1938 October (and end of September)
Family letter from HPV
Darjeeling
September 29th 1938
My dear Joan (handwritten name)
It was a rush getting away from Chinsurah on Tuesday evening; all through the day the office continued to send over files that did not matter at all although I had told them to select only those that it was important to dispose of before the holidays; and things like paying the servants (and getting money to pay them, for I suddenly realised that I had only Rs 100 notes) took up undue time. It had been my intention to run round and see H.D. and Winsome; but just by the Canal Bridge at the corner where one turns into the Dum Dum road the car stopped. Magneto trouble. After some time a taxi passed and I took the luggage in it to Sealdah Station where I left it with the bearer; and I myself went on to the U.S. Club. A lot of time was wasted on this and even if I had had the car it would have been useless to go out to Alipore; as it was I had barely time for a bath and change before a hurried dinner and a rush for the train. The car turned up at the club for me; the damage was a magneto spring broken – the spring in the make-and-break; lucky that the break happened just inside Calcutta and not on the way in where I should have been stymied altogether. At the station I met Harold Graham who said that the Chief Secretary had come down to Calcutta on account of the crisis in Europe ant that the under-secretary had suggested that Graham might in consequence think it well to stay down also; but he rejected this with scorn, saying that if officers were wanted back in the plains Government might telegraph for them. A comfortable night but very little sleep; for some reason the E.B.R. is worse than either of our other two railways as regards shaking; one holds oneself rigid in consequence and doesn’t relax as necessary for sleeping well. It was a wonderful morning and when I looked out at Haldibari at about six (for the train was half an hour late) the Snows were showing very clearly through cloud which improved them. Any number of buses and cars on the roads and the general pace was slow. I survived the trip, though through sheer habit perhaps once or twice I wondered whether I should not. The road was in very bad condition at many places, after slips and rockfalls. It remained fine all morning but the snows did not show except for a little in the evening by snatches. I met various people outside the club on my arrival and during the morning, none of outstanding interest; and being tired I did nothing all the morning but chat and lounge around. After lunch I retired to my bed and slept; I got up at a quarter to four, being deceived by the travelling clock into thinking that it was a quarter to five – the hour hand has slipped – and then I walked round the Mall and after writing my name at Government House went into the Gymkhana club to have tea. As I went up the hill I saw below me the Governor’s car emerge, taking him down to Siliguri; he also is going to Calcutta; and I was pleased to see how the sidecar thing in which the armed escort precedes him had to be pushed by six coolies before it would start while the Governor’s car went slower and slower and finally pulled up dead. An undignified performance such as would have seemed reasonable enough in Sikkim. After tea I fell in with the Symons bari and a group which included Bobbie Taylor and his daughter; Coralie bursting with health and determination turned up later. The daughter does not look as if she ought to be here; slim and almost timid. Other people also appeared but it does not look as if the Puja season were going to be gay. Lorna Janvrin came along thrusting theatre tickets shamelessly on people; I bought two and asked her to ask Miss Pearce if she would come with me. Today I wrote asking her and suggesting dinner here first. And so it has happened that a letter has arrived asking me to Government House for that evening.
This morning which is Thursday I walked round the Mall before breakfast; and feel astonishingly stiff in ankles and knees. Snows showing;
Friday September 30th
And a beautiful morning. It remained so all day; rather a waste because I felt that I ought to be taking more advantage of it. After breakfast Simmons the Forest man came in and we talked shop for three quarters of an hour. Then I sat talking to Taylor for a bit and then I walked round by the Chowrasta and up to the Janvrins to give my message to Miss Pearce. Then down by NBellevue to see if I could light upon Charlotte. I was told that she had gone along to the Gardens and I went there. And then on to the club. No sign at either place. So I came back, met Jerry Symons and talked to him till lunch time. Thereafter I slept like a hog till four and did not arise till after tea. It was probably after that that I wrote the first page of this letter. Later I went to the Gymkhana Club to change a book; met there the Taylors and talked to them for a bit and so back here by 8.15 and to bed by 10.30.
I was extremely annoyed yesterday to receive from the AgriHorticultural Society a lot of packets of seeds. Abominably slack of them to wait till the Pujas to send them out. I have sent them to Stein at Chinsurah asking him to give them to the mali; but it is unsatisfactory not to be able to supervise them myself – since, for all I know, he may merely sell the greater part of them. This answers my question whether it was intended not to have green peas this year. What worries me (if worries is the word; annoys is better) is that there is now so little space left in the vegetable garden; cabbage and cauliflower take up a lot of ground; and since these sell in the basar so much better than other English Vegetables the mali is sure to keep them and to say that these peas beans and such have failed. What a pest a garden is when one has no time to look after it! not that I should have done much looking anyhow. Talking about manure the Watson girl was married a couple of days ago.
Today as the heading of this page shows is Friday. Tonight I shall be taking Miss Pearce to the theatre; an invitation came to dine at government House on Saturday so I altered the date for Miss Pearce. It will mean seeing the show twice alas. People say that it is good; but when did they ever say one wasn’t till afterwards? I walked round Birch Hill this morning before breakfast. The Snows showing almost their whole length. In my little shorts I didn’t sweat so much as I might have but it took me 65 minutes. My left knee and my ankles are terribly stiff and the soles of my feet were sore before I got in. After breakfast I snootled with some crop statistics for a bit, talked to some people for a bit, wrote two or three letters
Pause to rearrange the sheets of paper which had worked all crooked and they are even worse now. Why carbons should be difficult I cannot think, since there is no wind and no fan to disarrange them here.
And after the letters read for a while then went down and chatted to some folk on the quarterdeck till lunch. Then I lay down but did not, as I believe, sleep. After getting up I started on this, which is dull stuff, and now at 5.15 I shall go to the other club for tea-
Monday October 3rd. 1938
I had tea in the smoking room and came back here immediately afterwards for a slouch. Miss Pearce seemed pleased with the dinner and the show though it was not a good dinner. To do her proud I provided half a bottle of fizz but I do not know that she became exactly animated and I did most of the talking myself. Naturally. The show was quite good, but there was a miserable audience; not more than 20 or 30, including man drunk to start with who did himself so proud in the interval that he felt impelled to sing while the play went on and had to be removed. The play was Bats in the Belfry which seemed homelike, for the conversation in our family might have been the original of it. Of course I felt that the acting would have been better for a few brief words from me beforehand. One thing about the small audience was that it contained a large percentage perhaps of 100 of people who could see and did see something coarse in the simplest remark; so everything went with a snap. Bed by 12.15.
Much tempted next morning to hog it for a while, I resisted temptation and went up Observatory Hill before breakfast. How I spent the morning I do not remember except that as I was setting myself to do some work (and now I think of it I had spent an hour by then on letters received the previous two days) I was interrupted by Twynam the Chief Secretary just back from Calcutta after the easing of the crisis, and talked shop with him for a bit; descending to the quarter deck I talked with Col Webb who is up for the dog show and who looks frail; said to be 66 he looks much older, I think; but I do not at the moment remember any one who is 66 to compare with him. Lunch over I retired and slept, though I was not feeling tired; precaution against the coming festivity of the evening. Tea here and then a walk to the Gymkhana Club during which I found that my knee was so stiff as to make walking a difficulty; it felt as if something caught the edge of my kneecap, which is the feeling that results from giving the knee a wrench going downhill. And for this reason although the night was beautifully fine I took a rickshaw to Government House. The dinner was pleasant enough though there was no noticeably merry conversation. Seeing the play a second time was not boresome; my impression that the women did not talk loudly enough was confirmed; the audience being much larger found more difficulty in hearing and the response was less quick than on the previous night. After the play I found that it was expected that we should go on to the dance at the club; so I drifted along and talked a lot, refusing to attempt dancing, and indeed I doubt whether I could have managed it with my knee hurting as it did. So it was that I did not return here till 3 o’clock.
In consequence I did not get up till 7.30 and did not go out before breakfast. But see how great has been the strengthening process during these latter months; for happening to hear Ben Kindersley say that he was going by car to Senchal, I foisted myself on to the party which consisted of him and one Mac whose full name I did not catch; we went off at 10.15, strolled only for a bit and then sat, snow-viewing, and then had lunch, during which I spattered myself with beer which came spouting from the bottle like fizz when opened; also three leeches got on me. We did not go to (dash the breeze; the paper is blowing all over the typewriter) the bungalow but lunched under a rock. Although I was not face-to-the-sun at all so far as I know, I have caught it badly; on my return I dropped in on Frank Ross and bought a lotion which has perhaps averted catastrophe; but all who meet me remark on my nose and Ben says that it far surpasses Duplock’s. I became peeved and protested that the only thing known even resembling his nose was the hind end of a mandrill; and I fear that this only too true remark is being spread and that if there ever was any friendship between me and that handsome one, it will end abruptly. After sitting for a time outside and discussing what to do I went along to the Gymkhana Club with the other two where we had tea and were joined with the Dunlops; they led us back to the Bellevue where we talked for nearly an hour. I learned she is the neice of Crichton Miller. The psychologist. Discourse on Psycho-analysis. At eight returned here intending to get a quick bath. But Ben meeting Ferguson the planter and the Military Secretary insisted on sitting in the Red Room where eventually I deserted him. However after my bath (and it was then past nine) I found him wandering and we had dinner together, occupied chiefly by an argument as to the proper conduct of dog-shows with the man who had been judging; I finally adjudicated; they had been disputing about the difficulty of judging the Best Dog in the Show type of event (Lhasa terrier or Great Dane so to speak) and I advocated a mixed Cat and Dog event, to make things easier. It was a quarter to eleven before I went to bed; and at twelve two planters in the next room, having drink taken started to settle the question quietly. Very Scotch; one said “Now you have apologised publicly and I have accepted your apology for what you said – like a gentleman; and I want to know before we go further WHAT THE HELL YOU MEANT by saying it.” And so on. It was obviously useless to ask them to stop, because they were clearly fuddled and obviously low jat; and the kept me and half the club awake for a long time repeating themselves. None the less I got up at 7.15 and went out for a walk before breakfast; which as you will admit is a marvel after two or even three late nights. But I must say that I do not feel energetic. Now I shall unguent my nose and go down and slack.
Tuesday October 3rd
After my descent I went out and bought sock-suspenders for they are things that decay rapidly upon me; and then having chatted for a short time with a Dooars planter whose name I cannot remember (Mac Something and his garden was near . . . . . . . I’ve forgotten . . . . . ah! Gairkatta bazaar) (and it is called Gairkatta itself) a big and genial man who always greets me as an ancient friend, I went up to the Gilchrists’ for lunch. We sat out on the lawn before and after it; they have one of the villas on the ridge. Cyril Gurner was there almost handsome and more genial than ever before known and there was mixed discourse till after lunch when Gilchrist began asking me about random-sampling; and when Gurner became curious; and when I set too and gave a neat and vivid disquisition on the subject which probably bored Mrs Gilchrist but which aroused the others to keen discussion. I found that I knew a lot more than I thought and that I remained a lot more interested than I thought. It all sounded very good and plausible. Walked down with Cyril to the Club where I fell in with Kindersley who suggested my coming out to Ghoom with him and walking back; out by car that it; the same party of three and the name is MacPharlane. The weather remains beautiful and the snows show all day. Yesterday evening the snows showed up in relief as I have never before seen them. Every detail clear. And I had the undoubted pleasure of lecturing on the names and the run of the mountains, at the request of the others who did not know them. I had put on shorts and we walked not too fast because Kinders gets cramp in the leg every now and then. A good evening. Pleasantly tired we had tea at 5.45 in the reading room here and after the others had gone I read the weeklies till dinner time, and afterwards before an early bed-going.
Up this morning at 7.15 and out for a brisk walk round Snowy View road; it amazed me to find that it is only 15 minutes quicker than the whole way round Birch Hill. Ben had spoken with appreciation of the Brioches obtainable at the Swiss place and on my way back I dropped in to get some for him; there were none and I bought croissants; but he had finished breakfast by the time that I returned. Some time after breakfast went in reading Mahalanobis’ notes on the jute-sampling experiments; then I talked to sundry folk down below and since I started this I have been engaged in converse by many who passed this room. Another glorious day. My face has not actually come off but it is sore or sore-ish.
Never have I been so lazy or paid so little regard to things.
(handwritten) Much love
Toto
From HPV to LJT
The Club
Darjeeling
Oct 3rd Tuesday
My dear Joan
As you may judge from the typed stuff I have been leading an idle life. How excellent that Ben Kindersley should have been here,
with sufficient energy to do things
with sufficient toleration of spirit to be pleased when I go with him and
sufficiently congenial for me to like being with him! Probably, otherwise, I should have done nothing. My knee of which I made moan in the circular letter has not really worried me since that day. My face does no more than smart. And, having a drowsiness which may be due to lack of sleep, (since apart from my late nights, it is a noisy place, this is) or may be due to the sun and such, I am very well.
One Pasang (Pasang Chikudi would it be?) came beaming up, to show me his new chits. A very good chit from the Germans and a very good chit from the French – nothing could justify such enthusiasm as the French show. He says that he wanted to get them counter-signed by you so far as I could make out. Kama Paul (very smart) and Sulu (the motor car lady) sent salaams.
It is strange to think that this will be the last letter but one to find you in England. I shall have to do some calculations about times of arrivals of the ship and of the mail at different places. Cyril refused to believe that you’d be arriving on the 24th because he was sure Phyllis was coming by mail. He is not only more genial but more smart than I have seen him before. But he does sweat. Clutching a volume of Karl Marx he reeled back from Katapahar to lunch yesterday, and went to sleep for a bit afterwards: I like talking to Gilchrist: we behave like a mutual admiration society.
I am now a pucca Commissioner. It seem a mistake on the part of Government to make me this whereas they did not confirm a man like Drummond (who knew his job) even after two or three years acting in it.
Today is Governor’s Cup Day: and actually I toyed with the idea of going down to Lelong. But it is sure that my face wouldn’t stand it: as it is, there is an incipient cracking sensation about it.
I forgot to bring a fountain pen up with me: forgot also the Glacier cream. It is getting on for noon: and I am beyond belief drowsy.
Much love, my darling
your
Toto
From HPV to LJT
Darjeeling
Wednesday October 5th
My dear Joan,
This is a copy of a letter that I am sending off to England by Friday’s airmail. I thought that it would reach you there before you sailed but recalculation and the reflection that it will have to be forwarded from Grindlays have filled me with doubt.
Having made a muck of the carbons I start again. Was it only yesterday that I wrote? A quiet day. Walk to the Club before lunch to get some books. I had decided not to go out in the sun because my nose is extremely and the rest of my face somewhat tender – while my ears have begun to peel in an ominous but harmless manner. I hogged it after lunch for about an hour; and after tea felt that it would have been better if I had not. So when evening fell I went along to the other Club and there fell into the Company of Mr Chowdhuri the lawyer who defended in the Bhowal Sannyasin case, in which a man claimed to be a zamindar who died in Darjeeling some ten years before, and won in the lower court by (it is said) the expedient of paying the Judge 2 ½ lakhs of rupees; interesting talk by Mr Chowdhuri about it all but I had heard a lot of it before and he talks of nothing else. He has a grievance in that he is owed 2.1/2 lakhs of rupees himself for the months of work that he put into the case and which the wife or rather widow of the zamindar cannot pay. As Kindersley and I left the Club we met Ferguson of Lessh River who said that he had John Tyson and an A.D.C. dining with him and that we were to tell them he would be late; we told them that he would be never, because we adjudged him to have reached a state of jollity hat would put them out of his mind in two ticks (and it proved to be so) and we took over the entertainment instead. I bathed and changed in six minutes which is as little as ever I have achieved in that way, while Kindersley who also shaved took two minutes longer. We gave the two a dinner and had good talk; and afterwards we carried out the plan arranged by Ferguson and went to the movies – the Yank at Oxford which I had seen before but laughed at again. When we got back to the Club here we ran into Ferguson, who was wandering vaguely and beaming; and we then discovered that he was to have been guest to Tyson and the other man, not host, so that we had been had for mugs when we have them the dinner (with claret) and when we paid for the movie tickets. The best part of the show was a trailer of Diana Durbin Mad about Music, the only trailer except a Tom Walls that I have ever seen which gave one a desire to see the show. The next best thing was the trailer of a Jessie Matthews film which was amusing. After that I put the Yank. Then the advertisements. And a bad last the News. But I am not sure that a group at a table, C.K.Homphrays, enormous, Mrs McAlpin cadaverous, Lorna Janvrin and a planter, were not better value; scene from Monmartre so to say. C.K. is more than enormous; the other day a planter seeing him remarked that it was unsafe to let him roam without a mahout. It was ten to one before I came up to bed.
None the less I woke fresh enough to get up at once and go for a walk. Past Government House and down Snowy View zigzag, the reverse of yesterday’s walk; it took ten minutes less, partly because I walked as fast as I could and partly because the zigzag takes much climbing; but the end result is that a toe has been cut by the next’s toenail and I have blisters on both feet though not bad. It is now twelve; I have wasted the morning; sitting on the terrace takling to several folk and reading a murder tale.
At that moment in came letters; my dear brother Parp on humus Jews and Germans and my dear wife on things in general. There is a lot of work that I ought to do sometime, but I shall not do it now, and perhaps shall not do it all till after the holidays. However I shall look at my Development Act rules; and at once.
Thursday October 6th
What is more I did till lunch-time and after too. But when I went to lunch Kindersley suggested going out somewhere; and with Twynam we went out to 5-mile bustee by car and walked along the road which goes off at right-angles towards a forest bungalow name-forgotten though well known for 1 ½ miles. Knowing that the walking would be leisurely because Kinders gets cramp every so often whether he walks slow or fast, and then can only hobble I tried the new and extremely heavy marching boots. This was an error for they are suited only to the slow deliberate trek-pace and are in no way flexible; also my feet are soft. I developed a big blister on my heel. Moreover I was very tired after we had returned and had had tea; and I had to lie down and sleep. It was a good walk; a beautiful evening but clouds had come up – the first that we have seen for days so to speak; there have been wisps.
Dinner with the Symons here; and afterwards the amateur variety show at the Capitol. Packed House. A good show really but much too long and in parts abominably vulgar beyond anything that a pro, even George Robey, would have ventured upon. I flagged towards the end, and when it was all over I was relieved to find that the Symons and their guests except one refused the suggestion that they should come up here for a drink. That one really had promised to join another party and when this was run to earth in the old billiard room at the far end of the club I was free to go to bed. This morning I slept till 7.30 and did not go out before breakfast. This nose of mine is stiff; it also peels: my lips are breaking; the sun has been unexpectedly strong, as the Frank Ross man said when I went in to buy strapping for the blister – he is having a succession of people in burnt raw. I have spent the morning finishing off the letter re the Development Act rules and in talking a little to new-comers like Gladding who stop at my door. His voyage to Singapore had braced himup and he proclaims his renewed fitness.
(in Annette’s version of the letter, there is the following handwritten addition and the rest of the letter is missing)
P.S. Monday Oct 10th
I am indebted to you for a letter about the crisis which I found very interesting. It appears that all letters received from England about this time are brief and have the same contents - - anxiety made it impossible to write. I was anxious too, not on my own account. But I imagine that what we all felt was what all felt often in the middle ages, when invasion was an easy thing.
The weather has changed. Thick cloud hangs over us. The conference of Commissioners has begun. And the Ministers have caused me acute annoyance at the first meeting.)
(handwritten para follows in copy of letter to LJT) On Thursday I lunched with the Janvrins at Rangneet (is it?), after walking down. Pleasant. The walk caught my blisters and I am not sure that it didn’t tickle up my burnt face. He brought me back by car at 4 o’clock.
Saturday October 8th.
Richard’s birthday. Remembered in my bath, and with appropriate thoughts. I sent a telegram yesterday which should arrive at the right time today; the wording is vapid but it is the sending that counts, I hope.
Thursday evening was celebrated by going to see a movie, Gangway with Jessie Matthews in it; not good as a film as others pointed out to me but I was amused by it. Yesterday morning went in work or attempts at work; and by lunch time I was tired out. Perhaps I have had less sleep here than is required. I slept for half an hour and felt limp afterwards; in the afternoon. So it seemed wise in spite of my peeling nose and my swollen lips (I am afraid to go out during the day now on account of them) to go out and I walked down to Percy Keelan’s house slowly and with a growing awareness that the two blisters on the soles of my feet were going to cause me grief. He was very genial and conversed pleasurably; but I had struck a moment when there were at least eight other visitors; I can never remember which of the two ladies living there is Mrs Keelan and what is the name of the other. Eventually I stayed some time; when I got back here I decided on account of my feet not to go to the boxing after dinner for which I had taken a ticket, but when the time came a consciousness that my real motive was a form of curmudgeonness induced me to go after all. Among the items were matches for boys; little Bhutia boys, two and two and a half jampots high, of remarkably study build smote each other with assurance; one was so small that he reminded me of Pip and the keys – if he touched the floor he couldn’t reach the other’s face. When the match was over and the bigger boy came forward and shook hands after his victory, the little one promptly smote him in the jaw, not realising that another round had started. This was funny for to see. Boxing doesn’t interest me because I do not know enough to appreciate the technique; and I left at half time. Thus I was asleep by twelve; but my lips woke me up and kept me awake for some time; it was self-denial not to satisfy curiousity and look at the time. This morning I abstained from walking because my blisters hurt; but Kindersley, now staying at Government House, rang up and suggested an outing and I have spent the best part of the morning up to date trying to get hold of a small car. There is none available.
Sunday Oct 9th 1938
The outing was rather successful. Large car to the forest bungalow towards which we walked the other day. Lunch provided by Government House. clouds over hills but a pleasant view. Walk back to Senchal by forest path; rather a disappointment because it does not strike straight up the hill as we had been led to expect but parallels the road by which we had come, for nearly three miles and then goes up to join the path to Keventer’s farm. Miss Pennington, Lady Reid’s companion, for whose benefit Kindersley had arranged the excursion, was most unsuitably shod for rough-path walking; but we went slow and met only two leeches. My blistered feet stood up better than I had hoped to the walk and my face did not suffer more because we were in the shade almost the whole time. It was more like 5 miles than the promised three. Tea at this Club when we got back was very welcome and very pleasant. Kindersley was in good form all day and Miss P. is intelligent and agreeable.
Dinner to H.G. the governor. When he went round the circle of his hosts before dinner, he commented with curiousity on the colour of my nose which was indeed the subject of universal admiration. I wish that it did not itch so heartily. The people at dinner were well mixed and the whole thing went well. Most slunk off immediately afterwards to the other Club dance, the last of the Poojah season; but I remained with a faithful dozen till H.E. left.
From HPV to LJT
The Club
Darjeeling
Oct 9th 1938
My dearest,
Elaborate calculations as to the time which may be taken by your steamer and the time which may be taken by Imperial Airways leads me to believe that I must post today to be certain of catching you at Port Said. It is a scrap of a letter. For I presume that you will have received already the first two typed sheets, enclosed herewith for precautions sake. Parp’s letter said that you thought of going the whole way round: and if you did your chances of receiving these two earlier (at Marseilles) to wit will have been greater. In a way there is less to write about here than in Chinsurah: at any rate in a family letter: up here there is only news of persons, most of them unknown to you probably: also I do not know their names.
Jamen told me that there are various hard cases among coolies. One half paralysed for whom money has been left to be doled out at Rs 10/- per month: but there is no chance of recovery, and he asks what will happen when the sum is exhausted and why not spend the capital on buying a bit of land or some thing to earn the man a permanent income. Another has lost almost all his fingers and the standard compensation rate seems quite inadequate. And so on: I am feeling dull in the wits and cannot remember the details.
Ben told me that the youth doing the Sikhim survey (Taylor was it? or Thomas or some such name) was hit by lightning in his tent. A hole was pierced through his shoulder and all the flesh taken off the inside of his arm: a Babu with him heard him groan and rushed in to find the bedding on fire. He was brought back to Darjeeling and is doing well. That other survey man, whom I visited in hospital after he had been looking for the pass into the Sibu (Sams?) has gone there instead.
Cyril has had a touch of the sun, due to glare: headaches and sickness: but when I met him in the street yesterday seemed well enough.
A letter from MacPherson yesterday told me that Nabin Sarkar had planted his feet and was refusing more expenditure on the Hooghly Howrah scheme till assured of the return. Like Woodhead but worse. If he sticks to this, it is the end. Shall I then yield to temper or despair or whatever one may call it?
I should see you again about a week after you get this – but I don’t realise it.
Much love my darling
Your
Toto
Handwritten letter from HPV to LJT
The Club
Darjeeling
Oct 11th 1938
My dearest
Although I had originally calculated that this would be sure to catch you at Aden if I wrote in time for Friday’s mail, it now seems unlikely.
There is little news. The Conference started yesterday, Monday; the morning was devoted to a wrangle between Ministers with an occasional contribution from one of us; and the afternoon discussion didn’t come off because Nazimuddin said that he had an engagement.
I went to the other club with Ben for tea after trying to work during the afternoon; and there we were joined by the Symons and various others. After two small pegs and a sherry I found that I was talking too much, and mouched off. It was cold. The rink Carnival night: I didn’t go. If anyone had been here to accompany me I should willingly have gone to see Mad about Music a second time. which reminds me that I omitted to mention taking Mr and Mrs Jamieson to see it on Sunday evening: dinner afterwards in the Grill room. Which (again) reminds me that supper tables are now laid in the bar at the Gymkhana Club, at the end of the billiard room: it is a sort of gallery and there are ?new? curtains. Duplock is no more handsome than he was and no more popular. The Mad about Music film was goodish but it should have been blue pencilled: I cried and I cried: so to speak. Before it was some of the slushiest news and other films ever seen, including the King’s visit to Paris, seen by me for the fourth time.
Two letters from you. One discusses going to Agra and the other taking Camilla Boughey with you. Good idea the former: I shall be pleased to know that you are doing something which will give you so much pleasure. Do not arrive in Calcutta on Monday 31st because I have cases fixed which I cannot postpone.
I should have said cauliflowers not cabbages.
Much love, my darling
Your
Toto
From LJT to Annette
29 Stanley Gds
W. 11
Oct 12th
Annette, darling –
Here is Bakers bill – You may get a duplicate for I told them to send this to you, and it had already been posted to me.
Its early morning – and I must get up in a few minutes – so I have no time to write a proper letter – My days in London have been very full – It was interesting seeing Sir Malcolm Watson yesterday – and Ian took me round the Ross Institute.
Best love, my dear! I have enjoyed being with you all this summer and hate leaving you now – but at the same time it will be good to get back to Dad – “The Viceroy of India” reaches Bombay on the 24th
Good-bye! and Good luck!
Mum
From HPV to Annette
Chinsurah
Oct 16th 1938
My dear Annette
Will this reach you in time for your birthday? I rather doubt it. If it does not, I am sorry. It had been in my mind to calculate earlier by what mail I should write but the Commissioners conference and its attendant bustle made me forget.
Any how, in time or not, the letter wishes you the happiest of birthdays and the best of luck for next year and for always. Your mother has not said what birthday present she is giving you from us: but I hope that it is such a thing as you wish. I am an indifferent present giver. Even when I have the array in a shop to stimulate my imagination: but out here without even such aid my mind is a blank and I cannot conjure up any thing likely to please anyone. This is the destruction of present giving. I have not succeeded for years in making any acceptable gift to your mother: now and then I have noted down things for which at odd moments during the year she has expressed a wish: but they have always turned out to be things that she didn’t really want. It would be a sad thing if under the stress of approaching departure she made no provision for your birthday at all: but I put that thought from me.
I had quite a long time in Darjeeling. 28th Sept to 14th Oct. It wasn’t all holiday but even when there was work it was by no means like working down here. Attendance at a conference is boresome rather than arduous: though one finds oneself tired by the end of the day. The worst thing about it is the thought that work is piling up all the time, to be done later. I returned here yesterday at lunch time after stopping in Calcutta to see the dentist after my arrival from Darjeeling: the motor trip from Calcutta was very hot and I felt fit to expire with drowsiness by the time that I came here: but I found no difficulty in getting down to work again and was not discouraged by finding masses of files waiting for me. They were not there: but they rolled up later and my room is now like a left luggage office. There is an endless chain of routine matters to be dealt with and I must admit to disliking them: but they have to be done and it is no use feeling annoyed, as I do, because I can so rarely find time to tackle interesting stuff. Routine means anything that one doesn’t happen to be interested in.
It is extremely hot and sticky: though by the thermometer it ought to feel cooler than it did. As I sat at breakfast in the U.S. Club yesterday in Calcutta, under an electric fan, drops of sweat trickled down my forehead: but I slept unusually well last night, (from about 10.30 till 6.45, without a break) and maybe this indicates that the cold weather is beginning. Maybe it doesn’t for I now remember that it was too hot for more than a corner of the sheet over me. These questions always occupy one’s attention at this time of year but it is an error to discuss them in a letter. Incidentally I detest this airmail paper which it is impossible to keep steady under a fan. Your letters recently, though I have not replied to them and often have not even mentioned their receipt have been interesting and I have enjoyed them. Continue the good work. Do you stay only three years at Oxford? I am not clear about your Schools. When you read modern languages, is there merely the final exam or is there anything corresponding to Honour Mods? I have just sneezed three times; in your honour
Much love, my dear.
your
Dad
From HPV to Annette (individually hand written salutation on carbon copy letter)
Chinsurah.
Saturday, Oct 15th.
My dear Annette.
Back from this holiday trip of which I have spoken so much. I doubt whether I have ever really felt so divorced from responsibility, though there was no cause for it. I had work to do and ought to have had it on my mind.
Best to deal with these last two days first. Yesterday finished the conference; no rows. Little Mr. Mallik the depressed class Minister had a wonderful time; he rolled back in his chair and held forth twisting his spectacles and feeling that he was impressing his personality upon us; the other Ministers always deal with him as if worthy of the deepest contempt and it was a change for him to be able to talk and (to some extent) be sure of an audience. We let him down gently; beyond telling him, not in so many words, that he was making a complete muck of things I said nothing offensive. It was a dull day’s work. Lunch with the Nawab of Dacca. On the credit side, Ben Kindersley was there; con., so was Suhrawardi, one of the Muhammadan Ministers and the balance was thus weighed against enjoyment. He loudly sucked an immense mutton bone out of the pilao and piled it on his small plate along with a heap of other rejects and he talked incessantly about his own cleverness. The general impression was that nothing was clean; smeared plates and verdigrised plate; and I full expected to be violently sick afterwards, before and after travelling down the hill in the car. But nothing such happened; maybe because we crawled down through thick mist. Heavy rain when we reached the plain and Siliguri station was not unbearable hot. News! They have done up the Gentlemen’s lavatory and instead of a depressed and unclean row of aluminium pots there is now a stretch of marble side-chapels, as it would appear to the uninitiated. This was a shock to me and will be a shock to H.D. who has been agitating about it for ages. Maybe my comments to the Agent of the Railway over the luncheon table were more efficacious than I thought. A good night. I was tired after the Trip down the hill. We came into a part of Sealdah station which I had never seen before; suburban traffic part; there had been a derailment owing to a cooli using a lever without discretion.
Breakfast at the U.S. club with Dr. Heron. He says that some man whom he met had been over the Sibu and had used both the Club huts; this man holds that the new hut is a vast improvement on the old. He is not anything much in the way of a climber or walker and found no difficulty in tackling the pass; so the round trip is now definitely on the map for the unadventurous. Of course it was an exceptionally fine season and another year might prove less propitious. The German expedition trespassed into Tibet and Gould is on the war-path. The name of the man struck by lightning was Eilliams. He had his tent on top of a ridge of the Andong Peak opposite the Penlong La (4 miles from Gangtok); there was no path and he was dropped three times from an improvised stretcher on the way down to the road. That is not news for the family in general. I have an idea that I shall have missed both Port Said and Aden as well as London with my letters . . . . . . . After breakfast the dentist; nothing much; only a wax mould for a new tooth on the plate. Then a hair cut. Then a look-in on Idris Matthews to thank him for keeping the car for me while I was in Darjeeling. The Hutchings are going to live with him. By the way as I came out of the U.S.Club on my way to the dentist I passed Anita Brandt (Anina?); a shout elicited the news that she had been back a week and was well. Calcutta sticky; sweat dropped off me even under the fan. The drive out was hot too; I nearly went to sleep; which reminds me that I might as well go to sleep now.
Let the family observe my new carbons, bought today. it is true that the colour is inauspicious.
Sunday October 16th 1938.
My last conscious thought last night (I went to sleep quickly and well) was that I had missed the mail for Annette’s birthday; Would that there were some means of knowing for certain how long the airmail takes! So this morning it was almost my first care to write to her, after having been delayed by a visit from Dr Jafri of the Imambara with another interminable tale of intrigue. No wonder that these Muhammadans failed to hold India; it is interesting to reflect that lack of scruple does not in the long run make up for crookedness . . . . . .I confess to being no writer of birthday letters. The complete pessimist, I have visions and forebodings of my letter arriving in the middle of a toothache or bellyache or something such; and all that I can think of when I start on birthday felicitations is memories of my own. When we lived at Gibraltar and were very very young there was a pleasing custom for a while by which when one had a birthday all had a present each; on my fifth birthday I was given a cup by Leilie not then cumbered with the name of Peter Lombart; on my seventh a playbox and air-pistol, neither quite satisfactory because not the precise ditto of what Frank had; and at the moment I cannot think of any other presents. As regards teas and festivities I do believe that the only one of which I have any real memory is the tea on my fourth, at Beaulieu, when I renounced for ever the love of Patricia Gordon because I supposed her to have eaten all or too many of the chocolate cigars for which then i had a deep regard; she could not really have eaten the lot --- and why should the memory of this have conjured up pictures of the bas-reliefs in an Egyptian tomb? I should like to know what has happened to that Patricia in order to be sure that I didn’t love anything by the renunciation.
Is it worth while trying to recall what happened on those days in Darjeeling that followed the despatch of my last typed letter? Probably not seeing that I cannot remember what date it was. And seeing that on no day did anything happen of any interest. Several people at the Club remarked not only that I looked much better than usual (a thing that they always have said to me even when I felt much worse) but that I was much more mellow. There was universal astonishment because the conference “went off without fireworks” as someone said. The nearest to a dust-up was when, having been persistently interrupted by him, I turned on Harold Graham and suggested that since he obviously felt more capable than I of explaining to the Minister what I was going to say he had better do so for I had no intention of continuing till he had finished. His manners on these occasions are insufferable; he esteems himself the only Civil Servant to know anything --- as indeed we all esteem ourselves but we do not keep on saying so. Also I was a bit peeved on another occasion and showed it; to the general pleasure, for he annoys others who are too benevolent to protest. At least some are, but Ben Kindersley says that he restrains himself because if he did not he would knock Graham’s head off, as he might easily do being of a considerable size. With him I went to see Dr Syn, a film which he had seen before and considered exceptionally good. I did not though I declared otherwise to him, lest he should regret having dragged me to it. He had enticed me to the Gym. Club on Monday evening when I might with more profit to my feelings have gone a second time to Mad About Music ---though the first half of the programme was a barrier to doing so. I demand myself whether Diana Durbin has replaced Grace Moore (is it the name?) in the affections of my dear brother Parp. Also in those last days I did some work. And there was the Government House Garden Party on the Thursday (?Wednesday?), noticeable for an admirable selection of eatable cakes and dainty sandwiches. This made Ben Kindersley to be loud in praise of the girl whom we took out on the picnic and who is Secretary Housekeeper to Lady Reid. The christening was postponed owing to the illness of Joan Reid --- Is she Battye? It was after the party that we went to the Dr Syn thing. My last evening saw me giving Mr Blair who has taken over as Irrigation Secretary a rapid explanation of the reasons why I had said that the Development Act had to be amended; briefly they amount to this, that the compromise accepted by Sir Nazimuddin made the whole thing unworkable. Did I say in previous letters that I had argued with Gladding Finance Secretary about the refusal of his Department to sanction my crop-cutting scheme? Anyhow he ended by writing a note to his Minister suggesting that they should reconsider; it is probably too late now to get the thing going this year, and if it is not done this year it will never be possible afterwards because the trained staff that I want to use will be disbanded; but it is something to have got an admission of error.
There was violent rain down here a few days ago. The traces of it are evidence that the malis did trench deeply for the sweet peas; for the ground in places has sunk and there are deep holes where the water swirled down underground. It looks rather as if the whole lot might be written off. The mali clearly did very little while I was away; there is no more room in the vegetable garden; and the beans and the spinach are not planted; I am not sure about the peas. it is a nuisance that there was the heavy rain after all the seeds had been handed over to the mali, because now when we enquire what happened to anything which he may have sold he will explain that the rain destroyed it. The lettuce which I had written off has begun to come up now that it is a bit cooler. The hollyhocks have been planted out in three rows in the middle of the long bed by the river bank, in a manner that looks wrong; but it is no use grumbling. I wish I had some idea of the proposed lay-out of the beds, for the mali is saying that it is time to plant out various seedlings. Yesterday I started cutting deads (the gaillardias have obviously made a fine show lately and the tithonia are now full of blossom, -- both full of deads now) but was warned off the mesalchi who said that everywhere there were masses of hairy caterpillars painful to touch and hard to see in the dusk; they all say that these come from a tree outside the kitchen which has been stripped of all its leaves and that this is so every year; and they suggest cutting it down. I rather think it to be a nice tree.
This evening I went to the annual meeting of the town club, the one which gave us tea and a strength display. A humble little affair ended by rain. I made a speech suggesting that they should not dispute the decisions of the umpire or the managing committee of a tournament; the secretary’s report had been a long series of complaints about both. it is dark early these days and there was no time after the meeting to see the garden, --- which is a sad matter to me because I have not visited the humus. Except the mali’s own brew about which it is impossible to say anything as a lot of new stuff has been thrown on top of it.
Monday Oct 17th.
Two appeals today; and I visited the humus pit on the way back: as I often do, though there is no obvious connection between the two activities. The second batch (which means the first prepared in the pit) has been used up altogether; and a good half of the third batch has gone too. This last had not looked too promising to me before I went to Darjeeling but now that it has been opened out it is seen to be the real stuff. The richest of rich black earth: I wish that I knew how it compares with the stuff of which the book speaks with its abundant nitrates. It seems a pity that it should be taken away and scattered on the ground. I should like to see what would happen to vegetables grown in it and in nothing else. It is abundantly hot. I woke happy and lay stretched flat for 15 minutes before I got up which is a charm; and I did the exercises with abandon. Much work; no end to ti. After lunch deliberately I lay down for half an hour. More work. Going through audit reports; waste labour for there is nothing to show for it at the end; but I never know when to scamp a thing. After tea, cutting of deads in the garden; then more work, be- it gets dark so early. Just as I was in my drawers after my bath the bearer announced that the police sahib was in the drawing room and I nipped along the verandah, struggling into a vest, to say that I would not be a minute; he had not said that Mrs Holman was there too, but I spied them in time not to make an entry ignomious for a Commissioner. They sat and talked pleasantly for some while. I lent some books. Hartley has left his books with them. One day I must go over and examine them. I have gone back to the Mysterious Universe; it is readable still in spite of my having met him. What beats me is why I should find the little History of Europe so dull; yet of all the French books none other so full of idioms and phrases.
Today I read some more of the two-year old Family Letters. How ignorant is my dear wife, who says that when I dislike anyone I can see nothing good in him. Far otherwise; I dislike him all the more for the good I see in him; it deprives him of any excuse. That too is not so; really I don’t dislike anyone heartily.
(handwritten) Wednesday Oct 19th
I abstained deliberately from writing yesterday since enough is nearly as bad as too much. Mere gossip about the garden, the visit of a young I.C.S. officer (Mr Mukherjee) and endless work. You don’t want to hear it.
Thanks for your letter. I worked after dinner tonight and am blank in the mind.
Much love
Dad
(handwritten addition on version of letter sent to LJT)
Thursday 20th Oct
I feel like Noah – the resemblance is slight: it is merely the return of something sent out, to wit my last letter to you. It was posted in London on the 13th and thus my fears of it being a day late were probably fulfilled. This has made me speculate gloomily on the probability that my letters to Port Said and Aden also missed. I ought to have addressed this returned letter to Port Said instead of waiting till the next mail. As to Aden that was unavoidable unless I wrote there as well as to Port Said. One difficulty has been ignorance when your ship would get where. Now I have probably missed you again, though forgetting that perhaps letters are not delivered in Bombay on a Sunday and that your ship may arrive at dawn on Monday so
that you may be off before the delivery on Monday. I sound only one history book: the only guide that I ran across was one to Lucknow: those which you want are probably in full view somewhere. This history I am sending to Agra because the book may be slower than a letter. There is no excuse for my not having sent off everything sooner: merely a vague feeling that there was loads of time. True I have been working all day, after tea too and after dinner, these last few days – having tied myself up in one file and being compelled to go on and on unless I scrapped all the previous work. Stein came in and interrupted me last night (it is a long letter to Government about Administration of constituencies) and stayed on and on, repeating himself. Strange to say I did not fall into impatience. Having said at 8 that he must go he remained till a quarter to nine. Lucky that I did not ask him to pot luck, for there was not enough meat for two. The evening before, the interruption (to my gardening activities) was a call from a young I.C.S. Assistant, first year: name Mukherjee, home Dacca. I didn’t feel drawn to him but he was harmless enough: and I shoved him off firmly after quite a short stay.
Stein says that Harold Graham was taken to the Eden Sanitarium on Saturday (I think): dysentery again. He is having bad luck. I am sorry that I turned upon him.
The seeds have arrived from Mrs Stanleys two days ago. She says that they were in a box which she couldn’t unpack because she couldn’t get into her flat. – Some of the seedlings have started flowering in the seed boxes: I don’t know what they are or where you would want them to go: when I say “flowering”, I mean in bud.
Yesterday morning at 6.15 I woke to hear quaint noises on the verandah: and at last curiosity led me to sit up and gaze. This alarmed the white cat responsible for them, which had meanwhile entered the bedroom and started testing its claws on the mosquito net. It leapt once into the air and then walked out of the door into the passage very calmly. I did not pursue. Enquiries from the bearer produced the information that the house has three cats, one of them black. The white one came into my office room today and walked outa gain quietly before I found something to throw.
Your room is finished at last or almost finished. The workmen moved out of it yesterday: the paint on the floor was barely dry and so I prevented the bearer from moving the furniture back there. It will be a change to get the passage clear of this and that again.
I haven’t left cards on the Lossings and my two attempts to call on them in a friendly way have failed owing to their being out. The evenings are very short. I have been cutting off deads from the cosmos in the dusk – when it was almost too dark to see: getting them against the sky or the river. Result I have been bitten by mosquitoes in the face.
It is still very hot. Maybe even hotter. I have reverted to doing without a corner of the shawl over me at night. Insects are many. I do not know whether there have been swarms of greenfly yet: someone said to me that insects went on till the Kali Puja.
I have no sort of realisation that you are drawing so near to India. Perhaps its because I have really been working with unusual persistence – very long hours though not perhaps at very great pressure.
No use going onto another sheet. Oh! I ought to have repeated everything that has gone into the Port Said and Aden letters: but the only thing that mattered was saying of course go to Agra – and I now add Delhi and Benares. Take De ????? advice about the last of these places.
Best love, my dear: and a happy trip
Your Toto
From LJT to Annette
P&O Viceroy of India
(letter is dated 15.8.38 but should probably be 15.10 38)
My darling Annette
It is my hope that this will reach you somewhere near the date of your birthday and carry you my greetings and good wishes. You will, I fancy, have Mokes with you – If so, give her also my love.
I am sorry I did not even a post-card off to you from Marseilles – My train did not get in till about 10 o’clock and the boat sailed at 12 – but what with finding my cabin – greeting friends, going to the office to see if there were any letters and what-not, the time slipped away and I only just had time to send a few lines and greetings for her birthday to Aunt –
My journey to Marseilles was in every way successful – The sun shone and though the channel was not smooth, it was not rough enough to make me feel ill. There were some who, from their looks on arrival, had evidently found the motion of the boat too much for them – I made friends with a dear old lady in the train. To begin with I thought she was French and on my mentioning this later she said that her late husband had been all his service at the Embassy in Paris – She asked me to go and visit her thinking I was going to stay in Paris – We exchanged cards – She is a Lady Austin Lee and I should like to see her again, for she bubbled with laughter at every thing and seemed such a gay old body.
The third class sleeper was a huge success. Its really in essentials, just as comfortable as the 2nd Class ones and far more comfortable than a 2nd Class couchette, though it only costs about a shilling more – I – yes, even I, with my abominable French, was called by the attendent, (a most genial fat creature) to “faire” un peu de traduction” for him – There was a Burmese lad, who had been for six years in England, but who spoke no French, who had given up the bit of his ticket from Paris to Marseilles with the Calais-Paris bit at the Gare du Nord. I had to explain to him that he must get another ticket and then make a claim to get his money back – I promised to help him with this in the morning and it was lucky I did, for amongst other things the ticket collector found it difficult to grasp his name, which was San pronounced “Sow” – subsequently we shared a taxi down to the ship –
I’ve found heaps of friends on the boat and am sitting at a table with Mrs. Gurner and Mrs. Graham – I found Camilla soon after I got on board and amongst other people introduced her too Mrs. Smythe Osborn and her daughter Pat. – Do you remember them at Chagford? The Mediterranean is behaving perfectly and it has been astonishingly warm – I’m almost too hot in a jumper suit and a thin blouse.
Phyllis Gurner tells us that we should on no account miss visiting Futtipore Sikri the abandoned city near Agra, which was built by Akbar in honour of his son Jehangir and abandoned within 50 years because the water supply was so bad. Camilla is all for it, so I am writing to Cook’s to book our rooms for a second night in Agra and push the other bookings forward by a day.
The week-end at Oxford was fun! I’m grateful to you for arranging for Aunt and for me to stay in College. it was much more fun than staying in a hotel. I realized yesterday, when doing my accounts, that I did not reimburse you for the dinner on Saturday night. May I take it that I was your guest, and thank you for it? You found the money I left in your room, I hope? Will you show this letter to Richard and Romey? I’ve written all this news to Dad and cant bear to write it again. I’ll try to think of something different for them.
Best love, my dear – and many happy return of the 22nd.
Mum
From LJT to Rosemary
P&O Viceroy of India
Oct. 15th. 1938
My darling Rosemary
Time was so short in Marseilles, that before I realized it, I found that the ship was just about to sail, and I had written no letters or post-cards and only just had time to scribble a few lines to Aunt.
I had a very nice send off from Victoria. Aunt was the first to arrive, then Auntie Eleanor and a little later, Uncle Roy – Then George Pilcher and Freddie Temple so we were quite a gay party. I was glad to be able to introduce Aunt to Freddie Temple, for the previous day when I lunched with him, we had been having a great talk about the possibility of making humus out of the “muckings” from the septic tank, mixed with vegetable rubbish from the garden – and that is just what Uncle had been wondering about
I’ve written to Annette about my journey and asked her to show you the letter, for I don’t want to write it all again –
I have so many friends on board that I am afraid I have spent most of the time since we left Marseilles talking, instead of attending to my letters – For Camilla Boughays’ sake, I am sorry that we went through the Straits of Bonnefacio at night and the Straits of Messena at dinner time, because both places are so picturesque. I well remember the time I brought Annette home as a tiny baby and had rather a grumpy old nurse just for the voyage – We approached Sicely in the early morning and seeing Mount Etna, snow-capped, standing above the clouds, still with the faint flush of dawn upon it, I called to Nurse to come and look at the beautiful sight. She replied that she would’nt bother, for, being short sighted as a child she had never taken much interest in geography!
I hope your cold has recovered – No, I did not catch it, thank you! The woman in my cabin has developed a cold – I hope I shall avoid that equally successfully.
People are giving Camilla and myself lots of advice about sight-seeing in Delhi and Agra and I’m getting very excited about it all.
As I have asked Annette to show you her letter, will you also show her this one?
Best love, darling
from
Mum
From HPV to LJT
Chinsurah.
Friday October 21st 1938
My dear Joan,
Your letter posted at Port Said arrived this morning after I had sent off to Calcutta the driver with my letter addressed to you at Bombay and two parcels for Agra – the History of India and the mosquito net. You seem to have crammed more into the last three days of your stay in England than I should have got into three weeks. How typical of you to strike up what might turn out to be a life friendship with an old lady during a half-day train journey! To me such things would not happen, though a parallel in a way might be the habit years ago of being given Palang ka cha by total strangers.
Be not in any way dismayed by your decision to take an extra day at Agra; I had anticipated it and announced it as a probability to all comers, eg. to Ben and to H.D. I wrote to the latter the other day to give news of you and to tell of the transformation at Siliguri. It would be a pity when you are at Agra not to see Fatehpur. Should I go myself, if there? Doubtful, but there is the precedent of Cairo. Yet I suspect that guides and beggars in India would annoy me more than those at Cairo.
The garden has me beat. Where to put those things which have to go direct into the ground? Where to put nasturtiums likely according to the directions on the packet to grow to a height of 9 feet? Where for that matter to put the new packet of sweet peas? The mali is confident that the Agri-Horticultural lot will be all right, so that part of the garden is not available. They have been busy to day exposing the roots of the roses, which is in accordance with the advice of Percy Lancaster in the Statesman. My bewilderment and impatience may in part by due to not having slept very well these last two nights; the night before last I woke up with a start and lay awake for some time; and last night I lay awake till past two – not worrying about it and quite relaxed (which is as good as sleeping, says the book) but unable to lose consciousness. From which it appears that I did do too much work. Therefore this afternoon I lay down for 15 minutes and made it 30. In a way I did a lot of work; it looks though as if I should have to fall back on putting initials to office notes as a matter of routine for some time in order to straighten up; and it would probably make no difference except to my vanity any more than mis-spelling would.
The cat made a hold in the net as I realised this morning; my speaking to the bearer had some effect beyond eliciting the discourse on the nature of cats, for he announced today that that cat would not come back; it sounded ominous but meant that some one among the domestics had copped it with a brick and discouraged it. I have not been round to see the stables and outhouses or the kitchen since I returned from Darjeeling. It is partly due to my fearing to show my face out of doors while the sun is up because its effect on my nose is too violent; and partly to my having no time for anything during the day. This evening I made another attempt to see the Lossings; that makes three; now I shall desist. Yet if I had dropped a card they might have asked me to dinner and at the moment I do not feel inclined for that sort of thing. It is not that the good effects of Darjeeling have worn off but merely that I have been working hard enough to be tired out each evening.
If I send this off tomorrow, it should reach Agra on Sunday night and be delivered next morning; but do letters sent from Chinsurah on any day catch that day’s mail up country from Calcutta. Better be on the safe side and send this off. Especially as it may be the first of my letters to reach you for almost three weeks. I wonder why shipping companies do not as a matter of course say when one should post for what ports for any ship. But I had calculated and made a note in Darjeeling that I ought to send off my letter to Bombay on the Thursday.
Today fearing that my letter to Annette would arrive too late for her birthday I sent her a cable. That makes two, because I sent one to Richard also; and I haven’t even noticed if he mentioned getting it. For he did write to me after the birthday; the first time since you went to Wales anyhow.
In the letter that I sent to Aden, probably, I said that the date of your arrival should not be the 31st because I had appeals fixed for that date. I have however just been looking up the time-table and gather from it that you will doubtless come by the Panjab Mail which gets into Howrah at 7.45 local time; my appeals are not till eleven and I could stay the night of the 30th in Calcutta, and so the difficulty about the 31st disappears. The 1st and second are holidays; I imagine that you will find it a rush to arrive by the 31st.
Two of the largest bats have been circling and circling in this room; I had the windows closed on account of the insects and I am wondering whether foolishly they come in round several corners just to annoy or rather live in this room always and found it impossible to get out. Every house is shared more or less with spiders but I feel some annoyance at the thought of bats also joining the establishment.
As regards a room for Camilla, I had already given orders that he much smeared windows should be cleaned; which had the result of putting the whole household on to cleaning those in our bedroom. What more is to be done about preparing any room? Talking about “what more” Mani Lal has a new phrase; it may not be new but I had not before noticed it; he says at frequent intervals “Now hear me.” That method of stopping is in accordance with the Queen’s English; but I agree with brother Harry that the fullstop looks better outside the inverted commas.
Just in case; allow me to caution you on no account to attempt to write during your sight-seeing trip.
Now I stop. It is amazing how many mistakes I can make with a typewriter.
Much love,
Your
Toto
From LJT to Annette
P&O Viceroy of India
Indian Ocean
Oct 21st 1938
My darling Annette
There’s little enough to write about but as I shall have no time for letters while I am rushing round Agra, Delhi and Benares, I feel I must attempt to send you some sort of news of myself. Having two friends on board of whom I am as fond as I am of Phyllis Gurner and Gwen Graham, makes one rather lazy – We tend to sit to-gether and read and talk and sew very happily. Of famous people I have met old Sir Edward Lutyens over in the 1st Class and on the first occasion, found him very tiresome, for his idea of me was to tell rather dull and dirty sort of school-boy stories and make not very witty pencil sketches. Next time was better, for I scarcely gave him a chance to take his own line, but started crossquestioning him about his opinions of the Taj Mahal and the Pearl Mosque and various other famous buildings. Of the Taj he says it is more a beautiful jewel than architecture – for its walls take up more space than the space they enclose. That seems to be quite suitable for a mausoleum and I don’t quite see why it makes it “not architecture” –
The Viceroy and Vicereine have kindly asked me to a sherry party to-morrow evening – I have yet to discover why for other officials and official wives this side have not been asked –
I am just reading the English Edition of Hilters “Mein Kampf” – and finding it difficult to concentrate on it – It seems to be thrown to-gether in such an inconsequent way.
Camilla comes to visit me most mornings. She seems a nice girl – We expect to be in Chinsurah about Nov 1st and you wont get a letter till after then, I expect –
Best love – Mum
Oct 22nd
Greetings and good wishes for your birthday!
From HPV to Annette (handwritten ‘Annette’ at top of carbon)
Chinsurah,
Sunday, Oct 23rd 1938.
My dear Annette
This letter is to the family only and not to my dear wife, to whom I have written separately. As is my custom, I have made a muddle with the dates; and I am now wondering whether the letter which I have sent to meet her at Bombay and which ought to have reached there today will be delivered early enough tomorrow morning at the Agents’ office to be on the ship in time. It looks as if she were going to take Comilla round the sights of Bombay; at least they ought to have the day there if the ship arrives in the early morning as the mail steamers do and I cannot imagine her not seizing the opportunity to act as guide to one who has never seen the East and to whom Bombay should be full of fascination. I have written two letters to Agra. If there were not an uneasy feeling that my letters to port Said and to Aden had not arrived at thos places too late for the ship (but probably that sent to Port Said would have come back to me by now if that had been so) I should not be agitated about the possible delay to that for Bombay.
News I have none. If one writes every day one can prattle on about the nothings which occupy the day and conceal the nullity of them well enough, but wait three days and the virtue has evaporated from them. My evenings have been spoilt for me very largely by visitors. Spoilt means that I was prevented from cutting off deads which has become an obsession. Once it was a new I.C.S. recruit appointed to this place as his first station who came to make an official call; a young Bengali not particularly prepossessing; I wonder if he was scared stiff at the idea of venturing himself within my gates. Once it was Stein the D.I.G. of Police, come to talk shop – but I had come in from the garden that time – and unable to tear himself away till a quarter to nine. yesterday it was the Under Secretary of the Home Department, up from Calcutta to see about some furniture which had been left here by a friend; he sought tea having failed to find the policeman on whom he had been counting for it; I was pleased to see him for he is a nice lad though terribly respectful.
It was a holiday yesterday; the Hindu festival on which they outline their houses with lamps, very pretty to see especially across water. A Hindu once told me a long story about its being in memory of a certain occasion when the goddess of good luck, lost in a forest, was attracted to a hut by the light shining from it and in gratitude gave all manner of gifts to the hut-folk, so that now on the anniversary all Hindus put out lamps on the off-chance that she may come in again. (But why they should imagine that lost one day one waits for the anniversary each year before losing oneself again, that I did not think of asking till now, when it is six years and a day too late.) But today’s Amrita Bazar, a Hindu paper, tells a long rigmarole about its being done to keep out demons and spirits because a goddess once brought up all the dead to help wipe out humanity; it does not make sense, for the story does not tell of their entering houses. It was fine here and the lights shone and the fireworks banged across the Hooghly agreeably enough; in Calcutta the festival was spoilt and many lives were saved by heavy rain which put a stopper to the fireworks; usually a lot of people blow themselves up — apart from accidents due to the pleasant Indian habit of throwing fireworks from the roof into crowded streets and throwing them straight at horses and at people. Sometimes one doesn’t like them very much, but the custom is not looked on as bad.
I did no end of a lot of work yesterday in spite of interruptions and had thought that by working today also I might clear off arrears and have an easy conscience for a change; but it was not to be. I drifted into the garden and worked away on cutting off deads till 12.25. Which was foolish when account is taken of the readiness of my nose to blister in the sun. Also I went round the garden to see what progress had been made. I bet a small sum to myself that your mother would express herself delighted with everything but it is all disappointing really. The failure of the Calcutta gardens to send the seeds till I was in Darjeeling and the month’s delay in the receipt of the seeds from England owing to the failure of Mrs Stanley, who brought them out, first to arrive as soon as she had intended and secondly to unpack them for a fortnight after arrival have put things back sadly. I wonder why the typewriter is not giving regular alignment.
There are signs that the cold weather is drawing near. I felt chilly last night with only a sheet over me and with the fan running, and chilly even when I put a shawl over my stomach. it never occurred to me till the moment that the sensible thing to do was to get out and turn off the fan. There is quite a cold breeze blowing, from the south, at this minute; but I am using the fan because I have all the windows shut to keep the insects out.
Monday October 24th.
Presumably you will have heard before this of your mother’s safe arrival at Bombay; for she will have written from the ship and maybe have caught not only today’s airmail but --- I was going to say the one before but I think it would have been Friday’s which is impossible. The only real news is that her telegram says that she got my letters, which probably means the lot, for if she hadn’t got the one written to Bombay why mention the matter at all? Again very little work done today; long hours and poor outturn, that means. On Mondays the police parade, armed police about 100, on the maidan outside the compound and I wake and have tea (which this morning was filth) and dress to the accompaniment of a brass band. Two appeals; I hate appeals; all this straw-splitting of the lawyers seems to be such tripe; and I haven’t written orders on the last appeal yet, which makes three. Letter from Annette with news of all the family. Half an hour’s loaf after lunch. Garden after tea. A visit to the Holmans, after garden and change; they sent me over a present of snipe yesterday; I don’t like snipe but had to pretend. Then I borrowed six rubbishy books and returned; in comfort because I have a new battery in the electric torch and with it could see to dodge the toads; they are stupid beasts and do not move out of the path, not for ever so. Which reminds me that Fowler delights to quote Kipling as a perpetrator of many of the worst things in English; I reverted to reading steadily through about half of him, examples and all. It is strange to think how poor to an analyst would be my reports and my official letters over which, to tell the truth, I take great pains; it was always a grief to me that I didn’t think it fair does to write up my speeches so that they would read a little better in print; when I looked through some of them the other day I was quite peeved to see that although they got me congratulations from the Hon Members and other Secretaries they read no better and indeed worse than the mumbled essays which fell absolutely flat. No more except that it is beautiful weather though too hot. Your mother ought to find north India at its best; not really cool but still green; the cold weather is spoilt by the dust up there. Bengal more or less is always green and suckly green at that.
Farewell all. And much love.
Dad
From HPV to LJT
Chinsurah
Oct 23rd 1938 Sunday
My dearest
This is merely an affection piece. No news since I wrote on Friday evening.
Saturday was a holiday. I worked all day: with interruptions. Dr Jaffir immediately after breakfast: he is the world’s worst stayer: done down all round, largely owing to his own fault but none the less with reason to complain of injustice, he does complain of it; without ceasing he complains. Next young Chatterjee S.D.O from Seranpore; he wanted encouragement – he is trying a case against a European assistant in a jute mill who is said to have twisted a woman worker’s ear, and some one whom he doesn’t like to ;name has written to say that he ought to keep in mind the possibility of a strike if the manager dismisses the woman. I suspect that this somebody is an Hon. Minister. There should be two classes of Minister: Honourable and others: and the “Honourable” should be conferred only if there is a unanimous vote by the Commissioners. Of course I said that he must go ahead boldly: I also said that, if a Minister wanted to do him down, it would not be directly on this case but on some plausible excuse found elsewhere, and that such risks were why we drew I.C.S. pay.
I did a lot of work: and contemplated doing more today and getting almost up to date. At 4.30 just after tea was announced in comes Saumarez Smith. He had come up to see the Holmans about Martyn’s furniture and they were out (golfing?), and so drifted in on me for tea. I was very pleased, for I like him. Not much time for rounding the garden afterwards: but I found a miserable calf half starved to look at it and threatened general destruction among the chaprassis if its looks did not improve at once, i.e. if it were not properly fed in future.
Then I wrote letters, - paying bills mostly; but also one overdue since May to Bon’s. Poor stuff. Early to bed but read a bit: and then lay awake till at any rate past twelve. First signs of cold weather: I decided at last that I was chilly and resorted to the lohi. This morning overslept myself. And taking this as an omen I did not work after breakfast but paraded round the premises. The sweet peas are coming up after all. Trenching for the English sweet peas is the deuce of a business: inches of broken brick, consolidated, to be hacked through. I was tempted into cutting deads: and kept at it till 12.15. Probably my face will have been burnt. After being in the sun I feel drowsy. Probably that is a good thing. It is silly of me to feel a sort of guilt over not working on a Sunday.
The latest animal to disturb my peace is the goat from the south. I do not much object to its trespassing once a day, but when it comes back as soon as it has been evicted, it shows contempt of the rights of property and rouses anger. Today it has appeared twice.
Two nights ago I found near Stein’s house a ploy afoot. Youths flashing electric torches and dodging. But it turned out to be a campaign for seizing a cow, which had been in the Barracks’ compound. How desperately the cow bounded! how all concerned fell this way and that in the dark! what laughter! and I was much perplexed lest the cow should run upon me.
I do hope that Agra comes up to expectation? There is perhaps no morn. It will be interesting to know whether the Taj is more affecting than a rock tomb. For me it would be tainted by the feeling that the Ministers also are Muhammadan: but maybe not, for I forgot them in Cairo.
Much love sweetheart
Your
Toto
From HPV to LJT
Chinsurah
Oct 24th 1938
(Monday.)
My dearest.
No news since I wrote yesterday. I spent the afternoon not in resting as might have been sense, nor in doing any of the pending work which is on my conscience, but in playing round with figures of yield from the Chinsurah Farm, trying for the nth time to make them appear consistent. It is useless: beyond doubt every time the Babu is asked for facts which will enable me to check previous statements he invents something.
Half an hour lying down and reading; then tea: then a walk round the garden and more de-deading. My morning’s work on the cosmos had been thorough, strange to say. After my bath, I wrote to Rita, at last, about her Ronald, though it is so long since I saw him that I could give none of the details which would have made the letter interesting to her: and then I read till dinner. No, I didn’t. I started reading: and then went downstairs to the figures till 8.30. After dinner letter to the children. There was quite a cold breeze blowing and a fan would not have been necessary if I hadn’t shut the windows against the insects. This morning the wind came from the north when I woke but dropped in a few minutes and is from the south again. I went to sleep without a fan last night but had to turn it on when I woke up at 12.15.
Two appeals this morning: and nothing more to write about.
My best love
Your
Toto
From HPV to LJT
Chinsurah
Oct 25thTuesday
My dear Joan.
Your telegram arrived at about 6.30 yesterday, to my pleasure. I picture you now bounding along (though why the train should be doing this in the picture I do not know) through parts of India unknown: embarking upon thrills.
Routine yesterday. The two appeals dragged on, seeming more and more unreal. Thank heaven I am not a judge: but presumably a judge has not the handicap of trying to do the square thing by people and instead merely looks to the letter of the High Court rulings, - not of the law, which often seems quite sensible. I lay down for 20 minutes after lunch. It was a sticky day: but signs of cold weather in an evening chilliness. I wandered round the garden and dealt with cannas and tilhomia –these last fast dying though full of flower: and after my bath I went over to the Holmans to thank them for the two snipe sent on Sunday and to borrow some books.
A lovely morning: wind still from the south.
The bearer has ricked his back and is very sorry for himself.
A one day old calf in the compound facing the world with assurance: a pretty little thing.
One drawback to the garden is the foul smell along the river bank: perhaps not really noticeable if one doesn’t work actually in the flower bed.
Much love
Your
Toto
From HPV to LJT
Chinsurah
Oct 25th 1938
Tuesday.
My dear Joan.
Maybe this will catch you at Delhi. It will not be of any particular interest: I do believe that writing every day is not a matter of habit but a symptom of a sort of loneliness: and I do it for my own pleasure.
Tuesday’s bright thought is that it will be a good thing if there isn’t an odour of papermills about when you arrive: for now there is – unless it is dead frog. Of course there is a dead bat on the windowsill of the hall: and that may be doing the trick.
It has been a holiday and I didn’t realise it till too late; if I know that its a holiday and there there will be no interruptions I can settle down to a real day’s work. But there were interruptions. Stein, on his way back from Burdwan, stopped off to tell me all about the communal dispute (music before mosques) about which there is a first class row brewing: but of that no word now, for it is dull. Having come he stayed. I gave him a drink: he took a whole hour to put it down and get his little piece off his chest. And me – I smiled and smiled, and could have screeched. I did work before dinner to make up for my lost day – I frittered away my time abominably – but cannot say that I made good. Most of the Europe seeds are coming up, some more and some less: in the seed beds: of those to go straight into final position only the nasturtiums are in, or out, yet quite a lot of the Indian sweet peas are coming up. Ordinary peas are being eaten by birds. There is one small apple size tomato! but the tomato plants look to me not too healthy. The poinsettias which I clipped are none the worse for it: and, I think, none the better either. The Europe sweetpeas went in this evening. I have taken on a cooli to do some weeding. The canes or whatever they were near the corner of the guest house have had to come out. The place is needed for an enormous and hideous galvanised tank, an integral part of the new pump-water supply: it seemed futile to stop the work when it had all been approved in proper form when the scheme was first propounded. Also I could not think of any less objectionable place for it. A screen of creepers will be needed.
H.D rang up today. Just back from Jamshedpur where he has been too busy to answer my letter, and craving precise news of you: in case you arrived on Sunday. He goes away, again to Jamshedpur, (there is a strike or a conciliation which is much the same thing) on Thursday and returns on Sunday, when I am to telephone to him the news.
I have been trying to make out a programme of my doings for November. I don’t dislike touring but I do dislike having to put up with being a nuisance to people – and with being put up at places like Midnapore and Burdwan. The prospect makes me real glum.
Calcutta tomorrow. Dentist first, then a meeting: jute crop estimating committee: I was an ass to accept membership, but it linked up with what I was doing in the Development job. The dentist is an afterthought: the new false tooth hurts persistently, pressing somewhere tender.
Much love
Your
Toto
From HPV to LJT
Chinsurah
Thursday Oct 27th
My darling
I was glad to get your letter today. It arrived quite late in the afternoon. I hadn’t realised that there was a second post in this place, though I do remember now having had letters from Bankura and Howrah in the evening.
So my Aden letter missed you. I feared that it would reach Aden the day that you did and too late for delivery. That there was no avoiding, but anyone except a mut would have inquired at the post office regarding times of arrival of mails at Agra and Delhi instead of making vague calculations almost sure to be wrong. Of course the post office Babu would not have known but to have made the effort would have been a sign of intelligence and enterprise.
Yesterday’s journey to Calcutta was for the purpose of attending a meeting of a committee which is considering means of discovering a way to estimate accurately the area under jute. As the Chairman and Vice Chairman were both absent I was compelled as the senior officer to take the chair; although as a new member I was not in touch with things. The great difficulty is obviously the obstinacy and, it is fair to add, stupidity of the Secretary. There is universal agreement that the only way to get results is a random sampling survey, and the obvious thing to do is to arrange the details in such a way as to suit the wishes of the statisticians – for it is purely statistical. But the Chairman Sir Bryce Burt and the Secretary, Cliffe, are determined to do things their way, though Mahalanobis says that it will be useless from a statistical point of view. As a new comer I could hardly go baldheaded for what I thought sensible in opposition to those two! and afterall Cliffe is the man who will be dealing with the stuff. Also Mahalanobis would try anyone’s patience, being quite unable to say precisely what he wants and drifting off into mathematics whenever he is asked a question. The meeting lasted two hours in the morning and nearly two in the afternoon. Afterwards I have Mahalanobis tea at the US Club, Lawn House, in order to discuss my rainfall figures with him. He started off about my random jute survey in 1935, into the figures of which he has been digging recently and exclaimed that he could not have believed a non-statistician capable of evolving a scheme in all its details so statistically sound. Later he expressed amazement over the ingenuity of my rainfall curves plus output figures and said that if I could give him the data he would like to check the statistically. We told each other in fact how admirable our work was. He is probably hoping to use me and soft-soaping for that reason: but it was none the less gratifying – and it may be that he can put in a word with the Finance Minister. All this took time. it was past six when he left. I phoned Harry or rather the house and found that he had not come in: and giving up hope of seeing him I came straight back here. Quite chilly in the car: also I was tired. For this reason I didn’t even look at my letters (all official) last night: and though I have done a great deal of work today I have not made up for yesterday’s absence. Tomorrow I shall be in Calcutta again for two meetings. They are a nuisance. At least the journey is
Much love
Your
Toto
I see from the Chamrita(?) that Miss McLeod is at Belur.
From LJT to GCT
Maiden’s Hotel,
Delhi
Oct 28th
Dearest Grace
Camilla and I, rather exhausted by 3 days of intensive sight-seeing, have come in fairly early this evening and there seems to be an odd moment in which to write one or two letters – so I start on one to you, as the central news bureau. I am not going to attempt a description of what we have seen till I get home to Chinsurah, when I will make some attempt to do so, very largely for the pleasure of seeing the beautiful things again in my own mind and fixing them in my memory.
Nice welcoming letters from you and Annette and rosemary were waiting for me at Bombay and Barney sent me one to Port Said – for which thanks to you all –
My I.C.I friend, Charles Crawford turned up in Bombay most opportunily. I left him to lunch with Camilla on the ship, while I did what was necessary about getting our tickets and money from Cook’s and arranging about luggage etc – and rejoined the young people at 2-15 – Charles then took us for a drive round Bombay and right out to the country bathing beaches – 16 miles away in his car – and finally back to tea at the Yacht Club, where we sat on the terrace over-looking the harbour, till it was time to go to the station for our train, which left at 6.50 pm. We reached Agra just after 5 pm the next day after a quite cool but very dirty 22 hours in the train – We were met by a man from the hotel, who took charge of our luggage and we drove straight off to the Taj Mahal and spent nearly an hour there, not leaving till it was quite dusk and the little crescent of the new moon was well up in the sky – The Taj is every bit as lovely as repute makes it and seems to defy all effort to reproduce its likeness in photograph or picture –
The next morning we drove 23 miles out to the deserted city of Futtipore Sikri, which far outshines any thing I had expected – We got back to the hotel a little before lunch time – and set out again for more sight seeing, including another visit to the Taj, at 3 pm and got back about 6.30.
The next morning we spent seeing the marvellous palaces in the Agra Fort and the famous Pearl Mosque all, again, exceeding expectations –
Getting home at 12.30 we did our packing and decided to make one more visit to the Taj after lunch when the sun was high in the Heavens – We found it very lovely – Our train was supposed to leave at 5 – but actually left at 5.30 – and we reached Delhi only 10 minutes late, at 9 p.m.
To-day we have had a tremendous day, visiting the old ruined cities, scattered to the south of Delhi – We lunched with a friend in New Delhi – Visited the Secretary of the Himalayan Club at Army Headquarters and then went on to see the council Chamber – passing the Viceroy’s House on the way – All very fine – and almost as lavish as the Mogul Emperor’s works - ! Next we spent an hour in the Fort – seeing Shahjahans palaces but I thought Camilla seemed to be drooping a little, so we did not go into the Museum which is said to be very interesting, but came home to a late tea – and now she is having a rest before dinner – She is a nice child – but oh! so slow in the uptake compared with anything that we are used to! She’s a little like John Bev. in making trite remarks about the obvious – However, she appreciates beauty and wants to understand what its all about, even when it has to be driven in by several repetitions! I have thought once or twice about Barney’s remarks on the subject of speakers who repeat themselves. When one meets an intelligence like Camilla’s, one realizes why they have to do it. After three repetitions, she scarcely grasps an idea. However the great thing is that she is enjoying herself and setting herself up with plenty of postcards and books of pictures of the places we have seen, which will help to tell her story for her to her people at home. Its a lucky thing she does not live at Highways, for she would always be about five sentences behind in the conversation. I wonder what she will make of Herbert!!
Much as I am looking forward to Benares, where we spend only one night, but shall have practically two days (for we arrive about 9-30 a.m one day – and leave at 5 pm. the next) I am longing to be home again now –
Would you send this letter on to Annette to see and circulate to Richard and to Rosemary – I will just send them each a p.c. to tell them I am still alive.
Best love to you all
Joan
From HPV to Annette (carbon)
Chinsurah.
Sunday October 30th. 1938.
My dear
The day after tomorrow, all going well, will see your mother returned to this house: and it is possible that it will not be so easy then, with a guest in the house, to write you letters. I have had one letter from Agra, telling of her sight-seeing briefly; no need to say that she enjoys every minute of it. My foreboding that the Aden letter would not reach her was fulfilled, for the pretty reason that the ship did not call there. My foreboding that the little history of India which she asked me to send would not reach her came true; for it disappeared in the post as almost everything that is not registered does in this country; and now I debate whether to have a foreboding about the boxes which she left to be sent by goods from Bombay; it jight be wisest merely to fear that they will be late in arriving; first fear to get expression wins, so to say, when one takes to prophecy.
I have prophesied what will be the harvest, on the strength of the rainfall figures of every day since May started, a period that covers the paddy (rice) cultivation season. An expert of the Agricultural Department laid down certain minima for the rainfall needed during these months for a reasonable paddy crop; by examining how this year’s rain fell short of or exceeded these minima and by comparing past yields with past rainfall figures, I hope to get near to the mark. Last year my guess or estimate based on this data was about two per cent out; and in such matters 2% is accuracy. The figures reached me yesterday and, moved by a sudden and unexpected enthusiasm, I set to and spent the evening before and after dinner on them. Unexpected because bitterness has taken hold of me; I am vexed. After the second meeting on Friday in Calcutta, I went in to see how the Engineers who are designing the first of my big irrigation schemes were getting along: the fact that they have under the orders of the Chief Engineer (and I begin to believe that Chief Engineers are picked for their stupidity in that Department) gone out of their way to adopt every measure that can increase the cost and thus make it more difficult to persuade Government to carry out the scheme, --- this fact, being suspected by me before, left me unmoved. But what has stirred my spleen is the discovery that the estimates will not be ready till Christmas, although they had been promised for the beginning of October; and, on top of this, the explanation of the delay has made things worse — not incapacity of the Engineers, but their having been diverted to routine work for a couple of months. If the Ministers really looked on these schemes as of paramount importance, if they really believed that they would help to eliminate malaria, they could not have thought of postponing them for the benefit of some trifling irrigation schemes of Central Bengal. It is the usual dilemma: should I throw up all connection with the schemes because these Ministers let me down so consistently (and so ingeniously; for they find some new and unexpected piece of treachery every time) or shall I let them do me down in the hope that persistence on my part will at last get the thing through?
The rebuff was asked for: I had been too cheerful and looked too well. At lunch time there was comment on my rude health. I joined a table where there sat mum several Secretariat-walas of my acquaintance; and through sheer contagion of good spirits I had them all joking and laughing like pledged carousers. I have never caroused; it must need unusual animal spirits to convert mere drinking into anything so positive. I shall not start now.
On Wednesday I visited Calcutta for a meeting of a Committee of which I have just been made a member; and to my annoyance, being the senior officer there, I had to preside. This was a nuisance, because I did not know what had happened before and did not know the subject. When one is Chairman of a Committee meeting it is essential to know exactly what the decision ought to be on each subject, for otherwise discussion wanders; and in this case, the difficulty was that the whole thing was mathematical --- statistics. It annoyed me also to be in the Chair because I wanted really to attack the policy that the real Chairman and the Secretary were pushing; as Chairman of a meeting I had to be impartial. The thing took in all 3 ½ hours; and I gave a tea to Mahalanobis and talked shop with him for another 1 ½ afterwards. All of which prevented my seeing anyone afterwards.
On Friday two meetings in Calcutta. On both days I went in early to see the dentist; on the Friday he managed to do the trick with this new false tooth; before then it had been causing acute pain. A satisfactory day till I discovered the trickery of the Irrigation Department. After that, all went wrong. In other words, I found that I was tired; the return journey through Howrah was dusty and slow and smelly; and, when we got into open country three miles from anywhere, the petrol pump ceased to function (which is, by interpretation, as I suspect, a way of saying that the driver had forgotten to see that there was enough petrol) and I sat in the dark for half an hour before a car came along which game me a lift to a bazar, where I got a taxi. This was in the industrial area which stretches up the Hooghly; one could not expect to be picked up by a passing car or to find a taxi on most Bengal roads. Two days out of the week knocks one’s work. I actually have done a great deal, but still I am not up to date or anything like it. Of course, I have wasted a lot of time on my hobbies --- cropcutting schemes, paddy yields, rainfall figures and suchlike.
Monday October 31st.
The arrangement had been that I should go into Calcutta this evening, sleep at Brother Harry’s and meet the Panjab Mail at Howrah station at eight tomorrow morning. Then there might have been breakfast at the Saturday Club and maybe a visit to Harry and Winsome (who arrives from Darjeeling tomorrow morning) before motoring out here. It is not often that I make a plan; and it is a lesson to me to abstain from them in future that today a telegram should have arrived upsetting all this. Your mother has learnt that the Panjab Mail stops at Bandel which is about ten minutes by car from here and has decided to get off it there. At five to seven, about. This has been rather convenient; for I had three appeals today which went on and on, so that it was nearly five before I returned for tea. And even then I hadn’t touched any of my files. It would have taken strength of mind to go off to Calcutta without doing them, and to have started after doing them would have meant a rush. As it was I went into the garden and dismissed all that the mali had to say by telling him grandly that he could ask the mem-sahib tomorrow.
For the first time the north wind was blowing this morning. Not very hard and not very long; but for a beginning good enough.
I have been quite benevolent today, in spite of having failed to get up to date in my appeal judgements. I have now four in all to deal with. Two days holidays: this season of the year simply festers with holidays, presumably because there is not much to be done in the fields and the weather is cheerful after then ending of the Rains. But holidays somehow with me do not mean getting up to date; I always do an unusual amount of work on them but mostly non-essentials about my schemes. Tomorrow with your mother’s arrival I shall probably not do much.
(handwritten) Wednesday
It was so. I did nothing at all yesterday and nothing useful today. She is very well except for a slight cold
Much love
Dad.