1944 April
Family letter from LJT No 13
The Settlers’ Club.
Cape Town.
April 2nd 1944
My Dears,
Yesterday the sad news that Guy is missing reached us in Grace’s airgraph. I know so well what Hilda must be feeling, and only trust that there may be a glimmer of hope to comfort her. One must seek comfort too in the fact that these lads are fighting for something they will know is all important for the future good of the world.
As far as we are concerned, it has been a busy week. Cook’s suddenly informed Herbert that all packages must have the name and address painted on them. Herbert set to, cut a stencil, and has done the names etc onto every box and case. It has taken him a long time, for he had not got all the proper things for such work. I was of no help to him, for I have been at Cavalcade every day, leaving here soon after breakfast, and getting home about five, or later, except on Friday when I came back in time to lunch at the House of Parliament, with Mr And Mrs Bowker, who sit at our table. They had invited Mr Hofmeyr, the Minister of Finance, and his mother, and wanted us to meet them. I did not want to miss the chance, for Mr Hofmeyr is the most outstanding man in S. African politics after Smuts. He has never married, and his Mother goes everywhere with him and is a well-known character. He stood out about the so-called “pegging bill” by which Indians in Natal, especially in Durban, are being turned out of certain areas where they were living, which are classed as European areas. I gather that they had been promised that certain districts would be set aside where they could live, but that this has not been done, or not on a sufficient scale, so that if they cannot live in the European areas, they must live in the Native slums. Hofmeyr actually sent in his resignation over this bill, but was persuaded by Smuts to withdraw it, on the plea that his services could not be spared in war-time. Before that his name was frequently mentioned as the most probable future Prime Minister. Now it is thought that he has lost the confidence of many S. Africans, who look upon him as pro-Indian. The other name mentioned frequently now is that of Dr Steyn, Minister of Justice, whom we met at Edward Groth’s house in Pretoria, and who has been into our office several times lately. I have been lucky enough to sit next to each of these men through a fairly long lunch party, and though the portly, kindly Dr Steyn is easy and pleasant to talk to, he does not give the same impression of power and quick intelligence that one gets from Mr Hofmeyr. Mr Hofmeyr was in India in 1936, and remembered many of our friends in Calcutta, and was quite willing to discuss Indian problems. There were a lot of other people at the party, two or three M.P.s, a doctor, a major ( who sat on my left and was not very interesting) and others about whom I gathered nothing, but like all lunches in the House, once we got up from table the party broke up at once. I could see that Herbert was tired, so refused the invitation to go and listen to the debate. Furthermore we had just got the permit from Jo’burg to take Beemax and Horlicks’ Milk with us for H’s use on the voyage, and I wanted to get them and have them packed, while I had a little time. Sad to say permission to take some other food stuffs has been refused. Previously 20lbs was allowed for each traveller, so it is most disappointing that it has been stopped. The reason given is that there is a shortage of so many food stuffs in S. Africa, but that seems to be chiefly rice, mealies and white flour with occasional crises about meat and butter, and none of the things that we had asked for.
“Cavalcade” has been a far better show than I expected, and the money has been pouring in. It is confidently expected that the goal of 100,000 will be reached when yesterday’s takings are counted. Added to this 100,000 were made by various activities beforehand. The money is all to go to the Governor General’s Fund, which was instituted to look after the dependents of men killed or incapacitated in the War.
I did not attempt to look at anything outside the Union Defence Force Section, in which the S.A.W.A.S. section for which I was working, was placed. The S.A.W.A.S. also ran the South African Village, with a big restaurant serving the traditional S.A.Dutch dishes; a “wine cellar” (the word ‘cellar’ is used in this country to denote store and is not underground) with trellis-shaded stoop in front where one could sit and drink wine. There were also stalls selling all kinds of things including cakes, fruit and flowers, each ‘house’ done after some style of traditional architecture. This I did see briefly, for I had to go there once or twice on business, so to speak. Otherwise when I got an occasional half hour off, I confined myself to certain exhibits in the Defence Force Section. I did the Air Force section on the day which was specially arranged for schools, and climbing up the bridge from which one could look into the interior of a Ventura Bomber, I began to question the handsome but very dumb South African A. F. pilot, who was supposed to be demonstrating. I was leaning forward with the top part of my body more or less in the cockpit ( if that is the right word where bombers are concerned). Presently I realized that small boys were leaning over my shoulder, and peering over my head, so that I must have looked rather as if I had a halo of cherubs round about me. I was immensely interested in much that I saw. Next day I visited the Medical Section at a rather slack hour just after lunch, and had long talks with the doctor in charge of the plastic surgery. He took me into the inner room, where there were wax masks of actual cases in different stages of repair, with photos of the men at various stages above them. Its tragical to see the havoc made of features, but heartening to see what wonderful things can be done to repair it.
Hygiene interested me too, and an enthusiastic major was keen to show me many things. On the Laboratory section I spotted penicillin, and the young man in charge was most interested to hear that Romey is making it in Canada. He says they carry it a stage further than can be done at present in S. Africa, where for lack of equipment, they can only take it as far as the state in which it is suitable for dressings. In Canada they make it in a suitable form for injection. The Engineers’ section models of bridge building, camouflage, mines and mine-detection, and such things, I managed to look at at various times. Yesterday I managed to see part of the United Kingdom exhibit, which was divided into three sections, comprising “Combined Operations”, “Merchant Navy” and “Civilian Defence, and War Effort”. It was the last I visited and there I found myself temporarily acting as showman for the groups showing what clothing can be purchased with a years’ coupons, for a man, a woman, and a child. The garments each had a price on them, as well as the number of coupons required, and the people looking at them were adding up the money, under the impression that it was a question of cost which is controlled by the coupons. Odd how people can go on for years remaining so poorly informed. One can understand it of the Coloured folk, but some of the people I spoke to were white and well-spoken.
We were short handed on our section yesterday, so I did not leave till about 5-45. It was hopeless to try for a tram, so I detirmined to start walking and hope for a lift, which luckily I very soon got. I still am not quite finished with the business, for I have promised to go out on Monday and see all our stuff loaded on to the lorry.
When one has been practically all day long on a show of that sort for some time, it seems quite odd coming back into the ordinary world again.
The weather has changed considerably during the last ten days. Its definitely Autumn now. There have been sea fogs on several days, and a good deal of cloud about, but luckily the rain has held off. We hear that it was not at all bad out at Cavalcade, which is on the way to Sea Point, as it was round in the Eastern suburbs on the opposite side of the Mountain, where I was on Saturday, when I feared disaster for the show.
Talking of Mountains, The Secretary of the Mountain Club has just sent me a copy of their new journal, which I am glad to have. I shall keep it, along with two little books sent by May, the January Reader’s Digest, and the quarterly “Beaver” from Helen, to read on the boat.
Beside Brace’s air graph of 11th March, we got Romey’s first letter from Montreal yesterday, which dated the 3rd Feb. has come remarkably quickly for a sea letter. It is a delight to hear about her doing in more detail. A few days previously her very nice Xmas presents, for me, enclosing gifts from Susie and Helen as well, arrived, more than a month after Herbert’s parcel had come. It was specially great fun getting them, for I had thought that the book Romey sent me was my Christmas present, and Helen sends “The Beaver” from the Magill family.
Lady Tait, wife of the present C-in-C of South Atlantic Station, was on duty at the S.A.W.A.S. section a few days ago, and told me that Robert Burnett is taking over from her husband on May 1st, and may be arriving here at any time now. It was in the papers the next day. Though I cant say I would wish our departure to be delayed in order that we might see him, it will be very nice to do so, should we still be here when he comes. He is well know in Cape Town, for he was out here for a long time before the war, and is seemingly most popular.
That about brings me to the end of our week’s news, I think, so I’ll say good-bye, and send my best love as always.
LJT
(handwritten addition at end of letter)
3/4/44
My darling Annette
Here’s my love and thoughts – I’ve got a copy of “Man The Master” here in Cape Town – Edward G. will, I think, have some others sent from New York –
I was down at the Cavalcade ground from 9.45 till 1.50 to-day – getting things cleared up – From 11.30 on it was mostly a case of waiting for a Military Lorry – Tiresome! I missed lunch, but did not seem to notice it very much, which is possibly a sign that I am usually over fed!
Mother
Family letter from HPV
c/o Standard Bank of South Africa,
Cape Town,
April 3rd 1944 Monday.
My dear Annette (name handwritten)
All my energetic time during the week (i.e. all that was not devoted to lounging around) went on the uncongenial task of painting names and addresses on boxes. My paper stencils worked admirably at the outset but became sodden with the oil off the paints; and anyhow the brushes which I had were clumsy paste brushes and did not favour neat work. Five sets of names each day was the average; and to judge from the seat of a pair of trousers which I noticed which I noticed yesterday I must have sat on one of my completed efforts and probably smudged it on Friday. Friday was devoted to undoing the work done two days before on the wooden case by Mr. Mutter and fixing two hasps instead of the one; as well as screwing down the case with screws newly bought in holes which Mr. Mutter drilled for me neatly enough. Sum total exhaustion.
Saturday saw me visiting the Cavalcade. I went along with Joan and put in a short time with a broom among the stalls exhibiting the activities of the S.A.W.A.S. Groups illustrating the departure of the soldier from the home; the recruiting of women for the S.A.W.A.S.; the creche where the children are left while the women are working; the packing of things for the troops; entertaining sailors; the return from the North; and such. Most of them are groups of people but some waxwork. At the stage of dressing up the waxworks much merriment; as when the skirt fell off an already dressed S.A.W.A.S. officer leaving the naked wax legs prominent under the very correct tunic; or when the uniform supplied for the returned soldier dummy proved to be far too small so that he was displayed (only for the moment) standing with his trousers unbuttoned in front of the scabdakuzed (a good typing mistake for “scandalized”) figures of mother and sister always supercilious as is the habit of waxwork figures.
The which irrelevantly reminds me of the remark of old Mrs Pratt at Elgin that anyone who provides sleeping accommodation for a coloured maid in the house may be sure of having a brothel on the premises.
My visit to the exhibition was not a very long one; tired already after the week’s labours, I found the process of going round the exhibits a knockout. They were good. Particularly the camouflage show, where I was buttonholed by a most handsome soldier-lad with charming manners and shown all in detail just when I had decided to move on. The plastic surgery of which Joan had spoken highly I did not see; it was meant for doctors and nurses only and I did not push in as was possible. Apparently much is due to the desire of Jews to have their noses altered; but I could not help thinking as I walked along behind several members of that admirable race that they would have to have extensive plastications to their behinds if they really wanted to pass as gentiles. Experiment showed that you could spot a Jew or a female same by the shape of his or her behind at a distance of 100 yards; if of course you feel any urge to spot them.
Twice visitors to this club who belong to the Overseas League; we staying here are asked to entertain such. From one I was made aware of the strange fact that the North West, as understood in Cape Colony, (I should have written the Cape Province) lies south of South West Africa: but it is no stranger that that the “south coast” when a Queenslander is speaking lies north of the “north coast” of the New South Waleser or Welchman.
A letter from Professor Mahalanobis the Calcutta statistician reveals that no use was made of all the crop-cutting figures gathered from the Hoogly area in connection with my schemes; not unexpected but saddening. I knew that when I went off no one would have the energy or the knowledge to see that they were examined sensibly; they appear to have fallen down before the first difficulty. I wonder if Bentley has really been called out to Bengal to advise; he might succeed in getting a move on.
Joan did her usual visit to Kenilworth and Mrs. Cramer Roberts yesterday but I stayed and slept; like the dead. We had bought an elaborate book of reproductions of Leonard de Vinci’s drawings and paintings for Mrs. Harvey and luckily she was delighted with it. I went down to meet Joan at the bus terminus but was late for her; the bus had rattled in well ahead of time; otherwise my outings yesterday were only to see squirrels in the Park at the top of the town, and infrustuous.
Much love
Dad
Airgraph from LJT to Annette (addressed to Miss Annette Townend P.O. Box. 111. Bletchley. Bucks. England)
No 7 April 4th 1944
My darling Annette: A few days ago I got Aunt’s air-graph of 11/3, telling us the sad news that Guy is missing. In Italy I suppose one may go on hoping that he may possibly be in hiding somewhere. I am thankful that Aunt H is standing it so well, for she is sometimes so emotional, I feared that she might find it too difficult to show a brave face to the world if anything happened to one of the boys. During the last week we got Romey’s first surface letter from Montreal, which took under two months, I suppose you have a copy of it. You can imagine how much we enjoyed hearing in more detail about her doings. I am quite up in Penicillin, for I saw a “Short” about it at a cinema recently, & I was the stuff being grown at “Cavalcade”. About the same time as the letter, I got my Xmas parcel from Romey, which was a lovely surprise, for I had thought the book she sent me was my present. I dont know why this parcel has taken so long. A copy of “The Beaver”, the Jan. Readers’ Digest & two little books from Auntie May, also arrived, so we felt well looked after. The past week for me was almost all “Cavalcade”. I went out soon after breakfast, took a sandwich lunch, and left again about four most days, but stayed till five on Thursday & six on Saturday, while on Friday I got off at 12.15, so that I could get into town in time to lunch with Mr & Mrs Bowker (our M.P. table companions) at the Parliament house, to meet Mr Hofmeyr, the Finance Minister, & his mother. He is outstanding man in S.A. politics after Smuts, & we were glad of the chance to meet him. It was a biggish party, but I was lucky enough to be next him, & enjoyed talking to him. He gives an impression of quick intelligence & of power & force. In 1936 he was touring India, & met many of our Indian friends in Calcutta. His attitude towards Indians is quite different from that of the average S.African. Cavalcade was a huge success. Over £100,000 were made during the week, & another £100,000 were raised beforehand, so the total has exceeded expectations. The most interesting exhibits were in the Union Defence Force Section, where the part of the S.A.W.A.S. show with which I was concerned, was situated; so, when I was able to take half an hour off, I was able to see some of the Military & Air Force exhibits, of which I think the plastic surgery & hygiene sections interested me most. The S.A.W.A.S. has nine tableaux representing their chief activities. Some of them were done by living people & some with shop dummies. The living people came on for certain hours, & I was in charge to see that everything went alright, receive the people & show them what to do. It was not frightfully interesting, nor, I think, very well done, but it is difficult to make an exhibit from the sort of things we do. The S.A.W.A.S. also ran the S. African Village, where they made £18,000 during the week. They ran a big restaurant, and a “wine cellar”, which was really a cocktail bar, as well as several shops. Yesterday I was down there from 9.30 till almost 2 o’clock clearing up and getting our things away. The latter part was all stupid delay because of a muddle made by the Military people over the lorry they were to send us. Dad spent most of the week painting our name & address on all our boxes & bits of baggage, since Cook’s suddenly informed us that some ships insist on that being done. He has been a bit tired, but now the weather is cooler, I hope he will brisk up again. He does not seem to be feeling cold anything like as much as he did, which is a hopeful sign. Alas! We have heard from Jo’burg that we are not permitted to take any food stuffs out of the country with us, except some Bemax & Malted Milk for Dad on the voyage. I am so disappointed. I am taking a holiday from office to-morrow & we go to a revival of “Casablanca”. Best love Mother
Family letter from HPV
c/o Standard Bank of south Africa,
Cape Town.
April 8th 1944 Monday.
My dear Annette (name handwritten)
All packed up and ready to go: thus and not otherwise, thus and not otherwise must ghosts feel, hanging about after the time has come to move on. It is a relief to have done with the painting of names and addresses and with the manipulation of screws and such with inadequate screwdrivers. I carry round two small screwdrivers and a pair of pliers, Joan’s little compendium of tools in a handle and a safety razor blade holder; would that years ago I had bought one of those superior Swedish compendiums in a leather case! There are many occasions when they would be useful these days when workmen are so hard to come by.
The week is notable for three walks on three consecutive days. In the woods on the slopes of Table Mountain; round the side of the Lion to Sea Point, a walk that we often did last year; and near the Rhodes Memorial which is new ground to us. I ask myself why I have been so slack these past months and gone no walks to speak of, knowing well the answer – which is the inauspiciousness of the weather; excessive heat and glare. In vain to attempt to convey to you the beauty of these walks or the satisfaction of going on them. And they were marked by no adventures such as meetings with pleasing dassis; unless it was adventure to remark twice the inability of South African crowds to form or to keep in queues when boarding buses. Strange to see a proper queue break up when a bus approaches and the people in it surge forward in a mass round the bus-step even before the passengers have alighted. A lack of discipline: but they not pride themselves on this as the Australians do.
But not for the walks so much is the week notable; regard with admiration rather my having written on the one day! two long letters which I have meant for weeks to write and expected never to. Old Miss MacLeod had written from New York that she had written to Lady Wavell to recommend that Dr. Bentley be summoned out to India to advise on the irrigation schemes in Bengal which he had recommended as the cure for malaria before he left years ago; and Louise Rankin had sent me a message from her that Bentley was actually going out to India and that I should write to him. So I wrote at length to Miss MacLeod telling what had happened about the relegation of such schemes to the class of impossibilities under a Bengali Ministry; and to Bentley mentioning the men who might put him wise to the happenings. Such a triumph of energy as never was on my part.
No luck in the book-line this week; but I renewed my youth by taking out a life of Jules Verne which had a list of all his books and a description of many. I found that I have read almost all his novels and remembered much of them; though it is doubtful if I could describe the plots. It is a peculiar pleasure that I obtain from remembering trash books read when I was a boy; but others share it. Even the stolid become animated when I remark that such and such an incident occurred in Round the World in Eighty Days. The Life says that when this was put on the stage (the play ran for three years in Paris) the elephant stole the picture; outvying even the live snakes which were introduced to make the Malayan scenes more plausible.
And the mention of snakes reminds me of those in the garden at Elgin; which reminds me again of my failure to mention that Mrs Gordon gave news of the results of the gardening by me there. The roses gave a show unsurpassed before as a result of my cutting so much off them; and where I dug up the front lawns the dandelions did not recur – and this was a real triumph, throwing into the shade all other triumphs mentioned in this letter.
When I ask if I have gained anything in South Africa, beyond a certain degree of new health, the reply is the strengthening of the arches and straightening of the toes (if this has indeed happened) but to offset this is the picking up of the evil habit of saying “Ah!!!” in reply to remarks by Joan. Incurable; and, as Winsome used to like saying, monstrous.
Much activity among my friends the squirrels; nut-burying time. They now have the pine-cones to bite to pieces in search of the nuts; an amusing sight and it is pretty to see how they choose flat and square rocks under trees on which to sit while they operate on the cones. One rebuked me the other day; a real snub: I offered it a monkey-nut, and very slowly it turned round and dug up a much bigger monkey nut which it ate while it watched me calmly. And one evening there was a ring of pigeons round each squirrel on the lawn, hoping for a sort of miracle of the 5000; only likely when the squirrels are very young. Not so young as two tinies which we watched wrestling on a branch, as dainty a sight as one could wish. Today finding no squirrels I fed gold fish; in the lovely lily pond. There were hundreds of them; and honestly there were hundreds; not only honestly but truly.
Much love
Dad
Family letter from LJT No 14
The Settlers’ Club.
Cape Town.
April 9th 1944
My Dears,
For the last few days I have had a quite extraordinary feeling of leisure. With Cavalcade over, shopping finished, boxes packed and most of them parked at Cook’s, there seem few urgent things to be done. It has been nice to have time to answer over-due letters, attend to long-planned, but never accomplished sewing, and not to feel guilty if I sit down after dinner to read and knit.
The second M.P. and his wife, who were staying here till a few days ago, lent me a much discussed book, “Smuts and Swastika”. It is by an English journalist, who has seen the faults of S. Africa in dark shadows, and has not bothered to put in any of the lights. The book infuriates most S. Africans. Luckily, when asked for my opinion of it by Mrs Robertson, I gave a somewhat cautious reply, rather on the lines of my comment above, but conscience drove me to add that coming as a stranger to this country, one cant help being somewhat shocked at the general attitude to the natives and to the Indians. I said that when one has lived for years in a country where not only are its Indian inhabitants accepted in the highest society, but many of them are part of that society, it is a shock to find oneself in a city where, with about one exception, there is no hotel, restaurant, or cinema where one could entertain an Indian friend. Cape Town’s leading hotel, The Mount Nelson, is the exception, but there I think one has to make special arrangements, vouching for the social and political importance of the Indian concerned. There is also one restaurant run by Canadians, which refuses to fall in with S. African ideas on this subject and to which one can take people of any nationality.
Mrs Robertson gave long and involved arguments about the danger to the white people in S. Africa, of being over-run and swamped by the sheer numbers of the Natives, a fear which one can readily understand, but I fail to see how it is tied up with the refusal to recognize Indians of good birth, breeding and education as socially possible to mix with. If Mr Bowker, the M.P. sitting at our table, reads the book, he will almost go up in flames. He is a nice man, and we specially like him when he talks about his farm, but he is amazingly complacent about everything South-African. He genuinely thinks the Parliament a wonderful body, the civil service excellent, and so on and so on. We have not discovered whether he has ever spent much time in England or America, or any country where the administration is more efficient and the general attitude towards things, especially problems connected with non-European peoples, less narrow.
Talking of non-European peoples, I am always amused by George, the Porter of the Club, whose skin is of a shiny dark, dark brown, and who wears a very clean white coat and a white pill-box cap as much on one side of his head as he can manage. He comes every week, knocks modestly at our door, and as if he had some outrageously funny joke to tell, says “P-lease, the Boy would like the money for the papers.” To which I reply “You mean you want the money George?” This is considered almost too funny for words. George has a deep voice, and rolls the different sounds round his mouth, giving an effect of his speech coming through bubbling porridge. I like to hear him answer the telephone. “Seeetleer’s Claaab a-speeeakiing”, and then he always bows politely as he puts down the receiver and goes off to fetch the person required. A good fellow, and always most obliging!
My hardest day at Cavalcade was on Monday, when I went down to clear up. The S.A.W.A.S. had hired a lorry to take away the furniture and odds, and said that if I could not get the drop scenes from the backs of our tableaux on to it, just to tell it to come back for a second trip. Things did not work out so well. The lorry-man said he was already booked for three or four more trips, and could not possibly come back till late afternoon. Knowing that the Military people had said they would let us have a lorry to take our things away if we required it, I engaged in intricate telephone operations to get one. Its not interesting to give the details of how it was forgotten, and then one was sent with the iron top for a canvas cover, and the scenes were too big to get into it, and how finally the native driver took it away to take off the top, and all this ran into his lunch hour, so that we finally did not get away till ten minutes to two. It had been drizzling hard for some time and I must say my heart was in my mouth as we drove into Cape Town on a wet slippery road, with the abandon which seems common to Military lorry drivers of all nationalities. Arrived at the Old Post Office (now chiefly devoted to all sorts of activities connected with the war) where the stuff was to be stored, we found that it would not go up the stairs, or through the doors of the only place on the ground floor where it could possibly be stored for a short time. Finally I just had to leave it all propped against the wall of the back, or goods entrance, till it could be taken to bits and rolled up, and gratefully accepted tea and scones rapidly prepared for me by a kind woman in our Hospitals Supplies Depot.
Herbert and I had been intending to go to see a revival of “Casablanca” that afternoon, but it was too late, so I asked for an afternoon off on Wednesday, and we went then. We both enjoyed it, and on the whole I thought it good, but how irritating it is when the producers do things like describing the appalling crowds on the last trains to leave Paris, and then showing the hero stepping comfortably into a carriage at the very last moment with no bother at all. Or, at the end, when he is holding up the Chief of Police at the point of the revolver, and at the last leaves him to sign the vital papers at a table alongside a telephone, while he, the hero, takes a long farewell of the girl.
One of the odd features of waiting about like this, is visiting ones friends, and never knowing whether it is going to be for the last time. Last Sunday I took a little farewell gift of a book out to the Harveys, who have been so kind and helpful to us ever since we arrived in C.T. The mere fact that it was a farewell present made us feel “last-time-ish”. From their house I walked on to have supper with Esme Cramer-Roberts, where, as usual I enjoyed myself, and so home by the 9.30 bus. On Tuesday the Gills had another little Sundowner party for us, asking the Adamsons (Professor of Botany) whom we like so much, also Edward Groth and the artist Franck. Edward had rushed away from office and was going back again. His second in command, who was fetched down here to help with the work, went down almost immediately with a bad attack of asthma, followed by a septic throat, and the doctor says he must have his tonsils out as soon as possible, so poor E. has not had much relief. He has been working all over the Easter holidays and came from office to lunch with us yesterday. It’s sad that he is so busy he cannot even get half a day off on a Sunday to go on the Mountain, which he so loves.
Its a long time since H and I had the time or energy for walks, but we had pleasant ones both on Good Friday and yesterday evenings. Now that the weather is so much cooler, walking is delightful, and I hope this week we shall be able to enjoy again a few of our old favourite walks.
At office too, a mile stone has been passed. I finished the rearranging of all the files, and now have a sort of lost feeling without them. There is work for me on Tues. But I dont know that there will be work for me every afternoon. You see I cant undertake charge of anything, for at any moment I may just have to disappear.
I like this cooler Autumnal weather so much better than the very hot summer days. The oaks are beginning to turn quite yellow, and the lovely dahlias in the gardens begin to look as if their days are almost done. The change of season has been marked by cloudy days, sea-fogs and some rain, with glorious fresh days in between. In spite of rain and mist, the Cape Winters must be mild, or the hedges of plumbage, and the masses of other plants which will not tolerate frost, would not flourish as they do here. The trouble, I gather, is that Cape Houses are not built to be warm. Few have fire places, and most of them are draughty, so that that when the days are rather damp and raw there is not the same indoor comfort that one finds in colder countries.
Best love to you all
LJT
(handwritten addition at end of letter)
My darling Annette
At first I had thought that I could wait for the chance of passages without any impatience, but I find I am growing impatient! Its quite unreasonable! We recognised from the first that we should probably have to wait some months – and we cant really plead any great urgency. So unreasonable is human nature!
Dad seems to have perked up quite a lot with the arrival of cooler weather – It makes me hopeful that idea of taking home is right and will be best for him. He seems to have had a great success in the Gardens this morning; where he went for a stroll immediately after breakfast in honour of the beautiful Easter morning – He fed the crowds of small birds in the big aviaries with tiny bits of monkey nut and as he was first in the field he was enormously popular and everyone one crowded and snatched the tit bits from everyone else. I am sorry I was not with – They are lovely little birds – I’m reading Julian Huxley’s “Africa View” about Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika – He is a person I should like to meet – What an impression of a rich mind there is in the background of all his works.
Love and blessings as always
Mother
Airgraph from LJT to Grace Townend (addressed to Mrs. A.B.S. Townend. Highways Great Leighs Near Chelmsford EsseX England)
No 8 April 12th 1944
Dearest Grace: Thank you for a-gs Nos 37 & 38 rcs on ¼ & 12/4. I had so hoped there might have been news of Guy! Poor Hilda indeed! With the grief about Richard we at least had the comfort that the girls were reasonably safe. It was the first I had heard of Tim being in Burma. So glad the wool etc arrived so quickly. Hope the Dec. Food parcels have reached you by this time. Its sad that permits to take food stuffs to England have been refused. I despatched parcels to Barney, Peg & Anne last week. If Peg is at home perhaps she will let hers go into the common stock. What an amazing sight it must have been to see the Hun Bomber shot down! German occupied Europe seems to have had a pretty good hammering the last few days. Although we quite visualized that we should probably have to wait 2 or 3 months for passages, we find ourselves getting impatient. It would be some comfort if one knew where one was on the list, but such secrets are not divulged. Now that it seems likely the time might come at any moment, we feel uneasy about going out for any length of time in case a message should come. During the Easter week-end we went for nice walks each evening. The weather is fresh & cool now & walking a real pleasure. On Thursday I finished my big job of the S.A.W.A.S. files, & feel rather lost without them. I am not sure how much work there will be for me now. There would be plenty if I were not liable to disappear at any moment. With shopping & packing finished, I have quite a feeling of leisure, & have written a lot of letters & done quite a bit of sewing the last few days. I am making myself some gay check aprons ready for house-work at home. H. Seems brisker since the weather has been cooler, which makes me hopeful that a cold climate will really be better for him. I think he is beginning to look forward to getting home himself now. We went to see “Casablanca” one day last week & enjoyed it, but found ourselves irritated by one or two little bits of idiocy, which could so easily have been avoided. Barring sundowners with Dr & Miss Gill one evening we have not been out much partly because one can only make engagements with people whom one knows very well, in case they have to be broken at the last moment. Edward Groth lunched with us on Sat. Which pleased me, for he is still so frightfully busy with business & social matters, that he scarcely has a moment to himself. He says he ‘sure will come to see us in England some day’. He probably will do so too, for he talks of retiring as soon as he can after the war & he plans to do a lot more travelling. Last evening I went to the Blood Bank after office & gave my 20 oz of blood. This is the sixth time, so I am quite an oldhand at it. While drinking tea and having a few minutes rest before walking home after it, I had an interesting conversation with a man who looked Leslie Howard, on the subject of wines & why South African Wines are not better. He puts it down to lack of skill in blending, & the high adulteration with spirits. The South Africans like to get what they describe as a kick out of their wine, with the sad result that it is easy to get drunk on it. Is’nt it lucky that Romey has found such nice folk to live with in Montreal? I confess I felt just a little troubled about her going off into the blue, so to speak, but she seems to have found plenty of friends. Both the B.B.C. & the newspaper yesterday mentioned the dry weather over England in March. I hope it wont affect the crops badly. It must have made a lot more work in the garden. I have been getting all my washing frocks washed & ironed during the past week. Luckily there is a washing & ironing room here, which is a great convenience. Thin woolens are the most comfortable wear now. The weather is rather like the up-country Indian cold weather. Best love to all of you.
#15 Family Letter from Mrs. HPV Townend (not in AMT’s collection – this typed by Joan Webb)
The Settler’s Club, Cape Town
April 15, 1944
My Dears,
We are still here, and likely to be for at least another couple of weeks. The weather is so lovely that we are enjoying Cape Town far more than in summer. Now it is chilly at night, and cool in the day. The temperature is perfect for walking. It encouraged us to go on to the skirts of the Mountain, and its satellites each afternoon of the Easter holidays. On the last two days we were exploring tracks on the Devil’s Peak, with which we are not so familiar.
On Tuesday, when I went to the Blood Bank to give my three-monthly donation after leaving office, Herbert went for a walk by himself on the mountain, and got caught in a tremendous downpour, arriving home with the water dripping off him, a few minutes after I had got in. He said walking in the rain was rather exhilarating, and it did him no harm, but it took me quite a time to press his trousers and coat the next day.
I have had plenty to keep e busy in office this week, but I have asked whether I may work in the mornings from now on, so that I am free to go walks with Herbert in the afternoons, for I think the air and exercise do him good, and I certainly enjoy getting out. it’s a most pleasant feature of Cape Town that one can live in the middle of the city, and yet in from ten to twenty minutes by tram, be at the edge of the rough country where the mountains begin to rise steeply above the town. I think we shall miss this “great ‘owd mountain” when we leave this place. I have found it more impressive and attractive as I have got to know it better, rather than less so. We are lucky in having such a good view of it from our windows here.
So energetic has Herbert become, that while I was in office on Thursday morning making up my lost time of the previous day, he went to the top of Table mountain by the cable way, and had an hours walk on top. He enjoyed it, but hurried more than he would have done, because he found the wind so cold. I am very glad he has been up. We have always intended to do it, but something always seemed to come in the way.
We get few letters these days. Naturally most people think we may have left. Gavin’s airgraph posted on 25th March, reached us on the 12th April, and that seems about the average time now, so news s not so stale. I was terribly sorry to hear that there has been no further news of Guy. It was the first I had heard of Tim being in Burma, too. What sad and anxious times for poor Hilda!
Most evenings we listen to the BBC news at 6 pm. We do like to hear it, for it always seems more reliable than local papers, though as far as War news is concerned, I must say the Cape Times, as well as the evening paper, the Argus, are pretty good. The Cape Times is specially good with maps, which pleases e, especially now that things are moving so rapidly in Russia. I suppose one evening the news will come that “The Day” has at last arrived, and the Invasion begun. One is sort of hoping for it as a necessary prelude to the end of the war, and yet dreading it because of the loss and the suffering it is bound to bring. The BBC has also spoken of the drought in March, but did not say how it had affected crops and gardens. I hope it has not done too much harm. Watering gardens in March is such an unexpected labour in England.
Best love to you all, and I do hope the time will not be long delayed when we shall be with you.
LJT
From LJT to Annette
The Settlers’ Club
Cape Town
April 16th 1943 (from content must be 1944)
My darling Annette
Waiting about like this is somehow bad for letter-writing or I’ve been dull lately –
Dad got me “Time, the Refreshing River” from the Library, and I have read the Introduction and the first two essays – I find them very interesting, but so full of ideas, references and cross currents of one sort and another, that I think I shall read them both again before going on – Needham’s quotations from Auden, make me think that perhaps I have misjudged him – My impressions from the books of poems lent me by his brother in India, were that his outlook was destructive – It seemed that he wanted to pull down everything, and that he was not prepared to see any good in things and people that had grown old fashioned. From the quotations in this book it seems as if he is trying to find beauty of some sort in the little houses of the suburbias which have grown round all big towns –
A point made by Needham, which had never occurred to me was the important one that the medieval Church controlled the economic life of the people.
As far as I have got I find Needham optimistic, but I wish he had a slightly clearer style. He gives the impression of going out of the way to use rather obscure scientific words, when simple ordinary ones would do. I notice it specially as I have just finished reading Julian Huxley’s “Africa View” – and Julian Huxley is a master of clear simple English, even when he is dealing with difficult subjects.
There is something in the long views of scientists, which is comforting in these war days. To so many people the idea of the passing of the Capatilist world, seems the end of any sort of stable society. The historian begins to put those sort of notions into perspective and the scientist with his mind running in cycles of millions of years finishes off the picture.
How interesting is the fact that sets of ideas seem to be formed at certain periods, and appear in all sorts of directions through different brains. That’s a trite and obvious kind of saying, but its still enthrallingly interesting to me. What builds up the mental atmosphere from which widely seperated people crystalize out ideas, which go to make a great pattern of thought?
Esme Cramer Williams and I met at Kirstenbosch Gardens at 10.30 this morning and had a delightful tête à tête walk over the back parts of the mountain and a picnic lunch – It is the most heavenly day and I have never seen the country looking more lovely. The vineyards are turning a beautiful bronze and the soft autumn light is much more attractive than the hard brilliance of summer.
With my love and thoughts as always
Mother
Family letter from HPV
c/o Standard Bank of South Africa,
Cape Town.
April 16th 1944 Sunday
My dear Annette, (name handwritten)
A lovely Autumn morning; Joan has gone off in the bus to Kirstenbosch for a picnic with Mrs Cramer robbers; but I funked it. Always I dislike that bus which is a tiring introduction to an excursion, but there is this week the additional reason that I am heavy with a cold. My day’s outing therefore was to walk down to the bus-terminus with her; and since then (for it is nearly 12.o’clock) I have been waiting for the room to be done and for morning tea.
Letter-writing ought to be easy since I have a long list of things to include; but most of them are trivial and would need much writing up to become of any real interest. There has by the way been a setback in the typing line: last week’s series of letters were hand-written and thus I came to realise that I had been misled when I imagined that typing was now as easy for me as writing. This induced me to return to practice: I typed out several paragraphs from a book for a few days and was forced to the conclusion that I type no better than I did a year ago when I try to go at all fast. Undoubtedly a setback.
Joan has told of my wetting and of the Table Mountain trip. Still I think that there was no reason for me to expect heavy rain when I started out, though I admit that it was optimistic to assume when the time came to get out of the bus on Kloof Nek that the drizzle would not extend down the side of the mountain. I found a path that we had neglected before to be among the best; contouring along the foot of Table Mountain fairly low down among thick woods. We failed when writing about the Cavalcade to tell how absurdly like a back-drop on the stage the mountains looked – Signal Hill, the Lion and Table Mountain rising behind all seemed to be in one plane and not too cleverly painted at that. It was well worth while to go up by the cable way as I did even though the day was not of the most favourable; the views from the top of Table Mountain are wild and good and I was surprised to find that it was a series of ridges and small peaks and not a bit like the Table which it is surposed to resemble.
Impressive as the views were, I did not pay much attention to them; for it was much too cold to stand about or even to move slowly. My first act was to get tea; and as the attendants had gone up in the same car as I there was delay while the kettle boiled. The interval was enlivened by the cat and by the dog; both small and black though of different shapes, being catshaped and like nothing on earth respectively. They adopted softening tactics towards all present, but when the tea arrived rejected all such as like myself did not take cake; the cat discovered this by going round and finding by experiment the tables from which cake was thrown or handed down but the dog, in rather an attractive fashion, stood up on hind legs at each table and took a rapid glance at the fare provided. They appear to be left up on the mountain for the night and must be hungry indeed when bad weather prevents the cable-way from working for a day or longer. Which reminds me that the Mountain Club Journal reports the death of the Club Hut cat about which Joan wrote over a year ago; the one that was fed on liver each week and by any Club member who happened to go up to the Hut. The Journal says that it lived chiefly on frogs.
The top of the Mountain was sodden after the previous day’s rain: and I had to leap among the stones and tussocks as I made my hurried way across to the Beacon which marks the highest point. I realised that if I took my time over the walk I should be perished in the keen wind; but the hurry was due to the decision to catch the 12 o’clock car down the cable-way and thus avoid the necessity of sitting around for a quarter of an hour. It meant doing the there-and-back in just under the hour, which would have been fast going on the flat; and it turned out to be useless anyhow. The car started down five minutes early, leaving a group of people who turned up at two minutes to disconsolate and peeved; it was very cold waiting about for half an hour, because the sun chose that moment to go in. Strange to see how soldiers bought at the stall near the platform repulsive curios and momentoes at exorbitant prices though they could be had cheaper in the town. I should have been very late for lunch if a couple of persons from Johannesburg had not given me a lift in their car down the hill; I did not seek to ask how they happened to have the car here.
That was on Thursday and the failure to avoid the rain was on the day before. On the Monday when we were coming back from the Devil’s Peak walk we saw a notable thing; three pillars which might have been of smoke over the town resolved themselves into clouds which appeared and disappeared, with flashings and twinklings; they were flocks of birds wheeling about; starlings perhaps, but this I hazard merely because I have seen flocks of starlings fly across towards evening. There are certain trees where they like to settle for the night.
It was the Bowkers’ thirtieth wedding day yesterday. She has left this afternoon with many parting words of hope for meetings in the future. A strange tale told by her is that she saw a man bathe with his beard in a bathing cap; is there a story of one who did so with a beard in a spongebag? On the contrary I did see a man bathe with an umbrella over his head: at Ramsgate: up to his knees in the waves: but he was half-witted. Also it was in 1900 when eccentricity was permitted.
Joan has indulged in a bout of seediness this week: cause as she thinks crayfish. Because there was nothing else that could possibly be blamed. Her chief complaint was that the crayfish was tough and tasteless anyhow; there is no percentage in being upset by something that is without merit.
Much time has passed in renewed attempts at stencilling luggage. This time on a small scale; the typewriter and leather zip-bags; very small lettering and perforce neat, because Joan did not like the idea of painting of the leather at all. Success of a kind. But it is sad to have to finish off the stencil-work with dabs on the point of a pen-knife.
Read Brogan’s English People as I have been doing, unless you already know everything about them. Annoying; but interesting all the same. Many facts unknown to me. Opinions often much the same as those expressed by me on Indian affairs; these were perhaps what annoyed me. It had not occurred to me vividly that all my views about things English were thirty years wrong owing to my being in India. The things might have been better if my views had been right. Apart from this no interesting book this week. But I met an oldish woman from Rhodesia who makes compost. The compost used in the Gardens opposite where I do so much squirrel gazing is poor stuff compared with mine; it smells and it should not. The custodian is very proud of having obtained bonemeal from the Museum, in the form of the skeleton of a whale which he caused to be ground down. A ton and a half. But Joan puts forward the theory that it was an elephant. He took me round his back premises and showed me chrysanthemums this afternoon. A fine show.
Joan did a good act sometime last week, forgotten in her letter before this. We saw an aged lady wandering in the De Vaal Park and calling “Caesar, Caesar.” Thinking that Caesar might be an uppish and independent black and white terrier, we told her that such an animal was on the other side of the Park, and thus came to know that Caesar was a Scottie. Much later we came on a Scottie wandering vaguely far away; and as we had seen the old lady forsake her search a few moments before and move towards the gate of the Park we accosted the Scottie which made no response and Joan hurried off after the lady while I cajoled the beast. Running Joan caught her up; and she reproached the Scottie for rudeness and ingratitude. The animal pleased an alibi, by lifting one leg in such a way as to insinuate complete ignorance of the whole affair, with an affectation of innocence rarely surpassed. I may complete my notes on nature studies by mentioning the lily pond; superb but memorable on account of the gold fish. Whoppers all with their lips against the surface of the pond sucking air. Out of compassionate interest I went back next to see whether they still lived; but forgot to pity them in the excitement of scattering biscuit crumbs which had the effect of summoning from the depths hundreds of small gold and black fish, some with three tails. But I surely mentioned this last week.
There has been an aged schoolmaster through here who dislikes the Free French heartily on the strength of travelling from England on a French ship. That this might be possible had not occurred to me, though I had pictured the possibility of travelling on a Dutchman where the scraps of Malayan might have come in, thus allowing me a triumph over Joan.
The effect of typing this letter seems to have been to make my cold heavier.
Much love
Dad
Airgraph from LJT to Annette (addressed to Miss Annette Townend P:O. Box 111 Bletchley Bucks England)
No 8 April 19th 1944
My darling Annette: Thank you for your most excellent letter No 6 of Feb. 19th, giving the news of your promotion, on which many congratulations, as also on your “moral victory”. In the scale of real values, the latter is perhaps the more important. I think in a sense, it is a greater test of character. It must be a satisfaction to you after so many years of steady work, to be in charge of other people, & I am glad for your sake. I’m glad too, that you have a good party. You have had all too few such things, but its a deprivation you share with many thousands of others, while a good few people seem to get too many. You will not be able to save up your spring leave long enough to use it for seeing us I am afraid. It seems unlikely that we shall be changing our address before the end of the month anyway. I hope Anne’s double holiday has done her good. The habit of not sleeping is so hard to break once it has started. Irene seems to have a pretty wit. Its a pity one of your friends took a thrust meant for you to herself. As a training for giving, taking & enjoying such thrusts, being brought up in a big family is a great advantage. Romey wants our opinion about sticking to her job in Canada or coming home. I think she should stick to her job, though I hate to have to say it, for I am aching to see her. I got an a-g from her yesterday, written while she was laid up with a cold. I have advised her to have the little operation on her nose done in Montreal, as soon as the summer weather comes in. It only takes a few days, & it seems a waste of time and money to go back to W’pg for it. News of ourselves is much as usual. Having finished the S.A.W.A.S. filing, I made new and beautiful labels for the pigeon hole cabinet in which current papers are kept, & I do any odd jobs that are going. I have just packed two cases full of sea shells for the Occupational therapy section at Jo’burg Military Hospital, & I have another to do to-morrow. We get sawdust from the forest Dept to pack them in, & it had a heavenly smell of pine. After a while I began to feel that I could get so fascinated by arranging the shells, that I could easily begin making all sorts of horrors out of them. Dad & I have been enjoying the Autumn weather. From the beginning of this week I have been going to office in the morning instead of the afternoon, so that I can go walking with Dad. The change has synchronised with his getting a fluish cold, which has made him feel rotten, so we have not done any walking, but I went to see a French Film, “Abus de Confience” this afternoon. It was a pleasure to see a film with the understanding of reality & the importance of acting which the French excel at, after so many English & Hollywood disappointments. I was glad to find I could follow the dialogue quite well after the first few moments. I think I forgot to mention that I sent off food parcels to you, Uncle, Peggy & Uncle Leg on April 5th, from C.T.C. Stores. On Sunday I had a glorious walk & picnic lunch with Esmé Cramer Roberts. We met at Kirstenbosch, & walked for two hours along contour paths & up zig-zag tracks until we were almost at the top of the spur that runs out to the north-east from Table Mt & looking down on the Constantia vineyards, now turning a delightful bronze. It was a perfect day, not too hot walking nor too cold sitting, & I have never seen the always lovely country-side look more beautiful. I have got “Time, The Refreshing River” from the library, & find it interesting, though for some reason when I have read one of the essays & try to sum it up in my mind, I dont find it easy. The style could with advantage be clearer. What, for instance, does Joseph Needham really mean when he talks about “dislectical religion’? The Bowkers who have shared our table for the past month, left a few days ago, & we struck a monstrously dull couple, but on plea of moving Dad our of draught are now better placed. Love Mother
Family letter from LJT No 16
The Settlers Club.
Cape Town.
April 22nd 1944
My Dears,
We had the pleasure of an air-graph from Romey and a letter from Annette last Monday. Romey’s, I am sorry to say, told of having a cold. Anne’s of promotion to being in charge of other people. We also had a nice letter from Harry, from which it seems that they are likely to be home before us. Our time at this Club is up on May1st, and as there seems no great probability of being away before that date, we have been looking for accomodation. The hotels in the centre of the town, with the exception of the Mount Nelson, all share the unpleasant feature that they have no private lounge for the use of visitors, and outsiders come in to drink beer etc, and fill up what public sitting-rooms are available. It seemed better to go to Sea Point, so we went out on Tuesday, had tea at the Pavilion, and then went to make enquiries at Arthur’s Seat Hotel, which is a big place with a good reputation. They have no rooms over-looking the sea, and we havered over the one looking across the main road up to Lion’s Hd, saying we would let them know. The next day I went off to Sea Point again to see a French film “Abus de Confiance”, which was good, and such a treat after the tinsel and cardboard setting of most of the Hollywood productions. After the film I abandoned the woman I had gone with, and went to look at one or two of the smaller hotels, but did not like them. Before settling on Arthur’s Seat, I made yet a third expedition to Sea Point. Talking with Edward Groth on the phone, he suggested that I should drive out with him after office and see what was available at his hotel, “The King’s” (Extremely nice but rather more expensive). He had to come back to dine on the other side of Cape Town, and was able to bring me back again. Nothing came of the enquiries at the hotel which has no rooms available till June, but I enjoyed the chance of seeing Edward. The upshot of all this is that we have clinched the bargain with Arthur’s Seat, and I am glad to have the business settled. It will be funny if we move there only to have to pack up again at once!
All these afternoon outings have been made possible by the fact that I am now working in office in the mornings. I arranged it so that I could go for walks with H in the afternoons, but he developed a cold last week-end, which has made him feel very heavy and slack. Now that it is almost over, I begin to think that it was a mild attack of flu, of which there was a good deal about. It was a mistake for him to go to Sea Point on Tuesday, and since then he has been doing almost nothing in the way of going out, until we went to tea with Miss Bean, Commandant of the S.A.W.A.S here, yesterday. She is such a nice woman, and we specially appreciated the fact that she picked us up in her car, and entertained us on a day when she had not got a party. Her old family home where she lives with her mother, is well up the mountain side, with lovely views both up at the mountain behind them, and over the city and the harbour across the Bay to the far-away hills. The extensive garden is just part of the mountain-side, with a spring, huge boulders, bits of pine wood (those lovely shaped Mediterranean pines) some large English oaks, and even a cave. It must have been a paradise for the Bean children, who grew up there, and is now for some of the grandchildren, for one of the sons has built a house on part of the old estate, and the garden still remains one entity. On other afternoons I have been to see one temporary picture exhibition by a group of artists, and the Cape Town Gallery in which they have now rehung the main collection. There are some good pictures there, both by s. Africans and from Overseas, which have been packed away for safety, and which, now that the Cape thinks it is safe, have been brought out again. I happened to meet the Curator of the Gallery, who was at parties given by Mrs Pierneef when she was down here. He recognised me and we had a long and quite interesting chat.
I did several nice things during the week, of which perhaps the nicest was a walk and picnic with Esme Cramer Roberts on Sunday. It was the most glorious Autumn day you can imagine, neither too hot for walking, nor too cold for sitting. We met at Kirstenbosch gardens, and took a path up on to the mountain side, where we turned east along a contour path, sometimes through woods and sometimes in the open. Later we found a new zig-zag up through the forests of pine and gum trees, where, after walking for very nearly two hours, we found ourselves near the top of the spur of hill which runs out from the north east corner of Table Mt. Here, on a rocky bluff, we had our lunch and sat for quite a while. I have never seen the always lovely Cape scenery look more beautiful. The Constantia vinyards below us, have turned to fine bronze tints, and the oaks, of which there are a good many in those regions, are losing their green and becoming a light yellowish brown, which gives contrast to the dark colour of the pines and the blue-grey of the gums in the numerous plantations. Esme and I enjoyed a tete a tete. She is such an interesting woman. As a rule we have her young daughter with us, but Cecile was in a Girl Guide Camp, somewhere in the country below us. On the way home, we took a shorter route to the gardens, and I caught the 3.30 bus, which got me home in time for tea. Another pleasant outing was the Symphony Orchestra concert on Thursday evening, to which I look the Assistant Secretary, of this Club.
We were really sorry to say good-bye to the Bowkers last Sunday. They have given us warm invitations to go and stay with them if we ever come back to S. Africa. He wants to show us his farm. In their place we got a singularly dull couple at our table.
23.4.43
The husband is in the Govt. printing press on the Gold Coast. The wife oddly enough comes from Witham, and the exchanging of names of Witham-personalities lasted us for one meal. Her name was Hubbard, and she knew the Miss Luards through the Girls’ Friendly (?) or some such society in which they are interested. Another meal or two revealed that she is interested in little but her health and her food, or at any rate these were the only subjects she seemed willing and able to talk about. The husband was not much better as a conversationalist, so I asked the Secretary to shift us to another table, using as an excuse the fact that Herbert had a cold, and that we were exactly opposite the door, and subject to draughts. Our next venture has been a success. Our table companion is a Civil Servant from Kenya, who has been for the last twelve years on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, and who is a charming person. He and I were to have joined Esme Creamer-Roberts at Kirstenbosch to-day for a walk and a picnic, but it’s a bad day. It was pouring with rain in the early morning, and is still drizzling. If it clears later we shall go for a tramp on one of the close-by paths on this side of the Mountain after lunch.
This letter was left unfinished yesterday, because I went to tea with the nice botanical people I have mentioned before, Mr and Mrs Bolus. They live very close to Esme C-R and I wanted to take her to see them. Herbert did not feel up to going, and tells me he slept all afternoon and was woken by the tea-bell. Esme and I had a pleasant afternoon with the Boluses, and I went back to supper with her. She is most kindly putting up the school-boy son of friends of ours in India, who has come down from Grahamstown to spend his holidays near his brother, who is at the University here. The lads arrived just after we got back to Esme’s house, and Blake stayed to supper. Two W.R.N.S., friends of the elder Cramer Roberts girl, had come out early in the afternoon, borrowed bicycles and been for a ride, so they were also bidden back to supper. I helped Esme to cook the meal, while the young things laid the table and did some odd jobs. There was the same sort of cheerful atmosphere of inconsequent babble flowing through the house that used often to be heard at Highways. It was great fun!
One of the odd jobs I have dealt with in office this week, has been packing up three wooden cases full of sea-shells. An appeal came from the Military Hospitals in Pretoria and Johannesburg, for sea-shells for some of the work the men do in occupational therapy. One way and another the whole business took quite a time. First I had to go and beg the wooden cases from a firm with whom the S.A.W.A.S. have many dealings. Then there was the job of getting lids made out of a collection of bits of wood given me with the boxes. The actual packing in sawdust took quite a time, and finally one of the native boys attached to the building, took the boxes to the Goods Station for me on a hand truck, and there I spent a good deal of time filling in forms. The South African Railways use horse or mule-drawn vans for a lot of their work now, with the consequence that the whole of the good yards have a vague smell of dirty stables about them: a smell I had not smelled for years, but which came with almost a shock of familiarity when it hit my nose. Its nice to know in theory how useful the horse dung is for bringing fertility to the earth, but when one is sitting about in the smell attached to it, and teases by the flies it brings, one begins to think there is something to be said for motor transport.
We are interested in this row in Australia about the censorship and the newspapers. When we were in New Zealand we heard constant complaints that the censorship was being misused to cut out criticism of the Government from both newspapers and letters. I dont remember hearing the same complaint in Australia, but the habit has evidently arisen. The Sydney Herald, one of the papers concerned, we thought excellent, and as far as we saw, it presented war news very well indeed.
I have not done so much sewing for years as I have been doing lately. The new clothes I bought made me feel my old ones were too long, and I have turned up a number of hems. Once we get home, I suppose I shall feel it matters much what length my skirts are.
The maid has just come to “do” the room, so I’ll say good-bye.
Love to you all
LJT
(handwritten addition at end of letter)
My darling Annette – As I have so recently sent you an air-graph, I am not going to send you a letter now; but even a line or two about nothing at all, make these communal letters a little more personal.
Now at 12 o’clock, the weather has much improved and I almost wish we had gone to Kirseenbosch – Still Mr Whitehouse and I can have a good walk this afternoon. I wish you could be with us – I wonder what you will do for your holiday this year:- Love and blessings from Mother
Family letter from HPV
c/o Standard Bank of South Africa,
Cape Town.
April 23rd 1944 Sunday.
My dear Annette (name handwritten)
These are the last sheets of paper of those kept out by Joan when we packed the little wooden case; she remarked that we could not need more than we were keeping and it is a sign of the great disparity between our hopes and the reality that we shall have to unpack and put out a new supply.
For me a miserable week and marked by depression and flabbiness; the cold which seemed so slight at first has hung on and done me down. Barring the expedition to Sea Point to inquire about accommodation at the Arthur’s Seat hotel, when unexpectedly the sun was so hot that we were almost undone by it, and going out to tea with Miss Bean of the S.A.W.A.S I have done nothing. I voluntarily omit such things as going to have my hair cut (when nobly I intervened to secure priority for a small boy over whom a soldier tried to secure preference) and visits to the library, recovering shoes from a repair shop, buying a pair of patent insoles with iodine and something impregnation (for foot comfort) not because I wanted the drugged feeling but because they were well made and stitched and they cost only one shilling whereas the ordinary cork insoles which fall to bits very quickly cost threepence more. If you ask why the insoles anyhow, the answer is that South African shoes have protruding nails in the soles and are hard on socks. Also I have been often to the Post office, carrying Joan’s airgraphs. She is altogether converted to the use of my typewriter for airgraphs; hers has been packed. I have put on a new ribbon, having doubted whether the last airgraph to Annette was in characters sufficiently dark to reproduce when photoed.
Thus I no doubt give the impression that I have been busier than usual: but it is not so. I have not been doing anything in the afternoons save sleep and lounge about. Dim is no word for it. It is perhaps lucky that I have news left over from last week to piece the letter out; callopism it, if that is rightly spelt. Callopismatize?? To wit, I am sure that I did not mention our walk along the “pipe line” on Saturday 15th. Marked by incidents more than usual. A crowd in the bus up; very gay; chiefly owing to the presence of a party of three with four children among whom Christine aged maybe four. A child of infinite presence of mind; swapping witstuff with the conductor. z.g. “Is this a lick lick bus?” Suddenly announcing to the soldier-member of the party “I can sign for a penny” – and disproving it after receipt of the sum; making friends engagingly with strange girls who giggled; accepting an offering of cocoanut ice from the conductor who fed all four of the children on it. And why was I so benevolent towards all this, unless it was a symptom of the cold that smote me next day? ----- Later we met an agreeable black dog, small but smart; and an officer-man who in the accents of our friend Reggie Cook (who climbed Kabru) asked us “Do you belong to that dog?” pleasing Joan greatly. Later still as we returned we over took three smallish boys with a tortoise; a portentous, or monstrous, tortoise; two foot long, said Joan, and even I adjudged it over a foot and a half. They stood round it and the tortoise hissed as if its boiler had cracked. I accosted them, “Have you brought that tortoise up from your home?” “No,” said one, very seriously, “we found it on the mountain.” A quaint thing. They were carrying it home with them; forty yards each, then a rest. We last saw them some way down the hill going towards Cape Town, with a father and a mother; now failing somewhat and changing the burden every twenty yards. Tortoises, they said, are prodigiously fond of hibiscus. But no ordinary garden could hold enough to satisfy that beast. As I think. ----- Last of all, as we waited for a bus, we saw two young men breast the hill, pushing two bicycles. Bent with efforts and dewed with sweat. They had fastened the machines tandem-wise with a rope; each had a huge holdall on his carrier and the second had as well a huge holdall on his back; and at the end, attached again by rope and looking out of place, was a small chariot, a box on inadequate wheels such as small boys contrive for coasting down hills and such. Most marvellous of all, in the chariot was nought but a gramophone; at least Joan thought this the most marvellous thing about a strange procession. They would be camping on the mountain.
So much for last week’s walk. Of books read some were strange. Did you know that the naturalist Waterton (who first of naturalists stuffed animals in natural positions, and stuffed them hollow so to speak, or rather did not stuff but set them up hollow after hardening the skins with corrosive sublimate) could at the age of eighty scratch the back of his head with his big toe and, after kicking off his shoes which he wore large and untied for that special purpose, would rapidly climb the highest trees to look at birds’ nests? with many other such toying. In a book about the British Museum Reading Room, I found the strangest instance of red-tape-ism that ever I did see. The first Librarian to start a reading room, in England, Panizzi had escaped from Italy in time to avoid execution by the Austrians who indeed executed him in effigy (like the Panjandrum’s Dodo) to show their annoyance; the red tape consisted in their sending him in a bill for the cost of a scaffold built to no purpose owing to his folly in escaping and for the fee out of which the executioner had been diddled. The same book tells how mice are caught in the Reading Room; squares of cardboard are smeared with an adhesive substance and set out with each a piece of strong cheese in the middle, and the mice leaping at the cheese are caught. Yes indeed. After which it is scarcely worth while to repeat how Sir Mayrick Hewlett (Forty Years in China) dressing up in uniform after many years to attend the British Minister’s first visit to the new Government in Nankin with natural but unexpected difficulty, found all the seams in the front of his breeches give way when he entered the car “but not the buttons, thank God!” “it left an unseemly display of black lining and the ability of the buttons to do their duty caused me intense anxiety: so long as I could cover this ungainly patch with my hat I was all right, but it was unpleasant to have to stand at the salute with the spare hand doing its best to hide the black patch.” . . . . . . a book by a friend of the Chinese; it leaves an unfavourable impression; the wounds of a friend.
I expounded to Joan a scheme for popularising the wireless; nothing less than knitting exercises on the lines of those by which physical jerks are taught to music; by a young and rupturingly-energetic young man . . . . “Knit one! Purl one! Drop two? Bow to your partner and down the middle!” or words to that effect. Joan thought poorly of it or pretended to. But the Tanganyika (No: Kenya) Civil Servant who has an orderly mind esteemed it highly on the ground that it would induce a much needed sense of rhythm.
When Joan was at the goods station about the shells she had to converse with an aged man who for the better furthering of the conversation decided to sit upon a box; but it was a cardboard box and empty, so that slowly it collapsed beneath him. Were they dismayed? they were not. The conversation proceeded as if nothing untoward had happened. This truly British phlegm I much admire.
The garden at Miss Bean’s mother’s house waggles up the hillside among great rocks and boulders, and has unexpected dips and corners. Among which and approached by a great hole in the ground there is a cave of some size; formed by several of the big boulders lodging against one another and not by a cavity in solid rock. A fine place for the grandchildren, but soon to be closed to them since there is to be blasting for the making of a garage in the hillside and Mrs. Bean fears that the safety of the roof of the cave may be endangered. Among notable things the squirrels enter under the tiles of the roof of the house and make their nests in its shelter, and for the better performance of their domestic duties they gnaw holes in the floorboards. Also they were the occasion of a mystery. None could understand why the children’s socks hung up on the line to dry disappeared except for a small piece under the clothes peg, till it was decided to root out the nests: they were snugly lined with the bits of the children’s socks in a most workmanlike manner. We cannot reconcile ourselves to the roaring quacks given by occasional squirrels from the tree-tops; Joan’s solution of the puzzle, that they are defiance against cats, seems to be unfounded. I do not know anything that gives a greater impression of intense and concentrated physical energy than the process of nut-burying as demonstrated by these squirrels in the Gardens. Every muscle in the arched body combines to push down the nut and the soil over it. (On top one wheeled a huge clod.) This done each moves round and digs up the nuts buried by the others.
It is now nearly six; for I have done this typing in two or rather three pieces; and Joan has not returned from a walk on the side of Table Mountain on which she started at quarter to two, with the Civil Servant. I hope that she has not walked him off his feet.
(letter continues handwritten)
Why I do not write you personal notes each week, I do not know. But comments on your news would be stale by the time they reach you (I cannot imagine what my views on public schools were that you passed on during some argument) and good advice I cannot manage. Congratulations on your promotion and on your sticking up for others. A woman with a commission in the air force in Rhodesia and with a husband in the Army told me that in both air force and Army everybody passes the buck and only a fool assumes responsibility for his own acts, if her can help it, - no one for those of his subordinates. I had been telling her how in India we tried to hammer into our Indian officers the doctrine that they must take responsibility and never put up excuses, just as I used to argue with ministers that they must back their men right or wrong – However I do not believe that the Army on active service works on the lines proclaimed by her. On the other theory one can get good work out of almost anybody. Maybe this is roughly what I said about the public schools? It is strange how the papers and the politicians continue to utter the parrot cries which are expressions of the defeatist doctrines whence the war sprang, although now they openly denounce the doctrines. How mean a thing is the politician! how contemptible the journalist! – whereas, as I often told Richard but never convincingly, a Good Bureaucrat is the noblest work of God almost. And maybe.
Much love
Dad
Airgraph from LJT to Grace Townend (addressed to Mrs A.B.S. Townend Highways Great Leighs Near Chelmsford Essex England)
No 9 April 27th 1944
Dearest Grace: Thanks for your air-graph 39 rcd on 25/4 (Just 3 weeks) We have also had 2 lots of Feb. Sea-mail from Romey. The Dennis Stairs who are kind to her, are great friends of Peter Carlton Jones. Peter & Vidie have been at Muizenberg (40 mins by train) & we lunched with them there yesterday, & so enjoyed seeing them again. it was just by chance we got in touch with them, for someone in Jo’burg told Vidie that we had gone. Luckily when she rang up Miss Bean, I answered the phone. Peter had to come down here on business and Vidie said she would come if he would take a week’s holiday. We had great family talks though Herbert is not very well up in his Canadian relatives & I know almost nothing about them. There is still no news for us, and as our two months at this club are up at the end of the month, we move to Arthurs Seat Hotel at Sea Point on Monday. It is a big hotel & well spoken of, but we hope our stay there will not be for so very long. Sea Point is much nicer at this time of year than in summer, when it is much too crowded & hot. We are getting occasional showers now, but on the whole the weather is glorious. I was glad to hear that you had had rain & that the garden was coming on well. Herbert’s cold is much better, though to-day is the first day on which he has felt brisk & more or less himself again. He has not felt up to going out or doing anything much, & as I now work in the mornings I have had some free afternoons, two of which I used to go to see picture exhibitions, one temporary one & one the Art Gallery, now rehung, with all its treasure which were packed away for safety, brought out again. It is a very different affair from what has been on show since we arrived in Cape town. In the evenings I have been to two concerts, and to to another to-night. Last night I was out again. We had three W.R.N.S. to dinner & I took them to the flicks. It was a rotten film, but we laughed a good deal all the same, & the girls seemed to enjoy it. Knowing that when they have evening leave they like to make the most of it, I took them to a restaurant to have coffee and sandwiches after the film, & we timed things so that they just had time to get in by 11.15. This party grew out of an afternoon & evening with Esme Cramer Roberts on Saturday. I took her to tea with the nice botanical people I have met, who live close to her, & then went back to supper with her. She is most kindly putting up the school boy son of friends of ours in Calcutta, who has come here for the holidays to see his elder brother who is at the University. The lads were both there to supper, as well as a couple of W.R.N.S. & Esme’s younger daughter. Talk was flowing through the house in the inconsequent way it sometimes does at Highways, while supper was cooked, washing-up & other household tasks dealt with. I enjoyed it so much. It had been planned that I should take a very nice civil servant from Kenya, who has been sitting at our table, to join Esme at Kirstenbosch Gardens on Sunday morning, & that we should go for a tramp up the hills, & have a picnic lunch. Unfortunately the morning was wet, so we had to postpone the outing. The day cleared later, so Mr Whitehouse & I took the bus to Kloof Nek immediately after lunch, & walked for 2 ¾ hours from there by the high contour path along the face of Table Mt & Devil’s Pk to the Rhodes Memorial where we got tea, before dropping down to the main rd & getting a bus home. I enjoyed the walk & I also enjoyed Mr W’s company. He told me lots of things I wanted to know about Kenya, & we discussed many things about S.Africa. In the evening I went to a lecture by our old friend Dr Davies on “The Occult in Shakespeare”, which was excellent. He has a good voice, & is completely unselfconscious & simple. The few new garments I have bought made me feel so conscious that my skirts were too long, that I have been busy turning up hems! Of course we listen anxiously to the B.B.C. broadcasts each day. Love. Joan
Family letter from HPV
c/o Standard Bank of South Africa,
Cape Town.
April 29th 1944. Saturday.
My dear Annette (name handwritten)
Unusual of me to write on a Saturday; but the explanation is that tomorrow we shall be packing. It daunts one somewhat to feel that perhaps one’s letters will all travel to England by the same ship as oneself; but no passages are in prospect at the moment and it may be months before we sail. Many of the pessimists who announce as if it were a settled thing that no one will be allowed to return to England before any invasion that may be coming has had a decisive result. But all rumours so far have proved wrong and they leave me unmoved.
A better week for me. The effects of my cold are passing off and I have walked with briskness though I have not walked far. On Wednesday I actually went on an expedition, by train as far as Muizenberg which means a 40-minute journey, to lunch with Peter and Vidie Carleton Jones. Pleasant, indeed very pleasant. No sitting on the beach, luckily; I dislike it at any time; and people assert that there are heaps of sodden Jew flesh barely covered with costumes all round one on the beach. Like fungus in the pictures. Sunbathers really. The book about the fungus is Large’s Advance of the fungus, full of good matter and spoilt by an assortment of must unscientific prejudices, and it has turned me against fungi for ever; they have the most unbridled sex-life and are pandered to by mycologists who dope them with aphrodisiacs (catjuice to wit) to induce them to come up to scratch before the microscope. The only things more revolting at the White Ant and of course Hitler.
Vidie Carleton Jones was most genial; benevolent; also outspoken. I cannot reproduce one tale that she told. Indeed I have spent some time wondering to whom I could possibly tell it among my reputable acquaintances and eventually selected three only among whom Parp. Drive up into the mountain side to see sites where they contemplate building; good. Lunch very well cooked; palatable fish which is unusual.
Sunday
At that moment Joan came in from office and I broke off to prepare for Mr. Bowker’s arrival for lunch. Since then she has been typing her letter and has not only covered the ground traversed above but has used all the news that would have been the skeleton of my letter. I had forgotten about going to hear the debate on Bilingualism; it was in Afrikans and interesting as an example of pantomimism; but she has forgotten to tell how the Minister of Justice not only ate sweets himself but handed them round to all the members within reach; a proper picnic. I had intended to go on the Senate-visit but when other victims appeared for the sacrifice performed instead a marvellous feat of sleeping for two hours.
Mr. Whitehouse who has left (the Kenya C.S.) told how when one of his native boys became the father of an albino baby there was obvious suspicion of himself; awkward -- and to think that I spent over 30 years in India without ever thinking of the possibility of such a danger! As he told us he blushed or almost blushed; pretty to see.
Do you remember how on the ship by which we came from Bombay there was an ex-Education Department man from Malaya, by name Lightle, and afterwards at the International? the world’s greatest expert in Malayan almost if you choose to believe him. His wife has turned up here, a pretty little blue-eyed woman from Dublin; whom I mention merely as the source of a tale. They ship hens’ eggs from Singapore in such a state that by next morning when they touch at some island the eggs have hatched out and are landed in the form of chickens; because the freight on eggs is less than that on chickens.
Of the squirrels this only. We met one who was so scared that clasping her paws over her tummy she squeezed her eyes shut as she took the nuts from my hand; after many efforts to face the venture. Do you know that before squirrels bury nuts they lick them all over?
The dog has gone a-vomiting again; to wit, I have reverted to the composition of typing exercises. Of the results I enclose copies, though I suspect my family of taking no particular interest in them. And with reference to the fourth I may say that this is the sort of weather in which one suffers from leaky tubes and worn-out gaskets.
Much love,
Dad
Squadrons of Kittihawks swooped down on their objective, then zoomed abruptly to evade the axis fighters.
In the sixties and seventies amateur mycologists jostled round tall brass microscopes equipped with polarizing prisms and other expensive adjuncts to quench their curiosity by looking at the artistic and instructive spectacles afforded by the poor animalcules and lowly diatoms. (adapted from “Advance of the Fungus”)
The saxe-blue fish trawled up off East London, with “gular plates” or plaques of bone in its mouth and with fins like arms jutting out into fringes, was identified as a “living fossil, Latimeria Chalumnae, one of the Coelacanth group of the fifty million year old Mesozoic epoch. (ditto from card in Museum showcase)
Vicious jets of high-pressure steam fizzed and squirted from burst feed-pipes and from leaks in the worn-out gaskets of the triple-expansion cylinders.
A bizarre old quaker, mated to a shrew, is reported to have exclaimed “Happy the existence of the jolly cicadas since they all have voiceless wives!” But equally fortunate humanity in general in that the female cicadas are not as voluble as the uxorious males! (ditto from Fenn’s Life of G.A. Henty)
The sheep in the Slanghoek valley up Worcester way graze more quietly than before because at sixty nine Oom Cornelius Le Roux is still knocking spots off leopards there and has killed several jackals recently. (P.S. ditto from Cape Times)
Family letter from LJT No 17
The Settlers’ Club.
Cape Town.
April 30th 1944
My Dears,
Still the weeks go by and we remain in Africa! This is our last day in the Club: a friendly place, which we shall be sorry to leave. Tomorrow morning we go out to Arthur’s Seat Hotel at Sea Point. It is a big, well run hotel, standing back from the beach road and sea-front, but with only its own garden between it and the sea. I think we shall like it, and we know that we like Sea Point much better in Autumn than in the season.
The absence of Miss Bean’s Secretary on a month’s leave, coincides with our move, and fit in well from an office point of view, for the office would like me to work all day on Tuesdays and Thursdays, rather than half day all week. This solves the problem of getting back to Sea Point just before lunch, when the buses are so full that one may have to wait in a queue for half an hour or more to get on one. As it is I shall bring in my lunch on the two days, and leave office about 4 o’clock, so that I get a bus before the evening queue starts.
I have an impression that my time has been unusually full up last week, and must cast my mind back to see why. When I wrote last Sunday the weather was not too good, but it cleared before lunch, so Mr Whitehouse, the Kenya Civil Servant and I took a bus to Kloof Nek directly after lunch, and climbing up to the high level contour path, we walked along the north face of Table Mt, and made a sort of half circuit of Devil’s Pk, finally dropping steeply down to the Rhodes Memorial, where we got a late cup of tea, before descending again to the main road and getting a bus home. Mr Whitehouse was a delightful companion, and we talked of many things. He is willing to talk about Kenya and his work there, and likes to compare the problems there with the problems in S. Africa and India. There was just time to change before the evening meal, which is at 6.30 on Sundays, and as we finished it, dear old Dr Davies (whom we met in Elgin) came to call for me to take me to a lecture he was giving at the Theosophical Society on “Occultism in Shakespeare”. He spoke extremely well. He has the twin gifts of simplicity and unselfconsciousness. Moreover he speaks Shakespeare’s blank verse beautifully.
Did I mention that the Carleton Joneses have been staying at Muizenberg? They asked us to go to lunch with them on Wednesday. It was Herbert’s first journey beyond Wynberg on the electric railway (the ‘lick-lick’ railway, as we overheard a small girl call it). Muizenberg is a sea-side resort, beautifully set at the north-west corner of False Bay, with flat sand beach and surf stretching away to the east, and the mountains of the Cape Penninsular rising up behind its western end. The drawback to it is that it is much beloved of the Jews, and in the season it is crammed with fat Jews lounging about in a state of semi-nudity on the beach, and spending money at all the hotels and places of entertainment. As we saw it on a crisp Autumn day, with empty beaches, it was lovely. Vidie and Peter were staying with the wealthy widow of a Jew, who was a great collector of pictures, coins and bric-a-brac of all sorts. The house is like a museum, and the net result not unattractive. Vidie and Peter met us at the station, and drove us up on to the side of the mountain where they wanted to look at plots of land, one of which they think of buying. The view of sea and mountains was lovely, and it was a joy to be out. Vidie came back to Cape Town with us immediately after lunch as she had an appointment connected with her work as President of the Navy War Fund. Peter was going out fishing on the Bay, which is a pastime he loves. He was interested to hear that Romey is in Montreal, for he went to the University there, and he and Denis Stairs were almost like brothers when they were boys. I hope we shall see Vidie and Peter again when they come to England, as they do from time to time.
Its been the rarest thing for me to go out in the evenings since we came to S. Africa, but I have been out on three nights running this week. A twenty-year old Jewish girl, who is advertised as a ‘Palestinian’ is giving piano recitals, and I was taken to one on Tuesday evening. Pnina Salzman, as this girl is called, is a remarkable technician, but both the woman who took me and I felt that she is being allowed to tackle too much concert work on a big scale, before she is ready for it. She is so busy with the technique that she has not that little extra bit left over for what we call ‘soul’. I should like to hear her again in two or three years time.
On Wednesday, which was the day after the concert, we had three W.R.N.S. to dinner and I took them on to the cinema. It had come on to rain. We could not get a taxi, so we lent coats and umbrellas, and walked down. It only took us about ten minutes, but that was enough to get our wraps wet, and as the attendant was absent from the cloakroom, the manager put our things into his office, to the huge amusement of the girls, who, by this time, were prepared to laugh at anything. It was lucky they were in that mood, for I think the film was pretty bad. “Between us Girls” with Kay Francis, who used to be rather charming, and Diana Barrymore, who seems to me to be able to act, if she only had something to get her teeth into. They had no chance in this futile farce. The W.R.N.S. when they have late leave don’t have to be in till 11.15. They said they would much prefer to stay for the ‘shorts’ and have coffee and sandwiches afterwards and walk home, than hurry to catch the last bus at 10 o’clock. At Markhams’, the only place I know of for light evening refreshment, we remained till the last possible moment, and were glad to find a clear sky and bright starlight when we started on our walk home.
Cape Town’s Symphony Orchestra gives concerts every Thursday in the City Hall, and I throughly enjoyed the one on Thursday, - - much more than the piano recital, though the tickets were half the price, and the hall which had been crammed on Tuesday, was only half full.
Early in the week we had a note from Mr Bowker, asking if we would go and have tea with him at the House of Assembly one afternoon, so we went on Thursday, spent a not uninteresting half hour listening to the debate on the question of bi-lingual teaching in schools, and then had a long talk with Mr B. He pressed us to come the next day to see the Senate (as the Upper House is called) and to bring anyone we liked. It so happened that Esme Cramer-Roberts brought young Martin Pinnell to lunch with us, I took them along afterwards, and sent in a note to Mr B., who sent a message to say would we mind going into the gallery of the Assembly for a few minutes, as he wanted to listen to a speech that was going on, and he thought we should enjoy it too. The debate on bi lingualism was still going on, and the speech by an ex-journalist, was certainly entertaining, and ended on an excellent note of appealing for the fusing of the two races in S. Africa as the only possible solution for the future. The Opposition are entirely against bi-lingual education, because they realize that when children are brought up to-gether and all speak both languages, it will be difficult to keep alive the same racial animosity, which at present they are able to foster successfully.
At the end of the speech, Mr Bowker came up and took us along miles of corridor to the Senate Room, which is pure Georgian in appearance and atmosphere. We were lucky, for Hofmeyr, who is Minister for Education as well as Finance, was in the Senate to answer questions on an Education Bill, and after waiting a short time, while an antique gentleman talked in Afrikaans, Hofmeyr got up. He speaks extremely well, with enough wit to keep people lively and enough sound sense and logic to satisfy the intellect. I am glad to have heard him, and so glad that Esme Cramer-Roberts and Martin did too.
Friday was a day of last-minute guests, for Edward Groth phoned me during the morning to see if we could go out to lunch with him somewhere in the town, but as I had got up at six, and been working in the kitchen of the Soldiers’ Club till 9.30, when I went to office, I felt I must get home and have a wash and brush up. It was lucky because Herbert had had a message from the other two, and so we were saved confusion, and had a happy little lunch party.
The Assembly were sitting on Saturday, a thing which they do not usually do, because they wanted to finish the debate on bi-lingualism, and Mr Bowker came over to have lunch with us, staying quite a long while afterwards to talk about education and other of his pet subjects. Its funny how fond we have grown of him, after feeling a little irritated with him when first we met.
At last Herbert seems to have got over the influenza cold, which made him feel so rotten till about the middle of last week. Luckily the day at Muizenberg was the first on which he felt reasonably himself again, so he was able to accomplish the outing without feeling too tired.
I had to refuse an offer to go for a walk and picnic to-day, because of packing and one thing and another, and I am saved from regrets because it is a cold grey day, with heavy cloud low down over the mountains. I am sorry for the other who were going. It may not be bad walking, as a matter of fact, as long as they dont go high.
Time, I think to bring this rather dull epistle to an end, so as always, I send my best love to you all
LJT
(typewritten sheet ? detached from a preceding page with address and date?)
Our last week in Cape Town treated us to the most perfect weather, and as I had left office, and could not make any “previous engagements” owing to the uncertainty of our movements, I was able to take good advantage of the time. I did no less than three mountain climbs, four cinemas and a visit to Rhodes old home, Groote Schuur.
Mr Whitehouse (Civil Servant from Kenya who sat at our table) and I took advantage of one lovely day to climb Table Mt on its western face by Kasteels Port, a steep but easy ascent up a gully where the strata of the rock make a natural staircase. We did not cross the summit of the mountain, but made our way to the top of one of the great bluffs overlooking the coast, and known as the Twelve Apostles. There is more rock than vegetation on that part of the massif. The rock is worn into fantastic shapes, and gives an impression of a lunar landscape.
On another day we went with sir Roger Wilson up Devil’s Pk, one of the pleasantest climbs, because of its variety. Sir Roger and I talked much of India, and I wished that some of the people who believe that the British soldier treats the Asiatic with complete lack of understanding, could have heard some of his tales.
The last outing was on Sunday. Mr Whitehouse and I made our way to the Wilson’s flat, from where they took us to Kirstenbosch Gardens by car. Lady W remained in the gardens with book and knitting, and the rest of us set out to climb to the top of the south-eastern ‘leg’ of Table Mt, under my guidance. It is a lovely route, mostly through plantations of gum and pine. Arrived at the summit of the spur, we saw a track going on to the main mountain, and followed it. It was a glorious path on a sort of narrow terrace, with the supurb view across the Cape Flats to the Hottentots Hollands below us. For lunch we scrambled to the top of a rocky koppje. Sir Roger announced that we were well on our way to one of the well known descents of the Mountain, Nursery Gorge, and suggested that we pushed on and returned by it. We had more of our lovely terrace path, and then plunged into a deep dark pine wood, where, not knowing that we were already at the top of Nursery we followed a dim track through the wood inland for some way, till we came up against the barbed wire which surrounds the catchment area. By that we knew we much be wrong, and retracing our steps we found the right track, which drops about as steeply as anything that is not technically climbing could do, and brings one back to Kirstenbosch in a wonderfully short time. It was a lovely day out, and I so wished Herbert could have shared it. My regret at leaving him was slightly soothed by the knowledge that he would be glad to have the room to himself for his packing.
It was a great treat to me to have these three outings on the mountains, for I always had a feeling that I had not made the best of my opportunities in enjoying chances of climbing.
The visit to Groote Schuur (pronounced rather like the kitchen skewer) was with Mr Whitehouse, who had never been there, and whose duty I considered it was to go before he left Cape Town. Herbert was afraid it would tire him too much, and we had been there before during the first few days of our stay in S. Africa. I enjoyed this second visit, for I have now a much better background of S. African history, so that everything about the house means more to me. Both Rhodes whose home it was, and Smuts, who lives there as Prime Minister of the Union, have left a strong impression of personality on the place.
As for films, on the one cloudy full day of the week, we thought we would go to see Deanna Durben in “The Amazing Mrs Holliday”. It proved a poor choice, but was made worth while by the perfect ‘short’ of Goofy in “How to Swim”, which made us laugh till we cried.
On Saturday we decided to go to see “Mdme Curie”, but did not know our Cape Town public at week-ends. When we got to the cinema at 2 p.m. the House Full notice was up. It was suggested that we should try “Dear Octopus” which was having a come-back at a small cinema near by. Herbert did not fancy it, and went home to sleep, while Mr Whitehouse and I went in. It was a continuous show, and we got in about a third of the way through. We enjoyed it so much, that when we came to the same place again, we mutually agreed to stay and see it round to the end again, and enjoyed it much. Mr W, said it made him feel very homesick..
Learning on Monday, we tried “Mdme Curie” again, and this time with success. Its a good film, with a few bad lapses. On that day I did a thing I dont ever remember doing before. I went to two films in one day. “Thunder Rock” which I had much wanted to see, was on at a small cinema just across the road from Arthur’s Sear, and Mr Whitehouse and I stepped across after dinner, and liked it enormously. I think it one of the best films I have seen for a very long time.
Our last impressions of Cape Town were happy ones. As we put out to sea, a rain storm came on, which drove us below, so that I was not able to watch the famous mountains fade away. I grew fond of it, and liked it better and better, the more I got to know it. I wish Herbert could have seen more of its sides and top. With a car at his disposal, to save the bother of getting to the start of different climbs, he could have done much more, but trams and busses tire him.
P.S. Explanation of the cuts in this page is that I had mentioned certain days of the week, which he thought might not be permissible –
Best love
LJT