent, to see twice. No substance to it. In fact it seemed to lack courage: instead of letting situations tell he clowned for laughs; and got them.
My own doings are not interesting. Two walks, neither very long and neither at all worth describing. A lunch on Sunday with an Honourable Member at which I talked rather too much: Mrs Gupta there the mother of one with whom you played – a witty woman. Incidentally I have a bit of a tummy ache this evening. Perhaps I eat too much in Darjeeling. Most people do. Certainly I don’t exercise enough: omitting usually the physical jerks.
Work has gone better in one sense: I humped myself and wrote a whole lot more forms and a whole lot more rules. You cannot conceive how much work goes into the designing of statistical forms, or call them schedules. They have to be self-chicking ie so arranged as to throw inconsistencies into relief at once, and also to be such that each item of information is available in some convenient register. So they are full of snags. I scrap and start again frequently. All afternoon I have been calculating how many hundred thousand of these forms we shall have to print for this year’s work: and I am tired of it all.
Weather better. Snows showed through the clouds the other evening – out Eastwards. I don’t know those hills by name, but won an argument with your mother. Since then she has taken the compass out on walks.
Enough Much love
Yours Dad.
From LJT to Annette
The Club
Darjeeling
June 16th 1936
My darling Annette
When I wrote last week I suppose I have neither collected my thoughts or sorted my papers, for of course I have your last term’s report here and enclose it herewith. I’m glad its such a good one –
Your account of the expert on botany coming a crash in the sphere of practical gardening, made me laugh! How often it happens! I was meditating on the subject of intelligence this morning, apropos of getting my journal typed. Its no wonder Bengali stenographers get poor pay, because they are so incredibly stupid, most of them. But then – how incredibly stupid so many people are, as you find out when you want any job done that requires a little independent thought or ability to absorb facts and then use them – I suppose there’s a type of simple country peasant mind, which can learn some hereditary trade to perfection, but may not be capable of grasping much outside it – people such as village blacksmiths – “hedgers and ditchers” and others who follow simply country callings.
Thank you for sending the cutting about Miss Benon’s death – I had a short note from Miss Capstick, saying that she is very glad that you are staying on at school and she mentioned – otherwise I had not seen it.
It certainly seems a pity to let too much of a high church atmosphere creep into the Chapel Services. Dad says “Good God – If they start incense, we’ll take Rosemary away” – He cant bear what he classes as “heathen practices”.
I’m very curious to know how Richard likes the life at Besançon University – I wonder what sort of curriculum it will do and how much he will be able to follow in French – I hope he will write us a good description of it.
For a wonder I am indulging in novel-reading – About four years after everyone else had their nose buried in it, I am reading “Anthony Adverse” and finding it very absorbing. In fact I have to be stern with myself and only read for limited periods – 15 minutes when the bearer brings my tea in the morning, and while he is getting the bath ready etc. and about an hour before dinner, when we come in from our evening walk. I have set my mind on sticking all my photos into albums before I go back to Calcutta and I work away at it every evening after dinner.
Best love to you, my child and thank you for your letters, which we always find fresh and amusing
Mum
The enclosed photos were taken to finish up a film – and look like it!
Family letter from LJT
The Club
Darjeeling
June 17th 1936
My Dears,
There is nothing much to write about this week. I have been lying very low, not going to the Gymkhana Club, and spending most of my time very happily in my sitting room, writing, doing accounts, and generally clearing up all the arrears of work and correspondance which had accumulated while I was away. I also got the strips of tiny prints from my films. I took five films with 36 exposures on each, so looking through them has taken some time. There are not many complete failures, some are definitely good, and some are medium. Unfortunately the two days on which we crossed the Börum La and the Sebu La, there was a lot of cloud drifting about, which is so terribly destructive to photography, and the pictures I took on those days are not very good. Its no fault of mine, but just the weather. Walter Jenkins is coming up again on Friday, and he is bringing the films with him, so that we can go through them and decide what are worth enlarging, and to what size.
On Friday morning I took my collection of flowers down to the Botanical Gardens, and the old Head Clerk there, who has a very good knowledge of the Sikkim flowers, has set to work to specify them. They have a fairly good Herbarium here, but I shall get them checked again in Calcutta. Mr Basu, the Superintendent of the Gardens, had been bothering me for a long time to go down and see the Rock Garden, about which I have been agitating for the last three years. I persuaded Mr Biswas, who was acting as Head of the Botanical Dept. last year, to get on to Basu about it last year, and Mr Biswas and I went down our selves, and taking off our coats and rolling up our shirt sleeves, we showed him how to get to work, to his great constanation. He stood by and chanted sorrowfully “I am a very sick man”.
However during the winter he has set his malis to work, and has made a very good job of it, except that he has put a perfectly frightful bridge, badly made of iron girders and concrete, across the middle of the garden, instead of the old rough wooden one. He has got a good many European things, such as rock roses, growing, and a lot of primulas and other things from the higher altitudes in Sikkim. It remains to be seen whether they can stand the constant heavy downpour of the Rains here. I had found a lovely white primula in a high and unknown valley, growing profusely in one place only, and in Gangtok I was excited to find that Col Bailey, who was Resident there for many years, and a keen plant collector, and who happened to be on a visit to Gangtok when we passed through, had never seen it. Bahadur Babu at the gardens has identified it as Primula Nivalis, but says it is rare in Sikkim. I was wondering in the back of my mind whether it was the same one they found on Mount Everest.
We are feeling very sad about the failure of the Everest Expedition. I was talking to Sergeant Fawley, who is doing their wireless work here on Monday morning, and he told me then it was all over. I asked him to send up a message of condolence for me, and ask them to let me know when they expect to arrive in Calcutta, and who would like to be put up. The home-coming will be specially flat this time, for they don’t intend to try again for many years, and Barring Wyn-Harris’ spectular bit of work in the avalanche, I don’t think there has been anything that has not by now become more or less routine.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were all beautiful days last week, with the snows perfectly clear all the morning, and popping in and out between clouds all day. Herbert gets back from office between 5 and 5.30 most days, and we have a cup of tea and walk till dark or after. The weather has not been so good since Saturday, but it has been fine enough to walk each evening except Monday, when it came down in torrents just as we should have been going out, so we drifted along to the Gym Club instead.
Yesterday morning I had a visit from Dr Law, the bird collecting man who has those beautiful avairies near Calcutta. He has been up here and in the Teesta Valley for a few weeks, collecting, and he persuaded me to leave my writing, and go with him to his house to see his new birds. His house is about half an hours’s walk from Darjeeling, and the walk, plus looking at his birds and garden, (for he is a keen horticulturist too) took up the whole morning. He helped to to identify some of the birds I saw when I was out, and I think I have managed to learn a few new ones. I find I can only carry the images of four or five new birds in my mind each time I go to see his collections. If I try to memorise more, I get confused.
I am sorry the Journal is not ready to send this week. Just at this moment, masses of work have come in for Herbert’s stenographer, so he could not do it, and I have had some difficulty in finding anyone to undertake the work. Mr Kydd produced a little Anglo Indian girl, who has been through a school of stenography and typing, and who is anxious to get work, so I have given it to her to do. I hope she wont make a hash of it.
The rains have broken with fury in Bengal, and in place of the drought, floods are now the order of the day. Calcutta has had tremendous rain storms, and consequent flooding of the streets. We wish we could go down now, as its comparatively cool, and the flat, and the car, and my horse are all waiting there for us, but Herbert’s work ties him up here beside his Minister for the moment. For weeks past he has been writing Rules for the new Bengal Indebtedness Act, and they are now just in, or coming from the press. He has to correct the proof and go through them all with the Minister before we can get away. He has been correcting the proof of the Bengali version the last two days, and has come back from office very late and feeling tired and blear eyed, for the printed Bengalis script is a singularly trying one to the eyes. I shall be glad when he is through with these rules, for writing rules that no lawyer, Bengali, or English can get round or through is not easy work. He has found it very tiring.
I am feeling a little guilty, as I really ought to be doing some sort of entertaining up here, but I am so enjoying having a quiet week or two, that I think I shall let the entertaining go by the board.
My best love to you all
LJT
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
June 24th 1936
My dear Annette.
I have just been praising returns to Calcutta and the plains in a letter to your brother Richard: and feel as if you must be able to guess for yourself how fine a thing it is to emerge from the mist and to see the sun again. In spite of the heat and the moisture, in spite of the fan blowing one’s paper all ways at once and defiling the excellence of my writing, in spite moreover of having been sick as a dog on the way down the hill, I am vastly glad to be away from Darjeeling.
Yes: all went wrong on the way down. A light and swaying car and thick mist. It helps to ward off such disasters if one gazes intently at a distant point but where there is a thick mist and one’s eyes focus on a point perhaps 10 feet ahead this solace fails. Probably in that car all was lost from the start. I fell into a state of queer coma and twice had to stop the car and cough up all that was coughable by the road side. I attained in this way to a condition of apathy resembling the Nirvana of the Buddhists, and was only somewhat revived by a meal at Sihgan. There we always renounce the dinner of five courses and fall back on tinned sausages and tinned fruit. Usually they are restoratives: on this occasion not altogether so. Strangely I slept quite well in the train: but one wakes at 5.30 at Ranaghat for morning tea: and by midday I was non compos. My strength failed and my condition was abject. It so chanced that two major crises had to be attended to and ruins fell about my head. It would have been good to return to the house and sleep, but things forebade this till five. Then I had tea and thereafter lay flat on my back in a lax coma.
All previous doings were eclipsed by this event. But I can remember going to see a film, the Little Colonel (Shirley Temple), which to my wonder was excellent: on Friday: or Saturday. We had been a walk of sorts. Saturday it was, for on Friday, having had two successive bad nights I was fit for nothing, and in the evening for sheer desperation drank milk stout (phew!) for dinner and sent myself into a deep sleep, which saved my reason. On Saturday to complete the cure I drank mild stout (ugh!) for dinner – and in consequence could not get off to sleep till a very late hour. There is some moral in this: and I think it is that I do not like stout. Last year I drank it as a cure for something, perhaps wind. Did I tell you that, being scientifically minded, I divided, of a sudden, all winds into belly wind and bowel wind – both without care?
My learning of some French by heart does not progress. Your mother objects to my reciting it: and there is no learning it otherwise. It is a pity that the pieces which attract me are always on subjects remote from actuality – what is “la petite fleur bleue” which grows more easily than elsewhere “dans la terre de Washington”? it should be happiness or simplicity or home affection, by the context.
Do you continue to do neck stretching and such? Not to judge by your photo. Out on you!
Much love
Dad
From LJT to Annette
14/1 Rowland Rd
Calcutta
June 24th 1936
My darling Annette
I’m glad you want to go to Germany. I think it will be a good thing for you and I feel that being with friends of friends will be a very different thing from being with the people you went to in France last year. There is just a chance that Herbert Richter might be at home, I suppose. I heard from him from Bali – a letter written on April 2nd. He was going home via China Japan and America – but I don’t know how long leave he will have – He thought it probable that he would have a spell of home service now, but says he will always be home-sick for India. I am sorry he has gone – I was very fond of him and he had a nice friendly way of dropping in at odd times without being asked, which I always consider a mark of friendship. It would be nice if he were in Dresden and you could meet.
We got back home this morning and Mogul and Latif had the flat looking so nice for us the wood floors and every bit of metal all polished beautifully and 3 great jars of tube roses scenting the drawing room. Its nice to be home again amongst all ones own treasures – My own writing bureau is what I specially like getting back to. I had the drawers and shelves made to my own design and to suit my own requirements, and I do so like it.
Its amusing that “smell” should know so little about a garden, but infuriating that she should pretend to have knowledge which she has not got – I class that as one of the major sins, especially in parents and teachers. Sooner or later children and young women like yourself always find out, and it undermines their faith.
You know I have an itch to try my hand at some sort of writing other than accounts of my trips and Reports and such. Walter Jenkins is always egging me on to do so. He flatters me by saying that I have learnt so much about human nature in my some-what wandering life. I don’t know if that’s true – though its true that I have had plenty of opportunity – Unfortunately that does not mean that one can create characters or tell a good story. The detirmination is gradually forming in my mind that I shall give up Guides altogether in the Autumn – Its work that younger people can do so well – and after all these years I am a little tired – Its constantly striving to find and train new lieutenants that is exhausting and takes so much time – By the way, don’t breathe a word to any of the aunts, about this desire to write or they will soon be telling their friends that I am a successful novelist.
Pause here – while I ran round to see that all windows or jhilmils were shut, for there’s a tremendous rain and hail storm going on, and the servants are away for their afternoon siesta. I shall go and have a nap in a minute, though I slept very well in the train last night. Still, one gets to Ranaghal at 5 o’clock, where they bring tea – so it seems quite a long while since I woke and I have to go out after dinner to-night.
Dad has on the whole, been in very good form since I came back from the trip – There were a couple sitting at the next table to us in the dining room of the Club in Darjeeling, of whom the wife is an Anglo Indian – rather stout and not frightfully intelligent. Her husband is I.C.S. and we have known them for years. She was always being overcome with mirth at Dad’s remarks and saying in breathless style, between spasms of laughter “You’ll be the death of me before you’ve finished!” There have been two great events in her life. She divorced her husband and she has had one kidney removed and one or other of these subjects always crops up in conversation, no matter what subject you start on!
Best love, my darling. I hope you have a good week-end at home and don’t find such unfortunate arrangements about the electric light as you found in your dream
Mum
Family letter from LJT
14/1 Rowland Road
Calcutta
June 25th 1936.
My dears,
However nice it has been in the hills, it is also very nice to be home again. Mogul and Latif had made the flat look so clean and shining to welcome us, and had filled three big jars with tube roses, which I adore. We had a misty drive for the first part of the way down from Darjeeling, and then we got below the clouds and had beautiful views of the plains, and fine sunset effects on huge mountains and billows of cloud. We travelled in one of the new Ford V 8 Cars, which are becoming very popular for mountain work, but it upset Herbert dreadfully. I think the bodies are lightly build and sway a great deal. We had to stop twice, and poor Herbert arrived at Siliguri feeling rather a rag. He has not been as bad as that for years. Luckily that sort of sickness does not leave much in the way of after effects, and he was able to eat a hearty dinner, and slept quite well in the train. It was a cool journey, and I slept extremely well from about 9.30 p.m. till 5 a.m., when early morning tea is brought at Ranaghat. Winsome, like an angel had come to meet us. She is looking well in spite of having stayed down for the hot weather, and has become so slim!. She drove us home in her car, and we sat and drank more tea and exchanged all the news, while waiting for the luggage to arrive. We went round to see the children in the evening. John is looking a bit pale, but seems full of life and has grown so tall. Charlotte is looking wonderfully fit. She is not exactly rosy, but she does not look pale, and she is such an engaging little pet.
My morning was spent unpacking and putting things to rights, ordering stores and so on, when I was not engaged in long telephone conversations with various friends. Percy Brown was one of the early ones to greet me, and he came round to tea in the afternoon, wanting to hear in detail about my trip. He has been a lover of Sikkim for so many long years. He told me a story about himself which made me laugh tremendously. When we went to Darjeeling towards the end of April, Calcutta was sweltering in the beginning of a heat wave. P.B. found the heat very trying, so he thought he would try the dodge of having a big block of ice under the fan, so that the air was blown on to it and cooled a little before reaching him. He had a tall stool put on top of a small table under the fan. On the stool he put a small zinc tub, and in the tub a maund (80 lbs) of ice. The arrangement worked well for several days, but there came a day when the block of ice was tall and narrow. One or more of the half dozen bottles of soda water which were put in the tub with it to keep cool, probably slipt and lying against the bottom of the ice block on one side, caused it to melt rapidly in that place, with the result that it suddenly collapsed, and fell with a crash right on poor old P.B.’s diaphragm. The tub came over with it and drenched him and his table with water, and the soda water bottles, falling with a crash on the marble floor detonated with terrific bangs. The chaprassi and the clerks rushed in thinking P.B. had been bombed, and were confronted with master in this sorry plight, almost winded by the weight of the ice striking him “amid ships”. He says he was reduced to removing his wet clothes, and while they were being dried, he clothed himself in a kilt made of the largest size Government envelopes.
My last few days in Darjeeling were quite gay. On Friday night I went to see “Escape Me Never”, which I missed when it was having its initial run in Calcutta. Elizabeth Bergner’s acting is certainly fine, but the play itself is not convincing in the way that the Constant Nymph was, just as the books differed in the same way. On the Saturday after a long walk in the afternoon, Herbert and I suddenly decided to go to see Shirley Temple in “The Little Colonel” at 6 o’clock. We thought it good and throughly enjoyed it. Shirley is a wonderful child, and the three negro servants were simply excellent. Walter Jenkins and I went off to the Gymkhana Club after dinner to the usual Saturday evening dance, which we enjoyed very much. He is a very good dancer, and the band played a number of walzes. At the end we thanked the conductor for giving us so many, and he said “Well I knew there were a lot of people here tonight who really like dancing, and they always like walzes”. I went to the pictures again on Sunday evening with Bry Jones who was up in Darjeeling for a few days. We saw “One More River” which I thought only moderately good.
I had really been keeping very quiet in Darjeeling, but I went and had tea with a Bengali woman, Milly (Pramila) Chaudhuri one day, and Herbert and I went to tea with the Majumdars on Sunday. I daresay you will remember them as very old friends of ours. We also had to lunch out with one of the Indian ministers. Sir Bijoy Prasad Singh Roy on Sunday, so we had rather a full day.
I found my old horse very fit. The woman who has been riding him while I have been away has been down with a sharp attack of flu, so he had not been ridden for a fortnight. I was very canny this morning. I rode alone, and kept him trotting in the lanes and paths, and did not take him out into the open or let him canter or gallop at all. He did a few bucks, but behaved fairly well on the whole. It was nice to be riding him again. The country is very wet this year, and our scope for rides will become more and more limited. Still there are always a certain number of lanes fit for riding, and one or two “maidans” and the race-course at Tolly.
The Journal of my trip is enclosed. It is rather long, I’m afraid. I hope it wont bore you all. I will send a few photos later on. Walter Jenkins brought his leica enlarger in on Friday evening, and he and Richard Gardiner (who was one of our party last Autumn) and I spent the whole evening looking at my films through it and deciding which were the best and to what size they would enlarge. I am going to take them into Agfa’s and give the order to-day. It will be exciting to see them big. Its wonderful what a lot showed up even through the enlarger which was not apparant in the tiny prints or films.
The weather here is sticky but not very hot. It takes a day or so to get used to feeling damp all the time, but one is quickly accustomed to that.
I’m sorry to hear that you have had such a cold and unpleasant summer so far. I hope it will improve before the holidays
Best love to you all.
LJT
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
June 30th 1936
My dear Annette.
On Sunday I laboured with accounts and found, strange to say, that the “balance” shown by the Eastern Trust Co each year was not a balance at all but an overdraft. Apes! But I suppose that they were moved by kindness to continue remitting money to me at the old rate: I had never even suggested that fixed sums should be sent me each year but they seem to have been under the belief that this was expected. So I am about £60 worse off than I supposed, but luckily it makes no odds because I had never really supposed anything – say, instead, than I should have supposed if I had devoted any thought to the matter: but then, again, the least thought and the error would have revealed itself. Accounts are odious unless one plunges boldly into them and then they are rather amusing.
The week’s entertainment has been diving. We have been to the baths most days of late. It is hot and sticky, though cool for the rains: and one can stay in the water long. I do not improve: either with practice or with disuse. Today I felt singularly inept, but maybe this was due to having been energetic yesterday: though even then I refrained from going off the high springboard. It is a form of vanity: I know that off there my dives would lack all finish and I would rather essay such things when no one was about. But someone (and that means a lot of people) is always about when I happen to go there.
Add two visits to my brother Harry’s: one on Sunday which happened to be Charlotte’s birthday though we had forgotten it (but we escaped our own notice acquiring merit by chance) and once today, when John went off to bed fairly soon and left things quiet. This was a boon because usually there is a lot too much of something: and it is not only I who notice this, let me tell you. Your aunt is very pleased to have lost weight: she stands sideways and demonstrates that he is flat stomached: however it is still possible to say that she is plump.
Rather more work than I like these days. It was a scramble to get the Rules into the Gazette: last minute difficulties which led to scrapping the last twenty of the rules or rather postponing their publication. The Accounts people got busy: of all pedants pluperfect and worse they are the most pedantic. Their insistence will lead to a system less convenient, offering more risk of money being stolen, and far more expensive: but because in certain circumstances it is a good system they will have it here. The Government printer in and demanded rhetorically “Do you know how may tons of forms you want printed for your first set of Boards?” I didn’t. “40 tons!!” he cried: costing, for paper alone, some 60,000 rupees – nearly £5000. But theres no help for. –What the printing and despatching costs will be, I can’t reckon: I haven’t tried to.
July 1st
It was a holiday today. Perfect quiet in office and I got through a good deal. But I was demoralised and came away at four o’clock: the stenographer by then had been given far more to do than he could manage. I was rewriting and bracing up the beginnings of the note that I had written, or begun rather, in Darjeeling. Some thirty pages of foolscap and still I had not got on to the new matter which I must lick into shape very soon. The snag was that to go on I had to know what I had written before: and when I read what I had thus written I had to rewrite it as not being sufficiently clear. – Yesterday the weather was perfect in the evening: so your mother was busy with guides and I in office. Today when I came home early the clouds were so black to the south that we did not venture out. We had tea on the verandah and since then, rather sticky, I have written an official and this.
Much love
Dad