The Townend Family Letters

1943 November

Family letter from HPV (not in AMT’s set of letters – this typed by Joan Webb)

Victoria Court, Long Street,
Cape Town
November 1st, 1943

My dears,

Having gone out to post a letter in the pillar box just outside this place, I met an aged man who asked for a tikkie (3d.); when I inquired why, he replied with simple dignity that he wanted to buy a drink. So in memory of my brother Roy, to whom such a thing would have appealed, I gave him a tikkie.

I forgot to tell of the loss of my cane, originally bought for an anna in an exhibition in Jalpaiguri and carried several times on trips into the Himalayas, in the New Zealand Alps, on Tamborine Mountain in Queensland and on all our walks here in South Africa. It was taken out of our hold all on the journey down from Johannesburg. Not really a convenient stick of a stoutness fit for mountain use, but I was used to it.

Since the Nine-Dassie walk on the side of Table Mountain I have done no real walking, owing to a certain weariness. But I went round a park 15 minutes away from here towards the mountain yesterday, alone since Joan was preoccupied with household affairs (to wit, ironing) and was regaled with the business of certain fox-terriers and the sight of a strange dachshund who must have had some corruption in his ancestry.

I have joined the Library. The girls at the reception office and at the counter where books are taken out are most maternal; and condescending. Now I am ashamed to take out detective stories, for they have devilish memories, and instead I am reading such things as “Decisive Battles in American History” and “The Farmers for 40 Centuries”, for which I have been looking for a couple of years. The former dull but good; it has destroyed the good repute of Lee, Jackson, Lincoln (as war-president) and Sherman, by criticizing shrewdly, and I feel that I have wasted much good sympathy on them in the past. The latter book is about farming in China; much about compost. Fine stuff; both the reading matter and the compost, as such.

Dr. Strickland, who used to be at the Calcutta School of Tropical medicine and Mr. Cleary, who was in the Bengal police, dropped in a couple of days ago, having heard by accident that we were here. The latter came in after supper last night, and the former comes in to morning tea in a few minutes. Pleasant to see them both and to get news of the working of things in Bengal. Strickland lost all his papers among his things in Burma where he was doing malaria work for the Army. He wanted a letter from me to certify that he was a doctor, so that he might get a ship’s surgeon’s job. I was able to certify with a clear conscience.

We visited the Museum yesterday to see the famous Blue Fish, of which I had in fact seen an account in a paper (Nature or the Scientific American) when first it was discovered. It is a bulky thing and belongs to a genus which was the most popular fish up to and during Mesozoic ties, but was supposed to be extinct since then. Then this specimen turned up off East London. It is a Coelacanth, 4 ft long, a deep improbable blue, two plates of bone in its mouth. It is so large that one would have expected it to come to notice often.

Much love,
Dad

Airgraph from LJT to Annette (addressed to Miss Annette Townend PO. Box. 111. Bletchley. Bucks. England)

No 22 Nov 2nd 1943

Darling Annette: the ten days since we moved into this flat have been busy ones for me, but as I get things organized, & a little practice in cooking I hope I shall not take so long. There has been unpacking, repacking our winter things, & finding homes for our belongings to do. Shopping is the thing I grudge the time for, yet I cant cut it down to be done only on certain days, for we have no larder & the ‘frige’ is very small. Its fun, though, & I am glad to have a chance of learning the practical side of cooking before I come home. Dad has been helpful with housework on Sundays & one day when Mrs Engel was ill & did not come. Much time has been taken up by visitors, of whom we have had an unexpected number the last few days, including two old friends from India. Dad & I have found time for a couple of good mountain walks. We find that if we have an early cup of tea, & catch the 4 o’clock bus to Kloof Nek, it gives us a couple of hours out, & we easily get home in time to prepare seven o’clock supper. Dad still finds a couple of hours walking as much as he can do, so he cant join Sir Roger Wilson & myself when we climb the Devil’s Pk on Friday (W.P.) It is a 3 hour climb from the Rhodes Memorial, and we shall be out pretty well all day. It is with some shame I confess that I have not yet started work in the S.A.W.A.S.’s office yet. Mrs Ruffle from Elgin phoned on Mon. to say she was in town, so I bade her to a picnic lunch. Actually we managed a cold sit down meal succesfully, which has given me confidence for the future. Mrs R. is an interesting woman, a S.African with a wide vision & I always enjoy a talk with her. She did not leave till pat 3.o’clock, so it was no use trying to start office that day. Next day Mrs Engel did not come, so I had to cope with all the work, including roasting a joint, & by the time lunch was over & everything washed up, it again seemed too late. To-day we lunched with the Roger Wilsons & the party went on rather late, & to-morrow a man comes at 2.30 to clean the windows. Dad rests at that time, so I feel I must be there. When Sir roger said he could take a day off on Friday & asked me to climb Devil’s Pk with him, I thought I might as well take the chance, & just hope to start some work next week. It goes without saying that had the work been urgent, like the work I was doing in Calcutta, I should have pushed everything else aside in order to do it. Dr & Miss Gill gave up their most valuable time to show Edward Groth & ourselves the most lovely colour films of S. African scenery, flowers and birds, on Fri. afternoon. We did so enjoy them & always like being with the gills, who are both interesting people. On Thursday last I played truant & went to lunch in the far away suburb of Newlands, near Kirstenbosch with a friend from India & her two small sons. She had asked some nice people to meet me and I stayed on to tea, since I don’t often get a chance of seeing her. Mrs E. (our “help”) managed Dad’s lunch alright. She is a most willing body but quite untrained in everything but housework, at which she is excellent. This evening we are going down to the station to see Edward G. off.
Best love Mother (Mrs H.P.V. Townend)

Air graph No 22 from LJT to Romey

Towend.c/oStandard Bank of S. Africa  Nov 2nd. 1943 

My darling Romey: the ten days or so since moving in to this flat have been busy ones for me, but as I get things organized, & a little practice in cooking I shall not take so long over things.  There has been unpacking, re-packing winter things, and finding homes for our belongings.  Shopping is the thing I grudge time for, and yet I cant cut it down to only a few days, for we have no larder & the ‘fridge’ is very small.  Its fun though, & I am awfully glad to have a chance of learning the practical side of cooking before I come home.  Dad has been helpful with housework on Sundays, & on one day when Mrs Engel was ill & could not come.  Much time has been taken up by visitors, of whom we have had an unexpected number the last few days, including two old friends from India.  Dad & I have found time for a couple of good mountain walks.  We find that if we have an early cup of tea & catch the bus at 4 o’clock to Kloof Nek, it gives us a couple of hours out, & we still get back in time to prepare our supper for seven or thereabouts.  Dad still finds two hours walking as much as he can manage, so cannot join Sir Roger Wilson & myself when we go up Devil’s Peak on Friday (W.P.)  That is a three hours climb from the Rhodes Memorial, and we shall be out pretty well all day.  It is with some shame I won that I have not started work in ??????????in town & would like to see us on Monday, so I bade her to a picnic lunch.

Actually we managed it as a sit-down lunch quite well, by using the writing desk as a side-board.  Yesterday Mrs E. was sick & did not come, so I had to cope with roasting the lamb etc, & with all the washing-up, and by the time it was finished it was past 2.30, & I felt disinclined to try to get to office just for one hour’s work.  To-day we lunched with the Edgar Wilsons, & the party went on rather late.  To-morrow a man is coming to clean the windows at 2.30 & I feel I must be here as Dad rests at that time.  I thought I might as well “call it a week” (to misquote) & put off starting work till next week.  If there were anything urgent going on, I would feel differently about it & certainly not allow social engagements to stand in the way.  Dr and Miss Gill gave their most valuable time to showing Edward Groth & ourselves the most lovely colour films of S.African scenery, flowers & birds on Fri. afternoon.  We did so enjoy them, & always like being with the gills, who are both such interesting people.  On Thursday I played truant, & went to lunch in the far-away suburb of Newlands near Rondernbosch, with a friend from India & her two small boys.  She had nice people to meet me, & I stayed on to tea, & enjoyed some interesting talk.  Mrs E. (our “help”) managed Dad’s lunch alright.  She is a most willing body, but quite untrained in everything but housework, at which she is excellent.  She turns out a room in half the time that I do.  We are going down to the station presently to see Edward Groth off.  I am sorry his holiday is over.  He certainly has made the most of it.  So sorry I forgot the proper date for an (letter runs off page)

Family letter from LJT No 42.

6 Victoria Court.
Long Street
Cape Town.
Nov 3rd 1943

My Dears,

In spite of having a half time “help” (She is scarcely a trained maid) the days seem to be very full. Still things are settling down, as I find out the best way of arranging the days duties, and the quickest way of doing the shopping. What an immense amount of time must be spent in the world by one person doing the marketing for another one or two: time that could be spent so much more profitably on other things. It seems a pity we cant get used to the idea of communal eating, or supplying of ready cooked food by some agency like Mr Walls. One difficulty about the latter idea is that things do taste so much better if they have been cooked just the moment before they are to be eaten. That is a thing I find even with my very amateur efforts, and that we appreciate after so long in hotels.

As a matter of fact quite a lot of time has been occupied with visitors. Two old friends from India, Dr Strickland and Mr Cleary (of the Indian Police) heard that we were here and came in soon after breakfast on Sat, staying for morning tea, and, in fact most of the morning. That knocked my plan of doing my English mail, as I had some urgent washing of socks & stockings and a dress or two that had already been postponed, & had to be done in the brief time left before lunch. I also had to teach Mrs Engel how to make gravy for the roast chicken. She had never made gravy before. Herbert is not supposed to eat butcher’s meat, so we cook a chicken once a week and he lives on that, plus fish and vegetables for some days, while Mrs E. & I have other little odds. I am really glad to have a chance of teaching myself a little about cooking before I come home, for then I shall not feel quite so ignorant and ashamed of being so.

Edward Groth had lunch with us at The Settlers’ Club on Sunday and spent the afternoon looking at some beautiful Himalayan photos I found in one of our trunks which was in store. After tea, Herbert went out for a walk on his own, for I wanted to iron some things while there was no other work going on in the kitchen. There is not room to iron and cook there at the same time. As I was at it I went on and on, smoothing the creases out of the clothes that have been packed away these several months, and feeling most satisfied when it was done.

Monday morning was wet, unexpected, for I dont think it often rains at this time of year. We had scarcely finished breakfast, when Sir Roger Wilson, whom I must have mentioned in letters from Pretoria, turned up. He was Adjutant-General in India, and President of the Himalayan Club till not long before we left India. He is working for the Red Cross section which deals with Prisoners of War. Just before we left Jo’burg he was transferred to Cape Town, from Pretoria, and left a message for us to get in touch with him and his wife here. He is one of the most charming people, but I could have wished that his visit had been a little later. He had only just gone when a Mrs Ruffle, who had been good to us in Elgin, rang up to say she was in town for the day and could she come to see us. I made a bold plunge, and said “Come to lunch”. It worked quite well, though I don’t think we could accomplish anything but a cold meal for a guest. It was delightful to see Mrs Ruffle again and to hear all the Elgin news. She stayed till past 3 o’clock, which I hope showed that she was enjoying herself. We have had more visits from Dr Strickland and from Mr Cleary, and also from Dr Beven, the man from Cyprus, who sat at our table at the Settlers’ Club. Mrs. Harvey was our first guest to a meal, and came to tea last Wednesday. All these little visits take up extra time, because I dont much fancy the cake shops or the only delicatessen shop for ready-cooked meats, in my local street, so when I want special things I have a ten minutes walk downtown, and in the crowded morning hour one has to wait so long at the shops to be served, so “running out to buy a little cold meat”, actually means being away about three quarters of an hour. This is really by of explanation of why my letter is so late this week.

I abandoned Herbert on Thursday, and went to lunch in the far-away suburb of Newlands, near Kirstenbosch, with a woman I knew in India and whose parents and brother I also knew very well. Her husband, who was in Hugh Carey Morgan’s firm, went into Naval Intelligence when the war came was killed in a flying crash near Chungking, after she and the two small boys had come to this country. Diana Robson is a nice creature and had asked two very nice women to meet me. I stayed on to tea, and was invited by the six-year old son to climb trees with him, which I took to be a compliment, but the size of the branches seemed to make the idea unworkable.

Since I last wrote, we have been two nice mountain walks, enjoying the magnificent views, the flowers, and the antics of the dassies, (coney) to whom Herbert has taken a great fancy. We spent Friday afternoon with Dr and Miss Gill, who gave up their precious time to showing remarkably lovely colour films of S. African scenery, birds and flowers, to Edward Groth and ourselves. Miss Gill was so keen that we should go to Namaqualand to see the flowers, but it is practically impossible to go without a car. Her films made me realize why it is worth a big effort to get there when the flowers are out. Country that has looked like desert, suddenly becomes a sheet of blossom, yellow, orange, white, blue, mauve and magenta. All those lovely daisies which now grow so well in India, venediums, arctotsis, dimorphoteca, gazania and ursinias, in every shade of yellow, orange, tawny red, and in white: charieis in deep blue: a most handsome mauve senecio, as well as mauve asters: and lastly the famous mesembrianthemums and several near relatives, whose yellow, pink, mauve, magenta, orange and red colours are so brilliant that one can scarcely believe they are natural. Having seen all these things growing at Kirstenbosch, and marveled at them, I was the better able to appreciate the film which showed them by the acre, and also gave good close-ups of them.

Dr Gill’s bird pictures are wonderful too. He has a film showing the whole business of the weaver bird weaving his nest, (for the cock makes it, and then brings home a bride) and of the hatching, feeding, teaching the young birds to fly. He has lots of other bird pictures too, but nothing as complete as this. We enjoyed them all.

I had hoped to be able to start work in the S.A.W.A.B. office on afternoons this week, but have’nt accomplished it. Mrs Ruffle’s unexpected visit prevented it on Monday, and yesterday Mrs Engle did’nt turn up. She had got her feet soaked the previous day, and got a chill. She came alright this morning to my great relief, and I have been freed to do some writing.

Later We have been out to lunch with the Roger Wilsons at the Civil Service Club, and as he will not have much work on Friday, he is going to take me up Devil’s Peak. I shall have to plan the food etc carefully the previous day, and am to meet him at Rondebosch Station by 9.30. From there we go up to the Rhodes Memorial in his car, thus saving the walk through the town. From the Memorial it is about three hours climbing to the summit, but there is a track all the way which zigzags and so the ascent is not too violent. I wish Herbert were up to coming too, but he still finds two to two and a half hours as much as he can manage.

When I have been talking so much about wanting to do war work, it seems dishonest of me to allow all these excuses to come between me and it when the opportunity does arise. If the work had been urgent, the others things would have gone hang, but actually there is not any great rush at the present moment, and I think I really will get round to it next week.

It certainly is a pleasure to be free from hotel lounges for a while, and able to do what we like in our own sitting room, not having to talk or be talked too: able to ask guests in and have our own place in which to talk to them: able to turn the wireless on and off as we desire. I scarcely realized what joy it would be, till we experienced it. We have been listening to the news a good deal, for so much is happening. Its good to hear that the Moscow talks have been a success, and how good to hear of the way the Russians are pushing on in spite of the weather.

Edward Groth leaves this evening and we are going down to the station to see him off. I am sorry his holiday is over. He has certainly made good use of it.

To those of you to whom I don’t manage to write Christmas letters or Air Graphs, I send Christmas greetings, though its impossible to tell when they will arrive. War-time Christmas mails always seem to be specially late.
Best love to you all
LJT

(hand written addition at bottom of letter to Romey)
Romey, I wonder where you will be when this reaches you.

Love,
Mother

(hand written addition at bottom of letter to Annette)
Darling Annette – I dont seem to be getting round to personal letters very satisfactorily – bad organization, I suppose. We have had an unexpected number of visitors, which has thrown anything in the way of a time schedule rather out of gear. I must remember to look upon my cooking as a chance of learning an essential art and not grudge the time given to it. Best love from Mother

Family letter from LJT No 43

6. Victoria Court.
Cape Town.
Nov 9th 1943

My Dears,

As I expected and hoped, a routine is establishing itself for our life in this little flat, and I waste less time than I did, though I still feel myself slow at all household work. I feel much happier now that I am getting to know the people in the shops, and they, me. The “help” though willing, is stupid and does not show much sign of picking up cooking and does not understand English very well, her own language being Afrikans.

This year my luck with weather seems to be out. Last Friday when I was to have climbed Devils’ Pk with Sir Roger Wilson, it was a cloudy day, with frequent showers. He wanted me to go on Sunday instead, but we had recently heard that one, Capt Leete, who years ago used to be flying instructor at Dumdum, afterwards becoming a government servant, is at St. Dunstan’s Home at Rondebosch, and we had arranged to go to see him. He was a great friend of Idris’ and I had heard that he had been in a bad crash at Bombay not long before we left India, and that he had lost the sight of both his eyes. Poor chap! He’s plucky, as indeed most of the blinded men seem to be. He has learnt to type, and is writing short plays for the wireless. He is also keen on a scheme for gathering India’s two (or is it three?) million blind into communities, and has been working the whole thing out in some detail. We talked very largely about that, and have promised to go out to see him one week day, when the work of the home is all in progress.

Luckily Mrs Smuts, who lives about twenty minutes walk away from St Dunstan’s, asked us to lunch with her. It was a perfect day, and I confess I looked up at Devil’s Pk with some longing from time to time. Edward Groth’s friend, Marischal Murray had also kindly asked me to do a climb with him on the West face of Table Mt, and I was sorry not to be able to accept that too, not only because of the climb, but because I like Mr Murray and find him interesting.

At Mrs Smut’s luncheon, the other guest was old Mr Harry Currey, and it was a pleasure to see him again. After lunch, when we made a move to go, Mr Currey suggested that we should all go in his car over Constantia Nek, on the South of Table Mt, to Hout Bay and have tea there. It was an attractive proposition, but Herbert was too tired. I felt a little badly about letting Herbert go home alone, but at the same time I felt badly about refusing Mr Currey’s invitation, for he and Mrs. Smuts had evidently connived at the plan, so I went with them, and enjoyed the lovely scenery and their talk. They have both known S. Africa for so many years, and have known so many of the outstanding people who have built the country up. I never cease to be amazed at the sprightliness of Mr Currey’s movements, and the liveliness of his mind.

Herbert had been a bit tired from the previous day, when we went out to have tea with the Harveys at Kenilworth, and then to a cocktail party with Sir Stuart and Lady Syme. Lady Syme sat at our table at the Settler’s Club, and it was through her that we got this flat. They have just taken a charming little house near the Harveys, and kindly asked us to the house-warming. Sir Stuart (It may be Stewart. I dont know) was Governor of the Sudan. I dont know what he is doing now. I suppose he is either on leave or retired.

Since I could not go on the mountain on Friday, I started work in the S.A.W.A.S.’s office, not in my old section which has ceased to exist, but in the central section. I am going to work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 2 till 5 p.m. It does not seem much out of the week, but that is all they want, and I have said they can always call on my for extra work if there is a rush at any time. I throughly enjoy being in office again. It is such a pleasure to be able to get down to a job, and not be constantly interrupted for all kinds of little household matters.

We have an open invitation to go to the Mountain Club any Friday evening. There are always some members there after dinner, whether there is a show on or not. I phoned to Dr Barnard, Herbert’s old school friend who is the Secretary, and said we should like to go down last Friday, asking at the same time whether he would like me to take down a few rather fine Himalayan Photos I happen to have with me. Dr B said that he would be very glad if I would take the photos down. Just after lunch he turned up here, saying that if I had photos that would go into the epidiascope, he suggested I should keep them and have them shown, in conjunction with a talk about the Himalayan Club, and the Himalayas, on Friday 19th. This I have promised to do, but I have quite a number of photos given me by various people, which are too big for the epidiascope. These I took along last Friday. The Vice President, who was there, asked me to put them out on a long trestle table, and to tell the members present about them. It was rather fun, for it was so completely informal. Lots of questions were asked, and people seemed interested and very friendly. About 10 o’clock we adjourned to a neighbouring restaurant for tea, and got home about 11 o’clock, - - the latest Herbert has been out for a very long time.

It was nice to be talking mountains again.

A week or two ago I mentioned that I had seen the name Bevington on a picture in the Art Gallery. We were in the gallery one evening recently, and got into conversation with one of the attendants, who told us that Mr Bevington is often in the Gallery, and gave us the address of his studio. I wrote off to him, and last evening his wife phoned us to say they are most interested. Her husband’s family were Quakers and came from Worcestershire. They are coming to tea with us to-morrow. Funny how we are both finding cousins in South Africa!

Edward Groth went off last Wednesday evening, and we went to the station to see him off. A couple of his friends were there, and the twenty minutes we spent on the platform were rather amusing, though I felt sad at saying goodbye, for Heaven knows when we shall meet again. Edward’s last words were “No none of this nonsense about passages to England. You just make your reservations for Pretoria as soon as the wether at the Cape begins to be cold.” What a hospitable creature he is.

We are becoming quite practiced at having a guest to lunch. Lady Wilson came yesterday and Eileen Forsyth to-day. I shall have to arrange to only have people on the days I dont go to the war office, for one cant very well turn guests out in time to be back in office by 2 o’clock.

Mails from home and from Canada still seem few and far between. All we have had for a long time is an Air-graph from Annette, dated Oct 16, telling us about her visit to Yorkshire with Pam and Betty. I hope a good budget of letters will come sometime soon.

It must seem odd my writing so much and saying nothing about the war. Our hearts are much uplifted about the war news and Russia’s splendid progress. I have just been reading Virginia Coles’s book “Looking for Trouble” and constantly while reading her descriptions of Paris and of London in the summer and autumn of 1940, I thought that the Germans must be beginning to have feelings something like ours were in those dark days, but their feelings must be more bitter one would think, for they must at least know that they were the aggressors.

After I got back from office last evening, Herbert and I went to see the roses (now past their best) and to feed the squirrels in the gardens. A great advantage of this flat is its proximity to the gardens, and the fact that we can walk through them to the town and to my office.

Three weeks ago I got a big bunch of postcards to send to various people for Christmas, and so far I have written only one! I must get round to it, and even so they will be late.

Best love to you all,
LJT

(added, handwritten at bottom of letter to Romey)
My darling Romey,

The enclosed letter from Mary Ow may interest you. I am sorry she has felt distressed about the possibility of your visiting them The possibility was so very remote in any case, as I have written to tell her.

I am sorry to hear that so much of Baroness Giskra’s money was tied up in Java. They had bought an estate there, and after Werner’s death there were all sorts of delays about the sale going through. I suppose the delays lasted so long that it never was sold. Let’s hope she will get something out of it after the war --- that perhaps Mary will get something from her husband’s estate.

We are longing for more news of you. I am so anxious to know how much money you will be allowed to have in the States if you get permission to go there. I did give you the Rankin’s address didn’t I?

Best love, my darling
Mother

(hand written addition at bottom of letter to Annette)

My darling Annette –

I’m just about to do an air-graph, so this is only a message of affection – I’d like to sit down and write you a long personal letter, including amongst other things, thoughts engendered by cooking and housekeeping, and about what I have to learn – but it must wait till another time – I’ve had an unexpected but very welcome visitor this morning – Mrs Cramer Roberts – who had just had strong drops put in her eyes and craved a little rest and time to recover with us – In a few minutes I have to see to the lunch – Love, as always and thanks for AG of 16/10/43
Mother

Family letter from HPV

c/o Standard Bank of South Africa,
Cape Town.
November 10th 1943. Wednesday

My dear Annette, (name handwritten)

Among the inventions of the age was a Letter Book, a note-book in which were to be recorded at the time of occurrence or of inspiration notes about sights or happenings or thoughts which would go suitable into letters for this person or that. Nothing came of it; though it would have the advantage that by jotting down the name of the person to whom anything had been communicated it would be possible to know whether it could be used in any letter later. Today I went to great pains to copy out the remarks of the missionary about the 14 elephants entertained like angels unawares, and then had a sudden fear that Mary Ow to whom I was writing had had the thing from me already. This week I have no notes on which to base this.

Luckily Joan yesterday had talk with the caretaker. He asked if we had been worried by noises made by the flat above. Answered that no, he went on to say that there is a woman who objects to noise two stories up above us. When anyone below her slams a door, she slams one twenty times within an hour: if there is miscellaneous noise below, she drops upon the floor a cannon-ball which she stole for this very purpose from Camp’s Bay: and if the watercloset below is flushed too often for her taste at night, she flushes ten or twenty times in quick succession. Apart from this eccentric conduct, there is another strange happening nearer home: our maid, after finishing her work yesterday, produced a tine of Mum and mummed her face. An act of infinite humility.

Which reminds me that I think of causing myself to become a bishop and preaching. In order to make use of a thought about the object of God in choosing the Jews; it was the same idea of infinite love as was typified by the blanket full of all manner of things clean and unclean. He chose them precisely because they were odd. Hope for everybody, so to speak.

I had relations with two Jews myself yesterday. I have been visiting pawnshops with the idea of getting a stereoscope in order that we may show the stereographs of the Kinchenjunga group to the mountain club people here. In one of these a young man, a customer, told me that he had noticed a stereoscope in one of the little curio-shops further down the street. When I asked there about it, they thought that it was a telescope that I meant; so that later, in the bargaining process, when they said that 10 or 15 shillings was the proper price and that they actually had sold a dozen in all for no less recently, I triumphed by asking “Why then did you not know what the word meant?” I offered three shillings, saying that before the war I could have got one new for half a crown; they responded by saying “Half a crown before the war! Then it is worth a pound now.”; to which I countered “Only if anyone had any need of one; and no one has.”, and walked out. They pursued me down the street and I finally bought it for 5/6. Now Joan acclaims me as among the great, the merchants and the money wise. And indeed I have never bargained with anyone before, except that I have walked out of shops in a dust-shaking process when prices have been too high.

Joan did her extempore talk at the Mountain Club meeting very well. It was not an easy matter to make a scratch collection of photos of different climbs by Germans and others interesting to folk who had no sort of knowledge of the Himalayas. I must admit that I sat back in a chair and made no attempt to follow the proceedings closely. They were friendly but not so genial as the New Zealand mountain club people; but then Joan had done a good deal for the N.Z. would-be climbers.

I have been working on the paddy-production figures from the farm of that Chinsura zamindar whom I have probably mentioned often in letters. Working out average yields per acre for the thirty or more varieties which enter into his reports. Tedious work, but the results are interesting; though I cannot make use of them really here, as I could if I could cross-examine him about them. Incidentally I have been led to check some of the figures worked out by my clerks at Chinsura, and find several of them to be quite wrong, hopelessly wrong. Typical. It was because I could never trust any of the results worked out for me that I had to do so much silly detail myself and so failed to get finished my contemplated note about the farm. I had hoped to show from the reports about it how much output a private person got from his fields in that area, what was his cultivation cost, and what his profit; so that I could draw comparisons with the results to be had with irrigation. Nowadays I am very slow in doing these calculations and tire soon so that I doubt if I shall ever get anything done worth putting onto paper.

Of late my reading has been largely about agriculture. “Farming for forty centuries” (“Farmers” rather) which deals with cultivation methods in China and Japan. Extremely interesting but I wish that I had come across it while still in Bengal. There is in it a lot about compost; and it sticks out that we were on the wrong tack when we preached to the people in Bengal that they should make compost with cow-dung. We knew well enough that they would continue to burn the cowdung; and it would have been wiser therefore to suggest their making an inferior compost out of layers of river silt and vegetable matter, such as water hyacinth. There is obviously a great deal of this sort used in China and although there they use also varieties of agreeable mucks which would not appeal to the Indian the results of the silt-vegetable matter compost are clearly a lot better than using no manure at all. Here is my Chinsura man remarking with bewilderment on the falling off in yield of his aus paddy (grown with little water on high lands and reaped in the early autumn) when his own records show that he has used no manure on the fields where he grows aus for at least 16 years. Another thing interesting in the “Forty centuries” book is all that it says about wooden machinery. Bamboo wind-mills, bamboo water-wheels, wooden circular water lifts worked by foot-power on the bicycle drive system, ploughs, drills and harrows. Years ago I urged the Bengal Industries Department to try first to introduce into the province not the elaborate machinery of the West but primitive machines used successfully in other backward countries; something that could be mended by any village carpenter or tied up with a bit of string; like the wooden spinning wheels and bamboo looms which I had manufactured in Barisal. The same principle would apply to agricultural improvements.

Another book dealt with compost making. It advocated the methods of Rudolf Steiner, that “neglected genius”; he was keen on compost making but dragged in a lot of mystical stuff about the virtues of certain herbs added to the heap in homoeopathic quantities, and it looks to me as if the results which are alleged to prove the virtues of these homoeopathic additions were due merely to the compost. Mrs. Forsyth has for sometime been talking about this gentleman but when one reads that he advocated keeping vervain in the bladder of a stag for three months and then scattering it over an acre of land, to its immense benefit, or of the merit of applying to each acre a few ounces of cowdung which has been stored for three months in a cow’s horn, one has difficulty in believing that he was not cracked.

As I passed into the Gardens the other day on my way back from the Bank the shoe-cleaner, shoe-black, who has installed himself there banged cheerily on his box as an indication that he considered my shoes fit subjects for his attentions. A merry thing; and it made me laugh. Near by there is a spot where a squirrel lies in wait in the middle of the path and accosts all comers with requests for nuts. My experiments have shown that squirrels will not eat cheese or carrots. And why should they?

When a bee finds a new flower has come out in quantities, she conveys the tidings to the hive by means of a wild dance repeated in different parts of it. My authority? - “Science for the Garden” by Keeble.

(handwritten addition at end of letter) You write interesting airgraphs. I do not comment on them because so many weeks pass before you get the comments: but continue always, my child.

Much love
Dad

Airgraph from LJT to Grace Townend (addressed to Mrs. A.B.S. Townend. Highways. Great Leighs. Nr. Chelmsford. Essex. England)

No 22 Nov. 13th 1943

Dearest Grace: Its almost a month since we had your last letter, & though a mail came yesterday with letters from Mr Cape & others, there was nothing from the home clan. It seems parcels sent in June from Jo’burg arrived. I am not clear whether those sent in April from Cape Town ever reached you.

A huge bunch of letters came from Romey to-day. Its worrying that the depts. Concerned take so long to make up their minds about allowing her to go to the States. It is good to hear from Harry that Charlotte is quite well again.

As for ourselves, life in the little flat has settled into some sort of routine. I am learning more about shopping and feeling a little less of a greenhorn at cooking. The “help” is not intelligent & has to be shown everything several times over, which is perhaps a good way for me to learn. Interesting that Romey has been housekeeping & cooking too. I am glad she has been able to be of real use in the Magill household. We are still much enjoying having a place of our own. I appreciate it specially after dinner. The plan of climbing Devil’s Pk with Sir Roger Wilson last Friday, came to nothing on account of the weather. We are to do it on Monday, if fine. On Friday therefore, I went along to the office to say I was ready to work in the afternoons. As a rule, it is thought, there will not be work every day, so I am going on three days from 2 till 5 p.m., & can be called on at any time to do extra work. I started on a job straight away, and this week I did an extra afternoon to get a job finished. It is a pleasure to be back in office. I must say I do like being able to settle down to a definite bit of work in an office. Its refreshing after working at home, & being constantly interrupted. We went to the Mountain Club after dinner on Friday of last week. I took along a few big & beautiful photos of the Himalayas, as there was no “Talk” on. We had a nice evening, and I have been asked to show smaller photos through the epidiascope next Friday & give a Talk about them.

On Sunday morning we went out to St Dunstans Home, which is in the Suburb of Wynberg, alongside Kenilworth, to see a man from India, who crashed in Bombay & has lost his sight. He has learnt to type & is writing plays for the wireless, & other things. Very plucky! Luckily Mrs Smuts had asked us to lunch, for she lives only about 15 minutes walk away. Dear old Mr Currey was there, good company, as always. After lunch, he suggested that we go for a drive with him in his car to Hout Bay & have tea there. H. Was too tired, but I accepted, as it was obvious that he & Mrs Smuts had connived at the plan. We had a pleasant time. Both mountains & sea were looking lovely.

I have made contact with another relative on the Bevington side, the artist to whom I wrote after seeing a picture of his. He & his wife came to tea with us on Thursday. They brought photos of Mr Bev’s brother, which are strikingly like Father, & they say I am absurdly like an Aunt of his. This man’s father came out to S.Africa in the army at the time of the Zulu wars, & staying on in this country. He knows that they have relatives who have a fur business in London. Please all my Christmas “does” as usual. Love. Joan

Family letter from LJT No 44

6 Victoria Court.
Long Street.
Cape Town
Nov 18th 1943

My Dears,

The longed for budget of letters has arrived. Romey’s 118, 117 & 119 written last half Sept& 2nd Oct. came last Saturday, and on Tuesday a mail from England reached us. There were letters from Grace, nos 24 & 25 of 22/8 & 8/9, and one from Annette of 25/8, as well as one from May & others from friends. We had a mail from India too, with letter of 28/10 from H.D. All thanks to the dear people who have written!

Nov 20
That was not much of a beginning, and since I was interrupted I have not found time to go on. Yesterday evening I gave my “talk” to the Mountain Club, so after my household duties were finished in the morning, I had to spend some time going through my photos and maps, to refresh my memory. After lunch I had to go off to office (at 2 p.m.) and when I go home at 5.15, there were various little things to do, before changing, getting supper, and arriving at the Mountain Club room at 7.45. The audience were easy to talk to but I am disappointed with my talk. I wish I could have gone through the pictures on the epidiascope beforehand. There was a lot of talk and questions afterwards, which I hope meant that people were moderately interested, and we were taken along to a neighbouring restaurant for coffee afterwards, and driven home by Professor Compton, President of the Club.

I have been in what might be called a “mountain atmosphere” a good deal this week, for I spent Monday climbing the Devil’s Peak with Sir Roger Wilson. It was a little bit of a rush catching the 9.20 train, and I had to leave poor Herbert to cope with the shopping. Sir R met me at Rondebosch station with his car. We were joined there by a young widow, and a soldier on leave, who Sir R suspects will be her second husband. They were nice people, both of them. We drove up to the Rhodes Memorial and left the car there. It was nice not having to walk up through the town. From the memorial it took us two and a quarter hours to get to the summit, which is 3,288 ft. The first half of the way is steep walking up a profile ridge of the mountain, partly through woods and partly in the open. Three rough wooden ladders take one over some rock cliffs. Having attained about three quarters of the altitude and half the distance, one then has a delightful long stretch on a fairly level contour path nicked out of the steep upper north-west face, carrying one to a point above the saddle which joins Devil’s Peak to Table Mt. Another twenty minutes steep zig-zag up a grassy slope lands one on the rocky summit, which is a very definite peak, on which there is no mistaking when one has got to the highest point. Most, if not all, the walker’s ways up Table Mt are in gullies, with little in the way of views from them. Our route up Devil’s Pk was a delightful contrast, with magnificent views all the time, often commanding both Table Bay and False Bay. The regrettable point was that Herbert was not with us.

Sir Roger came to lunch on Thursday and stayed on till 3.15, looking at Himalayan photos. He is keenly interested in everything to do with mountaineering and mountain walking. It was fun reviving all sorts of memories of the different climbing expeditions which have come out to India.

It was really his visit that prevented my finishing my letter on the 18th, for I had to wash up the lunch things after he had gone, and then it was time to change and get tea, before starting off by bus for a sherry party and supper with Mrs Cramer Roberts. Sherry parties here begin any time after 5.30, when the offices close. Herbert and I decided to go a little early and spend time in the Claremont public gardens, because if we had waited till after five we should have had to queue up to get on to a bus. It was lovely in the gardens, where the rhododendrons were out: it was a pleasant party, just a small gathering of well chosen people, and it was a pleasant supper afterwards. Mrs Cramer Roberts is herself an interesting person and gathers interesting people round her.

I have been kept busy on my three afternoons in office, and actually did part of an extra one last week. I had to leave at 3.30 on the extra day for I had the Bevingtons coming to tea. They arrived with several family photos. Two of Mr Bev’s father’s brother, Major John Bevington of the R.F.A., were remarkably like father. One of his sons went into the Hudson Bay Co before the last war, they think through the agency of other cousins, who were in the fur trade in London. Possibly our cousin Herbert?

Oddly enough in the letter I have just received from May, she asks whether I noticed that the first Canadian-built Spitfire, was flown across the Atlantic by two young Canadians, one of them a Bevington. Perhaps he is related to the John Bevingtons who went out to the Hudson Bay Co.

Our friend here, “William George”, asks if we know Reginald Bevington of Cobbler’s Farm, somewhere in Surrey, for he is a relation. I could not remember a Reginald Bevington, but now May reminds me that Herbert’s son was Reggie. It is amusing finding all these links, but the most interesting thing is the persistence of type. The Bevingtons here say that I am precisely like one of his Aunts.

I was interested in Mr Bevington for reasons other than tracing relationships. He is an artist, and the only man to have held a Rhodes Scholarship for Art, which took him home to study at the Burlington House School of Art. He subsequently became head of the School of Arts in Cape Town, but resigned after a few years because the Government would not grant money enough to make the teaching possible or practical. For instance, they said that the students could work by copying from the flat, and there was no necessitity to hire models. He now does more sculpture than painting. We are going to his studio one day soon to see some of his work.

This week-end we are making a change in domestic arrangements. The “help”, Mrs Engel, found it impossible to stay later than 1 p.m. and even that was difficult for her. Luckily I have been able to get a young woman who has been doing temporary work at the Settler’s Club, and who is used to domestic service. She will come at 7 a.m. and stay till after lunch, Sundays included, which will be much more convenient. She starts work on Monday.

We seem to have been busy one way and another. We have quite a number of visitors. We were out to tea at Seapoint last Saturday, and we have been a few short walks. The weather has been varying from cold to hot in a very uncertain way. The Inhabitants tell us, as, all over the world inhabitants do tell one, that never has a season like this been known before. It appears that it ought to be really hot summer weather by now, instead of which it has been like an English late Spring and early summer. Personally I like it far better than scorching hot weather.

Thanks again for letters, and best love to you all.

LJT

(added, handwritten at bottom of letter to Romey)

My darling Romey,

In case you do go to New York later on, I am going to write to a Mrs. R. T. Merrick----a well-to-do elderly widow, who used to be a great traveler and for whom I was able to do quite a lot when she was in India about nine or ten years ago. We corresponded for some years and she sent me a copy of her book about her travels. “Caucas Race”.

I fear I have been in her debt as far as letters are concerned for some years. I think she would very likely be willing to befriend you---so I shall tell her that I have told you to get in touch with her if you find you are going to be in N.Y.

Another very nice American young man, who was one of the party who came to India to climb Nanda Devi, was H. Adams Carter of 170 Otis Street, Newtonville, Massachusetts, whose father joined him in Calcutta after the climb. We saw quite a lot of them and corresponded with them. I think I will write to Carter pere, as I think Adams will be at the War. You might be fairly near them if you go to the Rankins.

Dearest love,
Mother

(handwritten addition at bottom of letter to Annette)

My darling Annette – Continuing the thoughts which I did not have room for in my AG no 23 – just dispatched – I send greetings to the Roscoes for I really feel almost as if I know them – I am so sorry my April parcel for Mrs R. never arrived. I hope the one send from Futti’s – Jo’burg on 28/9 turned up.

The other notion I touched on and had to abandon was the fact I recognize in my own mind, that I do look on cooking and housework as “waste of time” – I know its all wrong and quite illogical and I must go on thinking about it, until I can get the perspective right. Have you ever considered your attitude to these things - ?

So glad you have met Sir Frank Noyce. He evidently liked you – He might be useful in advising or even helping you to get a job after the war – must go and change before lunch and office Love Mother

Airgraph from LJT to Annette (addressed to Miss Annette Townend P.O. Box. 111 Bletchley Bucks England)

No 23 Nov 20th 1943

Darling Annette: This will probably reach you early for Christmas, but it had better carry you our love & good wishes. Aunt will send you the usual cheque, & I send my apologies for not being more original. Great joy last week over the big mail from home & from Canada. Thanks for your letter (no number) of 25/8, telling about visit to Scotland. Also for A.G. of 16/10 rcd on 3/11. Two days ago we had an A.G. from Sir Frank Noyce, telling of your lunch with him, & saying lots of nice things about you. Amongst other things he mentions how well you look, a fact on which Aunt also comments. Its good to hear this after so many years of steady work in war-time England. Sorry to hear from Aunt that my food parcels sent in April from Cape Town did not arrive. There were ones for you, her, Christina Drake & Mrs Roscoe. I must send off others for Christina & Mrs R. to take the place of the lost ones. I not only thought, but talked of you when I was climbing the Devil’s Pk with sir Roger Wilson last Monday. We had a glorious day, such as you would have loved. My mind has been running on the “Talk” I have to the Mountain Club on Fri. evening. I did not write out a lecture, but selected photos & maps, & thought out things to say hung round them. I missed a lot of good points when the time came, partly from a fear of being too long-winded. It would be a great advantage to be able to have a rehearsal with the photos on the screen beforehand. It was a nice evening all the same, with lots of talk & questions afterwards. We seem to have had little time to ourselves during the past week. We were out a few times. On Thursday we went to a sherry party out at Claremont, & stayed on to supper. Sir Roger had been to lunch that day & stayed till past 3 o’clock looking at Himalayan Photos & talking about the H.Club. People drop in to see us here, in a way they did not at Sea Point. Its partly because we are so central & partly because we are in our own home. We were out at Sea Point for tea with Eileen Forsyth one day, & there is always a riot of conversation in her house. Dad always tells her she is completely wrong-headed, for she claims to be a socialist. She is always running after new gods, without troubling to find out what poor clay makes their nether limbs. At the moment she has a picture painted by a woman in a trance, & full, E thinks of meaning. It’s a shockingly badly painted vase, with a few equally badly painted flowers in it. I’m afraid we, & some of her other guests, pulled her leg a bit about it. There was there a nice young S.A. artist I had met at the Mountain Clb. He, I am told, is a first class draftsman, & is highly approved by our new-found cousin W.C.Bevington, whose pupil he once was. We are going to his studio next Tuesday. I am glad to say I have a maid coming to-morrow. The “help” found it difficult to stay even till 1 p.m. This girl is a maid, & can stay as long as I want. I must of course, try to learn that housework & cooking are not waste of time, which I am conscious is the attitude I have to them at present. Dad is reading books about the grass lands of Britain, & I feel I shall never look at pasture or hay fields with the same trusting eye again. I had no idea there is so much science & skill in the whole matter. I am enjoying my three afternoons a week in office, though I must say nine hours a week seems a poor contribution to make to the war effort. I am just starting Beveridge’s book on his plan but have only read small snippets in bed at night, when I am tired, which is no way to deal with a book of that sort. Dad is, I think, strongly “anti-Beveridge”, & though he has not apparently read anything about him, I know when I start to argue, he will have the whole matter at his finger ends! Love & greeting. Greetings also to Christina, Anna & the Roscoes. Mother

Air Graph No 23 from LJT to Romey

Mrs Townend.c/oStandard Bank. Cape Town.    Nov 21st 1943 

Darling Romey; This will get to you in time for Christmas I hope, & it carries you our dearest love and good wishes.  I wonder whether you will still be with the beloved Magills when it reaches you.  I hope you have got nice presents for yourself, for them & for John.  I am sending a separate A.G. to Susie.  We got your splendid long letters 117, 118, & 119, with “personal” enclosed, on 3/11/, & much enjoyed them all.  You seem to have made good use of the last of the summer weather.  It is disappointing that your exit permit did not come through.  I wonder what have been the later developments.  H.D. thinks it will be possible to send money to the U.S.A. for you, as the sums involved would be small.  Do hope you manage to go to stay with the Rankens.  Louise, especially, is a darling.  She is in the very first rank amongst my friends.  Do you know I did such a stupid thing this year.  For several days from Nov 17th on, I kept on thinking R is going to be 20 on 22nd, & suddenly realized that I was thinking of Annies date.  Hope you had a nice birthday.  Some sort of a routine has worked itself out for our lives in this flat.  I am more at home with the shops now, & the people know me.  I also feel less of a green-horn at cooking.  (Its interesting hearing of your efforts)  My “help” asked me if I would look for someone else as she found she could not stay away from her home till after lunch.  I have got a young Woman, who has worked as a maid, coming to-morrow.  She can be here at 7 a.m. & stay till the work is done after lunch, which will be much nicer.  I can see I must try to get over my habit of thinking that shopping, cooking & housework are waste of time, for they are really the first essentials of live.  There has been quite a lot doing since I wrote on the 2nd.  I started work in office on the 5th.  I am acting as a sort of Asst.Sec to the Secretary to the Head of the S.A.W.A.S.  They only want me on three afternoons a week from 2 till 5.  Nine hours a week does not seem much to give to the war effort, but I have said they can call on me whenever they want extra work done.  I am very glad to be back in office once more.  We have been seeing quite a lot of Sir Roger Wilson, who was President of the Himalayan Club.  I climbed the Devil’s Pk with him on Monday last, & we had a glorious day.  He lunched with us last Thurs. & stayed till long past 3 p.m. looking at Himalayan photos.  He is such a nice person, wise & gentle.  We were asked to go down to the Mountain Club on the 5th, so I took along some beautiful large photos I have of different Himalayan climbs, & the members who were there seemed most interested in them.  They asked me if I had any smaller pictures to show them on the epidiascope & give a “talk” about them.  This took place last Friday & went fairly well, though I am not satisfied with what I did.  I wish I could have had a rehersal first, with the pictures thrown on a screen.  It was a pleasant evening though & there was lots of talk and questions afterwards.  We have had a lot of people coming in to see us, & have even entertained some to lunch.  People drop in here as they never did at Sea Point.  I suppose it is because we are so centrally situated & also because we are in a home of our own.  We have been out quite a lot too.  In fact I don’t seem to get round to any of the many sewing jobs that are crying to be done, & my letter writing is being sadly neglected.  Dad works away at his papers on rice-growing, rainfall and so on.  He has been reading books on the grass lands of England, & he reads quite a lot out to me or tells me about it.  We shall never be able to look at hay fields or grazing grounds with the same simple faith that we used to do.  The whole subject is an elaborate science!  We have had a mail from England after an interval of a month.  Love and all Christmas wishes from us both.

Family letter from HPV

c/o Standard Bank of South Africa,
Cape Town.
6 Victoria Court.
November 22nd. Monday.

My Dear Annette (name handwritten)

It was like the incident in the Book of Genesis when Joseph’s cup turned up in the corn-sack. We opened the roll in which Mr. Pierneef had packed for us the reproductions of his pictures which we bought in Pretoria; and behold! there in the middle of it was a small sketch, pen and ink, of one of the thorn trees which are dear to him, with an inscription giving love from the family. How charming of him. The alignment of this has gone wrong because Joan who was using the typewriter yesterday to do airgraphs (her own needs a new ribbon) left the lever of the paper-clipping device in the loose position. As I did not notice till this moment. This reminds me that Mrs. Forsyth asked me what I thought of her article in Trek on impressions of South Africa; I said that it was not simple enough to get across to any but the clever; and she took this as a compliment, adding that one reader has written abuse of it and has analysed some of the sentences. The article really was bad, straining after effect like a schoolboy’s essay; I told her that much of it was indeed ungrammatical - and she replied “That is not lack of grammar; it is being modern.” It is so easy to be modern and so hard to write simple but effective stuff that I am not impressed. Yet in my own letters I insert disjointed phrases like that which set me off on this diversion.

Did I tell of the striking setback as regards the hired vacuum cleaner? how, before I hurried off to my bath, I put the thing together and how when I came back from errands in the town at 10 o’clock, I found that the maid had been all round the flat applying the nozzle of the machine to this and that, and that since I had fastened it onto the wrong end of the machine, it has been blowing instead of sucking; the amount of dust extracted or forced out by this method was beyond belief. On the other hand Joan also has on occasion gone wrong in dealing with household problems, though I don’t know that I should have noticed anything had she not announced these disasters. I should not class among them the fact that our table (a card-table which has to serve all purposes except that of a writing table) turns out to have a top made of not very thick cardboard. It is no wonder that it sways and bends when one cuts meat on it at meals; the knives are blunter than can be believed and I have failed to get an edge onto one on which I experimented. Inferior stainless steel.

While I remember it, let me tell how in the “Hygienic Stores” this morning (a rather scrubby little shop run by an old couple who are willing if nothing else) Joan found the old lady behind the counter apparently alone but talking. She said by way of a jest “Have you got your husband under the counter?” to obtain the amazing reply “Yes: I have made his bed up there.” The old chap has a boil on the back of his neck, dislikes being alone and is essential to the running of the shop because the wife does not know where everything is. Faintly reminiscent of Rosemary’s putting Dismal Desmal under the mattress.

A week mostly of gloom. Violent unease due to indigestion one night and discomfort afterwards for some days. During which time we have debated causes. I suggest that they are to be found in the eating of beans and peas; and in eating rather too much anyhow. Joan holds that I did not eat many (true) and that I do not eat much (true again in one sense, but is it to the point?) It is the more uplifting today therefore to find when I went down to the shops on many errands (library, bank, giving books in for the troops, buying coffee and tea, paying electricity bill, having a haircut, buying barley sugar, and feeding squirrels) that I was walking in a light and briskly efficient manner. Like one who has been cured of fallen arches at a cost of £6 “and worth it” as the dingy old man said when vainly urging me to try a course of treatment at that cost. It is and has been for a couple of days stinking hot, quite like Bengal with a damp oppressiveness which is galling most folk. It would be strange if this was why today I feel so much fitter than of late; visions of having to retire in Bengal after all.

The purchase of the stereoscope from the two Jews who thought all the time that it was some form of telescope was justified by the joy given by the Darjeeling Snows photos. We took them down to the Mountain Club show when Joan gave her talk and they led to converse with several while Joan was answering queries. The epidiascope though modern and good did not shew up the photos well on the screen; conclusion, it is essential to have the epidiascope near to the screen no matter how good it is. In Calcutta the same photos or some of them had showed up much better.

During the waking hours of the night, some nights ago, I suddenly thought how dolittle-ish I had been in the matter of my pretty graphs for showing probable crop-failures. Instead of leaving it to the intelligence of the Secretariat to deduce from my scheme of forecasting yield from rainfall the possibility of a lesser thing, viz. the forecasting of crop failure, I should have worked out in plain and unmistakable detail simple rules by which anyone could have done it. My note for the Rice and Paddy Committee had ended by the conclusion that we had not enough data to be able to say what would be the precise yield with certain types of rainfall distribution though we could with other and more usual types; but I did not discuss the mere forecasting of serious failure and did not point out that the data were to let us know in most years whether there would be such failure. They were sufficient indeed to let us know last year that there would be serious failure in Bengal; and if I had written the whole thing out beforehand perhaps my prophecy of failure would have been listened to, and the optimism of the D.A. (Director of Agriculture, to be less obscure) would have been disregarded. The sad thing was that a technician would not venture to say that the subordinates were afraid to give true reports of crop-prospects after the Ministers had indicated that they were determined to get a bigger crop than usual, or to explain that the fear was due to conviction that the Ministers would get back at anyone who reported in terms which they disliked. - - - - - However the sudden thought has not led to any practical result, although I did rough out a note about it the following evening. The difficulty is not only that I lack energy; also I lack access to information which could be had easily in Calcutta.

Even now I do not know what the final forecast of the aman paddy crop was last year. If officially it was reported even after the harvest that the crop was good, it is useless to write the simple rules to which I refer above. It is quite possible of course that even when the crop was in reports would describe it as good in spite of its being deficient; in 1938 the Howrah crop was reported as having been a bumper one, until I pointed out to Morshed that the rainfall had been very short and that the favourable results reported were peculiar; then he went round and inquired personally, and ended by reporting so bad a harvest that he wanted money for famine relief immediately.

I have been reading one of the best books ever. Fascinating. Instructive. To be read by all, old and young. It is the “Clifton Park System of Farming” by R.H. Elliot. About humus making. Not in heaps, but in the field; by setting roots of grasses and fodder crops to work. There is more hope for action against the destruction of fertility and the setting-in of erosion through this sort of action than through the manufacture of compost by mixing vegetation and cow-dung in heaps. Roughly speaking Elliot argued that virgin soil is fertile because it is full of vegetable matter, humus; the tired soils on his farm were infertile because they lacked vegetable matter. The remedy was not to add fertilizers which would enable plants to extract the last remaining atoms of fertility from the soil but to get vegetable matter back; and the way to get vegetable matter back quickly was to grow suitable grasses and plants in such profusion that they eliminated all worthless weeds and in such a manner that they formed a thick turf with deep roots in a comparatively few years. Why spend money on deep ploughing or sub-soil cultivation when you can get deep-rooted plants like chickory or burnet to break up the subsoil for you cheaply and more efficiently? The book tells how the idea worked out. In some ways badly written it is none the less charming. What is more it seems to have sense in it; to judge by the remarks of Sir George Stapledon about it. Good as the latter is and worthy authority, he is dull to read, having a love of the abstractions which Q so heartily condemned. Let the family read not only “the Clifton Park etc” but a little book called “Soil and Sense” by Michael Graham; I read this in Brisbane two, or is it three?, years ago and have reverted to it.

But it is perhaps true that for benighted parts of India, in which agriculturally I include Bengal, more results might be had by a campaign in favour of the adoption of Rudolf Steiner’s schemes. All the astrological and black magic bunkum in these would appeal; and they might act as bait to induce the people to adopt that part of them, compost and careful preparation of the soil, which would do good.

One result of reading Stapledon on farming is to make one feel that it is all too complex for any but the great to manage. And a result of reading about grass is to destroy the concept of grass as such merely; any field will have a dozen grasses in it apart from obnoxious weeds like the buttercup which does not after all have any beneficial results of any kind on butter. All the agricultural knowledge given to us in the nursery was wrong.

Much love
Dad

Air Graph No 23 from LJT to Aunt (GCT)

Mrs Townend.c/oStandard Bank.Cape Town.    Nov.27th 1943

Dearest Grace: Thank you for your letters 24 & 25 of 22/8 & 8/9 rcd on 16/11. Its . nice to have news again & hear all’s well.  Under the advice of my good friend Mrs Smuts, H. went to a doctor, an F.R.C.S. who practiced for many years in England & have now turned largely to homeopathy, last Thurs.  After studying H.’s medical history & giving him a through examination, he says that he thinks the liver is the seat of the main trouble.  If that can be got to work properly, the lack of digestive juice in the stomach need not give much trouble.  Blood pressure is satisfactory.  Regime is much the same as formally recommended, but two medicines are to be taken.  It will be interesting to see what comes of it.  Dr Wright thinks it would probably be a good thing to return to England.  I do hope we have the luck to get passages without too great delay.  We have waited so long that I can scarcely believe that there is even a chance of getting home!  Our new little maid can scarcely be called “trained”, but she is willing enough, & its more convenient getting her here at 7.30, & keeping her till work is finished after lunch.  I am still doing or superintending most of the cooking, which is good for me.  I have often wished for your advice, but I have been managing not too badly.  We have done quite a lot of entertaining this week.  One guest to lunch: the man with whom Edward Groth stayed during his visit to Cape Town, who was hospitable to us.  An R.A.F. lad whom we met several times at the Mountain Club, to supper, & another Mt Club member, a young artist & two W.R.E.Ns joined us after the meal, for coffee & talk.  Another W.R.E.N. came in after supper on Thursday.  I am so glad to be able to offer even a tiny bit of hospitality to these young things, feeling it a small recognition of all the hospitality our children have received.  The weather is still patchy.  It was hot summer weather yesterday, with a faint haze over the Mountain.  To-day I was to go up the East Face from Kirstenbosch Gardens with Sir Roger Wilson, but it began to blow last night & not the usual S.Easter which is a fine wind, but from the S.West, which brings grey cloud & possible rain.  It was useless to try the Mountain, but we are lunching with the Wilsons, & driving out to Kirstenbosch afterwards.  H. may come a little part of the walk & than return, while Sir R. & I go for a tramp along one of the many contour paths which exist on that part of the Mountain’s lower slopes.  This should reach you about Christmas time, & carries our dearest love & all good wishes to the beloved family.  Please pay a cheque for £10 to yourself & Barney.  Give 10/- each to your three children & 30/- to Annette (I don’t think £1 buys much in these days) as well as getting a turkey or nearest equivalent for the House, & arranging some sort of a Christmas Treat if it can be done.  I think you know all this already, but in these days its just as well to repeat things once or twice.  I have been spending some time taking in the waists of skirts, which pleases me much.  I have taken off all the extra weight I put on while spending so much of my time sitting in office in India.  At the S.A.W.A.S. office this week I have spent my time going round the town finding out prices for furniture & curtain material for the South African Womens Auxiliary Services, (known as the ‘Swans’) who are taking over duty on an Island, ?????been given the barest minimum of furniture.  We are giving them extra ‘Comforts’, & having collected information, I went round yesterday doing the buying.  I hope it all proves satisfactory.  I have had so many little jobs to do, washing, ironing, mending & so on that my latest Navy League Jersey is not getting on fast.  Best love & good wishes to you all

Family letter from LJT No 45

6 Victoria Court.
Cape Town.
Nov 28th, 1943.

My Dears,

We shall soon have been a year in Africa, & Christmas will be coming round again. I wonder what luck we shall have about getting Home in the Spring. I am so longing for England: war discomforts or no.

How soon routine grows round one! My morning shopping up & down Long Street might have been a habit of months instead of weeks, so familiar have the streets’ characters become. The greengrocers, never called by that name in this country so far as I have heard, are all Indians, many of whom have never been in India. There are several small Indian grocers too, but I deal mostly with big grocers’ where the manageress is a most obliging person, with a wonderful make up. Piles of peroxide curls crown her head, and her lips are painted into a perfect scarlet cupids bow. They never seem the least disarranged, however fast & furious the custom in the shop. In the Dairy there is a disagreeable Afrikander woman & a girl who is always full of chat. A couple of mornings ago a small colored girl about three jam-pots high came with a huge jug to get the “yesterday’s” milk at cheap rate. “What” said the shop-girl, “Do you want that full?” Round-eyed, the small customer nodded her head. “Well, if you can drink all that, I should think you must have worms”, responded my friend behind the counter. The little girl’s eyes could get no rounder, & she showed no emotion at the accusation. In one little greengrocer’s shop I encounter sometimes an old lady and sometimes an old gentleman, who both keep rabbits and like to have the tops off my beetroots or the outside leaves of my cabbage or lettuce.

At the moment I am feeling very domestic minded. My former ‘help’ said she knew all about roasting a chicken, but it came to table with its legs and wings flopping all over the place, so I made up my mind that I would wrestle with the problem of preparing our Sunday fowl last night, when there was no one to watch me and no hurry. With cook-book propped on the table, I managed the whole affair quite well, though I took a long time over it. It gave me a strange feeling of satisfaction when it was done: a sort of relief: a feeling that I never need feel frightened of a fowl again. This morning I was able to say in an airy way to little dusky Lucinda, who has been working for us a week, and who I am sure never thought of anything so refined as trussing a bird, --”I have got the fowl all ready for roasting.” Its convenient having Lucinda, for she comes early (supposed to be 7.15, but its usually 7.30) and stays till after lunch. Like so many of these unfortunate Coloured folk, she has some idea of housework, but does not know much about cooking, though she claimed to do so. For these people there seem to be two sorts of cooking. You put things into a pot with some water and salt and stew them, or you put them into a pan with some grease and fry them. However she is learning, and can watch the pots, baste the meat and do all the odd jobs, which take so long.

We have had two parties this week. Marischal Murray, with whom Edward Groth stayed, and who was hospitable to us, lunched with us on Tuesday. He is an interesting person, and an interesting personality. He tries to see S. Africa with independent judgement, as outsiders might see her. Its a somewhat uncommon attitude in this country. That same afternoon we visited the studio of a young artist whom we had met and liked on visits to the Mountain Club. He does a lot of commercial work, and that is interesting, but his line and colour-wash sketches of people all sorts of subjects; -are very good, and so are his water-colors. He has never taken to oils. He came in to spend the following evening with us after supper, for we had already invited a young R.A.F. man, also met at the Mountain Club, to feed with us, and we cant cope with more than one guest to a meal. Two W.R.E.N.S. came as well, so we had quite a little party, and I think they enjoyed themselves. The talk ran mostly on art or on Mountain climbing, but the girls seemed happy enough to join in. I am sorry we cant do more for the lads and lassies who are so far from their homes, especially as other people have been so good to our children.

Herbert has been to see a doctor. He is an elderly man, an F.R.C.S., who practiced for many years in England, was captured off a ship by the Germans, & after many adventures, got away from Germany. He no longer practices as a surgeon, but has become interested in homeopathy, and has been remarkably successful in treating people with stomach and digestive troubles. He gave a lot of time and attention to Herbert. He says that the blood pressure is now nothing to worry about. After studying Herbert’s medical history, his opinion is that the only way to help him back to health and strength is to try to get his liver into better order. To this end, he is giving him two medicines to take. Diet and general regime are what has previously been recommended . He agrees with Dr. Du Preez that many people get along pretty well with little or no acid, but, he adds, only if the liver and other part of the digestive tract, is doing its work. I think well of him, for his diagnosis agrees with what I have always thought. Right back as far as our days in Asansol, I thought Herbert’s weariness and irritability were due to liver. It would be grand if Dr Wright could really do him some good.

Yesterday I was to have climbed the East face of Table Mountain with Sir Roger Wilson, but it was a cloudy, windy day with the top of the mountain covered in mist, so we had to call it off. The Wilsons, however, invited us to go to lunch with them at Rondebosch, (on the way to Kenilworth) and then, weather permitting, to go to Kirstenbosch Gardens, from where Sir Roger and I could go for a good walk on some of the several contour & crisscross paths on the side of the mountain. Lady Wilson came to the Gardens, but Herbert felt tired, and did not want to commit himself to staying about in the Gardens, in rather a cold wind all afternoon. Sir R. & I had a good walk, & investigated the approach to one of the less popular routes up the Mountain known as Window Gorge. It looks as if it would be mostly a scramble up a practically dry stream-bed, and he wants to try that way, but I intend to find out whether it entails any serious climbing, before I embark on it.

I was late back from office on Friday evening, and Herbert went off for a walk on his own, taking a bus to Kloof Nek and making some exploration from there. He enjoyed it, but eventually went a bit further than he intended, and was a little tired afterwards. One of the notable events of the walk was an encounter with a tortoise, small but observant, living on the wilds of the mountainside. He reports that the watsonias, a sort of gladiolus, are in full flower all over the mountain now. I must get out to see them. Sir Roger and I were in woods yesterday, so did not see any, but the arums, in the more open places, were still very lovely.

Some time this week has been devoted to taking in the waistbands of my skirts. During our Transvaal visits, when we did lots of walking, I have dropped the extra weight I put on during my last year in Calcutta, when I had no time for any exercise. I am glad of it, as you may imagine, but I wish it did not take so long to alter clothes!

I feel guilty that I have written to so few people for Christmas this year. Its futile to say I have been so busy, because of course most of you are much busier.

Best love to you all,
LJT

(typewritten addition at bottom of letter)

My darling Annette,

Dad and I have thought so often of the inconvenience Foyle’s must have put you to, by sending the Spanish books out here. How tiresome shops can be!

Its strange what a feeling of satisfaction I got last night over the simple job of trussing the chicken properly. One does not like to be ignorant of such things.

Talking to Lady Wilson yesterday, something cropped up about you and Romey, and surprised, she said “But you have never told me you had children”. Actually I have not talked to her so very often, and one does not go about saying, “Please, I have three children: - - “ and so on. Her family are almost her only real interest, I rather think. She says its so sad that when they grow up, one loses them. I fancy she feels that because she has that sort of possessive attitude. Perhaps they drift away for the very reason that she has no other interests. It makes her a bit dull.

I have not got on at all with the Beveridge book “Pillars of Society”, not because I dont find it interesting, but because I have scarcely found any time for reading this week. I have had a new Reader’s Digest hanging about, I have only managed to read two or three articls.

Best love, as always – Mother

Family letter from HPV

c/o Standard Bank of South Africa,
Cape Town.
November 28th 1943 Sunday.

My dear Annette,

It so happened that at the time when I visited the doctor (Thursday afternoon) I was feeling better than for weeks or for months even. That light-bodied feeling of which I have made mention as the ideal state before this. As for a cause to be attributed to this, I can think of none unless we praise the foot-arch-strengthening processes; which seems absurd. Yet it is true that the test of printing the soles of the feet on the cork bath-mat when I get out of the bath indicates success; there is a wide expanse of dryness between the imprint of the heel and that of the front of the foot. Also I walked with renewed energy; but that may be a symptom of some general improvement.

It is to be added in evidence of my merits that I have inveigled Joan into exercises for the feet. When she was coming down the Devil’s Peak last week she found her feet hurting and tests on the mat did not satisfy her as to their excellence. Now we may be seen (or rather we may not, having sufficient shamefacedness to hide the process) walking round and round the tiny sitting room on the sides of the feet, doing ‘on-the-toes-up’ at frequent intervals, twisting the toes up or down as we sit at meals, and picking up pencils with the toes – or, for me, trying to pick them up. I add agreeable efforts such as rubbing the feet furiously with nailbrushings and massaging; or toe-cracking on the lines dear to Ismail. How stubborn little toes are! resisting reform and adhering to all manners of crookedness.

So the day after the doctor-visit I celebrated by going a walk by myself (since Joan was to be late in office) along the side of Table Mountain. There is a contour road and from it a new zig-zag path down the next spur to that up which we went some weeks ago; and I came down by this zig-zag after tramming up to Kloof Nek. The walk was made less pleasant by a jingle out of the Readers’ Digest running stubbornly in my head. A device to teach Fiji islanders to keep step when they join the Army. “I fell in love with a girl, but I LEFT her; yes, sir, I LEFT her” chorus “LEFT her, you LEFT her” “because it wasn’t RIGHT.” Once you start on it, you’re sunk; it will not stop. But it had perhaps the merit that it prevented me from striding along too fast. Just below the contour road, I met in the middle of the path a small tortoise; we gazed on each other for a measurable time before it decided that it disliked my looks. It is false to say that tortoises do not move quickly; one they have decided that they dislike you they skip over the ground.

I walked fairly fast for over an hour and a half; and later in the evening felt dead beat. Yesterday also I felt tired out. The expression of this was irritability; alas! Most of the morning I spent on a letter to Mr. Watson in Brisbane (about the delights of compost and abut the Clifton Farm book) but I got down to the library as well and put in 15 minutes on my bed as a preparation for going out to lunch.

The ribbon on this machine sticks a bit; and watching the ribbon so as to stop myself overwriting unduly puts me out badly; hence the series of disfigurements which have begun to run up to such a total that I shall stop for a rest.

I have had much pleasure in watching those squirrels. In particular a very young squirrel which knew no better than to chase doves on the lawn. Like Richard chasing crows in the Calcutta zoo when he was three or maybe less. It turned in the air, waving its tail; fun. None of the animals gathered round me when I sat on a bench in the gardens yesterday on my way back from the library; but only three were friendly and the others were chivying the three. They are great destroyers of cannas, which they break off and eat as if savouring sugarcane.

So skilled did I show myself over killing flies this afternoon that Joan conferred on me the degree of D.F.S. (doctor of fly-swatting) which is better in every way than B.F.S. They are many compared with Calcutta’s but in England would be thought not remarkable.

The scheme of this letter seems somewhat to seek; something must have happened before Friday with which and yesterday so far it deals. Of course there was the doctor. My list of diseases and attempted cures went down well with him. He marked it in different coloured chalks. And he remarked “Most significant” about everything which I had felt shame in including. In the tone of a shopman asking if he could show me anything else (“Any knickers?”) he asked “And could you manage to give me a specimen of water?” – adding, when I expressed doubt, “You can go behind a screen”! Joan is delighted because he said what she is always saying, “Liver”: but to my mind, seeing that many doctors have condemned my liver and failed to put it to rights, it would have been more satisfactory if Dr. Wright had found something else that was wrong.

Dr. Strickland returned my Forest report which he had borrowed with a note that indicates his having left Cape Town by now. He gave us the following little rhyme, composed by someone who disliked the airs of the leading families near a town where he was staying
“The Mardies, the Timms and the Yarrs
Are very close neighbours of arrs;
They feed with their oxen
And sleep with their socks on,
And have done so for yars and for yars.”
Funny, he said, if you knew the people; funny anyhow, I think. Or perhaps not.

Did I tell last week how according to the life of Lavoisier the French Academy of Science burst out into applause when Voltair and Franklin entered, interrupting the Presidential Address, and insisted “Caressez a la Francaise!”? Did I? No matter if I did; I like it much. Bernard Tennant would have liked it too. The caress I picture as being like the chinning with a rather unshaven chin that my brother Parp used to inflict on his first friends and brothers.

Books I have read . . . . . . . One by Adams on St Michel and Chartres. It contained a lot about the Virgin’s taste in art but gave much detail about architectural matters and stained glass windows that was the money. (To me the money was rather less than a penny; for I took it out of a library for which the monthly subscription is small). Is it conceivable that the cathedral at Angers really has the widest nave of any in France? Did you know that the floor at Chartres slopes towards the west door (two feet) because the pilgrims used to sleep in the nave and it was necessary to be able to wash down the floor easily? Or that the west front used to stand back level with the back of the two towers? Or that there is no representation figure painting or glass of the crucifixion in any of the early parts of the cathedral - - - - and no reference to Hell? Or that the worship of the virgin was not favoured by the Church at first and was forced on it so to speak by the people and by the Royal Families? after being acceptable to the empress at Constantinople. Or that most of Notre Dame of Paris is later than Chartres? Or that the artists who made the three lance windows in the west end charged for sapphires to make the blue with, although you cannot make blue for stained glass with sapphires . . . ? or, for that matter, that the writer of the book is the only person who can understand or appreciate Chartres and that the rest of us are miserable and unpleasant tourists who would not be acceptable to the Virgin? And so on.

The book on road-making and such says that the standard mile was not made universal in England till 1824 when the general act for uniform weights and measures was passed: an amazing thing. It was first established in 1593 but only in relation to the three miles within which no building was to be permitted near London, which was growing too big then to be allowed to swell further. Until 1824 every county had its own mile.

I have also read soil and Sense by Graham which is goodish. I had read it before in Brisbane. And a variety of detective stories. How amazing the odd bits of information to be picked up in these stories! As for example details of the attitude to women of Lawrence of Arabia. If I failed to mention Ronald Storrs’ book about his life (it mentions Lawrance) I do so now; many of the family would like it. It contains anecdotes and sayings. Oldish of course.

Much love
Dad

From HPV to Annette

c/o Standard Bank of South Africa,
Cape Town.
November 29th 1943. Monday

My dear Annette,

On Friday afternoon I was roused from a bed of sloth by the postman with a parcel from Foyles. Full of curiosity as to the books that you could esteem to be superior to the Dame (which I confess to finding pretty dull these days), I yet spent long minutes untying the string: in growing excitement. Then anticlimax. The parcel contained Spanish books. I assume that you must have been getting these for yourself at the same time as the French books which you mentioned that you were sending to me, and that Foyles swopped the two parcels. Unless they sent to me the parcel intended for some quite different person and sent to the unknown the French books. In case you have been disputing the matter with Foyles I am sending the Spanish books to you; if you have already obtained a second lot of them from Foyles you can send these back to them, and if not so much the better.

In any case accept my thanks for the kind thought. In a shop window two days ago I saw some French books that looked quite fresh and interesting; and now I dally with the idea of purchase. But the spring has gone out of the year; either because I can no longer persuade myself that I shall ever be able to speak the language or because sympathy for the French has diminished since so many of them have shown themselves convinced Petainists, I do not relish French books as once I did. In spite of my reverting with interest to Malayan which can never be the least use to me and in which I shall never have the least proficiency, I find that as soon as there is no longer a prospect of my turning anything to practical use I can raise no interest in it. Witness chess-books, golf, tennis, diving, Sanskrit, Latin and Greek, billiards, philosophy . . . . . a whole raft of discarded interests. However I do not really object to others who do take an interest in them still.

The fact that still I read and work at my statistics about paddy-outturn and rainfall and on occasion revert to the Development Act is not in contradiction to the above statements. There is at least the pretence that if I put something into shape it might yet be of use. I see from a copy of the Statesman, the Calcutta newspaper, that Fazl Huq has been saying that the permanent officials opposed his ministry instead of working for it. He was defending his actions as regards foodstuff control, (continuation of letter is handwritten) [here the typewriter ribbon stuck again in the manner which I lament in the circular letter to the family, and so I am leaving it thus and shall take it down to the Agents for examination.] and is obviously thinking out our telling him that merely refusing to allow export of a few thousand tons of rice to Ceylon was futile and that he ought to tackle things seriously. I snort at the memory of the laughter with which the Ministers greeted my warning that we were in danger of seeing rice prices up to Rs 17 and 18 as in 1919: they assumed that I was trying to make their blood curdle with fantasies: but rice has been up to Rs 35. Also I snort to read in the Statesman that Fazl Huq was writing to one of my district Magistrates just before I handed over, asking him confidentially to take action towards the acquittal of accused in a paddy looting case. It was a Bengali magistrate: his first independent charge – and, I hope, his last. A pleasant enough lad.

It would be interesting really to know what is going on in Bengal: but presumably the knowledge would stir up all manner of black bile and set back recovery.

Much love
Dad