1944 February
From LJT to Annette
At
Belvedere Guest House
Grabouw.
Elgin Dist.
Cape Province.
Feb. 4th 1944
My darling Annette
Lately I have been bad about writing you personal letters. Sometimes I think I give too much time to the family newspaper and not enough to individuals. With no office work and no household duties there should be plenty of leisure in this place –
Its been a great pleasure to get your air graph of Jan. 11th and your letter No 4 of 27th Nov. During the last few days.
I liked hearing about your day in Oxford and your Christmas shopping – I’m glad you treated yourself to “The Tale of Genji”. I have heard people talk about it, but I have not seen it. Now to see your copy can be one of the pleasures I look forward to when I come home – The only Chinese novel I have read is Lin Yutang’s “The Leaf in the Storm”, which, I imagine, is done entirely for Western readers. To get some background of China I should say that Lady Hosie’s two books “Two Gentlemen of China” and “Chinese Lady” are good and so charming in themselves – as also is Norah Walhn’s “The House of Exile”.
My liking for knowing how people live and think in other countries grows stronger and stronger and books like those mentioned above, appeal to me very much. They are personal records of people who lived in Chinese houses –
Your remark that your “eyes suddenly opened” while you were watching “A Month in the Country” for the second time, expresses what I feel while watching or reading Tchekov’s plays. His knack of enabling one to see right into people of all sorts is something I have never found in the same degree in any other writer. It was that that made me toil down to a queer little theatre at Barnes, when you were a small five-year-old in Chelsea. I went twice to see “The Three Sisters” and each time came out feeling quite tired with the intensity of the experience. There also I saw “Uncle Vanya” and “The Cherry Orchard” – but I think I saw “The Seagull” at one of the West End theatres. I am right in remembering that “A Month in the Country” opens with the old servants and various hangers on, waiting up late at night, for the arrival of the Mistress, a rather passé actress, whose train is very late? I have only read it and should love to see it acted, for all you say of it is true – I remember reading out some of the bits about the servants to Dad, who was not very responsive, for he starts with a strong prejudice for anything Russian.
Thanks for the hint in your air-graph about bringing some soap home – and also for letting me know what you want. I hope I shall be able to get you a nice overcoat. There is a lot of Brazilian stuff in the shops which seems quite good and purports to be pure wool. I am sorry you did not send your measurements, so that I could be confident what size to get. I dont even know exactly what your height is. When I sent the skirt etc I just had to make a guess at your size.
It was clever of you to put to-gether the old brown dress I sent – Dad was quite worried at the idea of the bodice being turned back to front and said “Surely it will look very odd!”.
Have you ever been able to get the Gerald Heard books? Directly I said to Edward G. That you had so far failed to get them, he asked whether he should get them sent from New York. I will wait another few weeks, and if you dont say anything more about them, I shall ask him if he will arrange that.
I enjoyed talking philosophy with old Mrs. Pratt for an hour and a half yesterday and on Monday I am going to tea with a neighbour of hers, a Mrs Murray, a widow a good deal younger than myself, whose interests seem very much on those same lines.
Its good news that the parcels I send from Johannesburg in Sept. Arrived, but its a pity they did not turn up in time for Christmas, especially as the ones I sent from Jack’s in Pretoria in August had not arrived – It makes one fear those may have been lost. Dad enquired about the April ones sent from Cape Town and it looks as if they delayed so long about sending them that they may have been in the mail that was lost the first week in June.
I am completely puzzled about your remark that Mrs. Roscoe was specially pleased with the “green tea” – for I ordered ordinary tea, and most people would not be at all pleased to get green tea, which I personally, only like after Chinese food.
We enjoyed hearing of the American who helped eat the goose and said “he had not been treated so nice” since he left home.
Louise Ranken has just written us a huge letter about all they are doing on the farm they have bought near Ithica in N.Y State and again begging us to go out to them, saying cheerfully that we wont need any money once we arrive, for the one thing farmers can do is to feed people. She has sent a handful of snap shots, which really give us some idea of their surroundings. You would love Louise I think. She has such a lively mind and such a warm heart.
After covering all this paper, I think I have about written myself out for the moment – so I’ll stop.
I’m so longing to get home that I scarcely dare think of it –
Love and thoughts as always
Mother
Family letter from LJT No 5
At Belevedere Guest House.
Elgin. C.P.
Feb 5th 1944.
My Dears,
It was good of Herbert to deputize for me last week, for I certainly would not have had a moment to write. Our rather sluttish little maid chose to absent herself on Saturday & Sunday, knowing that I had a guest (Edward Groth) to lunch on Saturday and all the packing to do. This made me short of time, for, had I known that I should have to do the cooking and housework, I should have begun the packing earlier.
I was truly thankful when Lucinda turned up on Monday, looking rather part-worn. I had been worried, not only on my own account, but because she is staying on with Mrs Gerrard, from whom we rented the flat. It would have been difficult too, to leave at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, and have everything clean and in order.
We were lucky in having the one cool day there has been for some time for our journey, and luckier still in getting a carriage to ourselves, so we quite enjoyed the 50 mile journey, which takes 2 ¾ hours, including the climb over the fine Sir Lowry Pass in the Hottentots Hollands Mts, which run down to the sea, making the eastern arm of False Bay, of which the western arm is the Cape Peninsular. It was so pleasant to recognize landmarks of happy memories as the train hurried along through the forests which occupy the first part of the Elgin plateau, or rather high basin in the Mountains. At Elgin station we found that the one local taxi had to cope with no less than three couples and one single woman, all going to stay at Belevedere. Knowing that it was only about a mile from the station, we announced our intention of walking, creating some consternation thereby, for the S. Africans are not fond of using their legs in that way.
This Guest House is reasonably comfortable, with good beds, decent food, and above all, it is nice and clean. We chose, of two rooms, a smaller one upstairs, which has a good view and windows at both ends, so that on hot days one can get a through draft. We have been glad of it, for it has been hot since our arrival.
Dear old eighty-two-year-old Mrs Pratt had walked from her cottage at the other side of the village to greet us, bearing a posy of beautiful blue hydrangeas.
Though this place has not the charm of Mrs Gordon’s farm, it has certain advantages. It is a bare five minutes walk from the centre of the village, which by the way is called Grabouw (the G pronounced as if you were clearing the throat). Elgin is the name of the district and the railway station. From the back of the house we get straight out into veldt and forest country and the northern mountains are only a few miles away. Across the main road, which runs in a dip of the land a few hundred yards below us, there is more forest, so we are far better placed for walks than we were at the Gordons, where we were surrounded by their orchards and other people’s fruit estates.
One other slight advantage is that one does not feel quite so responsible to other guests, who, counting ourselves, number twenty. ( What a silly way of putting it!) Some of them are bores of the first water, others are men who are doing jobs in the neighbourhood, and dont use the lounge and stoop at all. One of these sits at our table, & is an interesting little fellow. He is surveying and laying the electric cables, and has worked in many parts of the world, including Venezuela and Australia. Another man who sits with us is the dumbest thing we have ever come across. He seems to have neither the will or ability to talk on any subject, and its not because he is an Afrikaner, and does not speak much English, for he did in an expansive moment, mention that he came over from England.
By far the most interesting amongst the other guests are an old doctor of over seventy and his equally elderly wife. They spent twelve years in Canada before the Kaisers’ war, combining ranching and doctoring in Alberta, and trekking and canoeing in the Rockies whenever they had time for holidays. They both have a passion for travel and have been in many countries, and he has quite a gift for “yarning” as he calls it. He is a little long-winded sometimes, but he makes vivid pictures not only of what they have done, but of what places look like. I enjoy an hour or so listening to him after dinner, while I knit my seaman’s jersey. It needs only some small question to set him off, and I like to get him on to Canada if I can. Here in S. Africa for a holiday trip, they were caught by the war, perhaps luckily for them, for their home is in Jersey.
On the day after we arrived Mrs Pratt invited us to morning tea at the S.A.W.A.S. tea-garden, where I used to help last year, and we sat a long while under the trees talking to the old dear, who, though she says she cant bear gossip, always knows all the local news.
She brought a message of invitation to attend the S.A.W.A.S. annual meeting and tea the following day. I went, not so much because I was interested in the meeting, but because I knew that I should meet everyone there, which I did, with the result that we had several invitations to go to people’s houses. We lunched at one of the very big estates to-day, a place belonging to some people called Blackburn. Mrs B. called for us about 11.30 on her way back from shopping, so we had time to visit the packshed and do the rounds before lunch. The peaches travelling about on their moving bands look extraordinarily dignified, compared with the oranges we saw at pack-sheds at White River. They leap & bound along, finding their own track by gravity, and tumbling off in to their appropriate bin. Peaches are too delicate to be bumped so, and are dealt with by hand.
After lunch Mr Blackburn went out to find something on the verandah, and came back with a strange black object in his hand. Holding it up, he said: “Was this ever a hat? And does it belong to anyone?” We could not help laughing, but alas! it was my hat, not by any means new, but I had just paid 17/6 to have it entirely reblocked, altered, and made like new. Mr Blackburn’s new seven months old pup “ridgeback” (a big attractive golden coloured dog) had been having fun with it, and in attempting to look innocent, marked himself out as the criminal at once, and was beaten for his misdemeanour. The little Scottie who had been sleeping in a far corner of the room, walked into the middle of the carpet, and surveyed the incident with the perkiest self-satisfaction.
Our host and hostess are greatly distressed about the hat, and talk of getting me a new one, but of course we told them on no account to bother. At the same time I do regret it, for decent hats are expensive in Cape Town, and that was my only black one.
Mrs B. drove us back after lunch so that Herbert had time for an hour’s rest, before we started out to tea with some other people. It was a pleasant half hour’s walk along a forest road to their house, and not nearly as hot as I had feared. It was unpleasantly hot yesterday, but to-day there was a good breeze, which was in our faces.
Quite a number of letters have come since we have been here, and just before we left C.T. on Jan 29th we had an air-graph from Anne, written on Jan 11th, and after our arrival here we got letters from her (No 4) and from Grace (No 31) both written at the end of Nov. Then a surface mail from Romey, just a short note enclosing some snap shots that were too heavy for the air-mail. Phyllis Carey Morgan sent us a double air-graph, & Margaret sent us one so beautifully typed that Herbert was most impressed.
Another great pleasure has been a long letter from Louise Ranken describing all they are doing on their farm near Ithica, and sending photos of it, and descriptions of the country round, so that now we can make some picture of their surroundings. Louise says we much better hurry up and go out to them, adding that once we arrive we shall not need much money, for the one thing farmers can do is to feed people. She wants Rosemary to go and stay with them before she leaves Canada.
There is no wireless here, or rather the machine is not in use, for it is run off batteries, which cannot now be renewed. The little electric light engine only just carries the load of the lights for the house, and on these evenings when it is light till past nine o’clock, it starts up late. We miss hearing the news once or twice a day, though we get the morning’s paper before lunch.
Time to stop this now, and send my best love to you all
LJT
Family letter from HPV
(Written at Grabouw, Elgin)
c/o Standard Bank of South Africa,
Cape Town.
February 6th 1944. Sunday.
My Dear Annette (name handwritten)
Joan has given the news; I shall add gracenotes. She has not mentioned for example the strange incident of the Poltergeist; it deserved otherwise, though a small matter. I was drying myself after my bath, in the flat; and she asked me to hand out the table cloth (which used to live in a cupboard there) and, moving behind the door, I told her to come in and fetch it, since I was too wet to touch it; while she was doing this, a shower of cold water fell down my back -- say, a cupful. The adjoining window had a curtain drawn across it; there was no sign of water on the ceiling. What the cause? Either Joan threw it, but she denies this; or someone deftly drew the curtain and hurled the water in: or the maid threw it even more deftly over the open door. Or a miracle. The last is very unlikely, even if account is taken of the miracle of the bottle-tree (which bore no more up to the date of our leaving), but the other three are considered impossible by Joan. As poltergeists are invariably maids, I incline to the third explanation.
I ended my days in Cape Town by a glut of detective stories; all, perhaps, bad. Few within the experience of the girls behind the counter could have had so much for their subscriptions. Here there are two books lent by Mrs. Pratt, neither such as I should have chosen for myself; and a vast supply of the National Geographic produced by one of the aged inmates of the hotel. It is a sad feature of life in it that the inmates will not allow one to sit and write; within a moment or two there is a hovering at one’s elbow and then conversation opens. Probably no one reads or writes in South Africa if talk of any kind is possible. The old doctor is not among those who indulge in these interruptions; his talk is at suitable times, after dinner or when one is obviously not engaged.
Of the doctor’s tales, one deserves repetition as being quaint. He was roped in as substitute for the French Horn blower in a small town band somewhere on the prairies; practiced his part in one tune, which merely involved his going Boom Ti Boom every now and then; and went out to a place outside the town with the rest of the band to rehearse. From a house emerged an “old mossback*” with a scraggy beard and listened a while without visible relish; and then he retired with the remark “Well! thank God, there is no smell.” Will some reader please repeat to my brother Roy and to Peggie? the former because of the criticism passed on Stravinsky in the Homer Lane days and the latter because she has that sort of mind.
A sad tale of General Tanner’s mourners. The crane which used to be fed by him each morning continued to knock at the window daily and though offered food by Mrs. Tanner refused to take it; and he stood outside the front door, or after a few days leant against it, waiting for the general to come out; till at last he died. The old dog also refused food and was found dead a few days after the general’s death. And an old native whom he had kept on as a pensioner died a few days after he did. This all made me to feel sad.
There are smells in this village; mostly drains or the lack of the them, but the worst, defiling the little stream near the back of the forest office, is due to the effluent from the jam factory; reprehensible. I lament the neglect of the humus heap evident everywhere.
A thing to which the Forest Department take great exception here is the disturbing of bees; an item strange to me on prohibitory notice boards. Not worth mention? however it astonished us.
Never have I been in a room that shook so much as this bedroom; the furniture quivers. It is like a perpetual earthquake. Yet the walls look solid. It is distressingly hot. We miss our little habitudes familiar, as Monsieur Hoogeveen called them, built up during our weeks in the flat. Both of us found the packing very tiring this time.
How absurd the Americans! the valley in Utah called originally Zion by the Mormons and then, after Brigham Young had disapproved, Not-Zion is now called on the maps “the North Fork of the Virgin”.
Much love
Dad
*should be “mossyback” videlicet “American”
Family letter from LJT No 6
Elgin.
Cape Province.
Feb 12th 1944
My Dears,
There have been quite a lot of letters, air-graphs, drifting in this week. Grace’s of Dec. 8th; one from Bous; air-graphs from Susie & Helen (Magill) & several letters from friends including one from the young New Zealander, Harry Ayres, who was our guide in the mountains there. He wrote from New Caledonia, & had recently been back to N. Z. for a course of some sort, so had spent his leave at Waiho, & gave us news of all the nice people there, as well s reviving memories of the lovely glaciers & mountains.
The weather still very hot at the beginning of the week, has gradually cooled down, & yesterday the wished-for rain started in the afternoon & I think, went on most of the night bringing quite a big drop in temperature. Its nice when rain gives pleasure to everybody. There are heavy clouds over most of the sky, with breaks of blue between, & lovely shadows and lights on the hills. We mostly stuck to morning walks, but one day we waited till after supper, meaning to go only on a short one. We crossed the main road into the forest, and climbed a small rocky koppje. From its top we found ourselves looking up a forest drive, leading to a higher kopje say half a mile on. Of course we were tempted, and went on. It was worth it. There were many flowers still in bloom: the queer giant proteas, sending out a sweet heavy scent: several sorts of heath, & lingering blossoms of mesembryanthemums & yellow daisies. It was a jolly scramble up the rocks of the koppje, which, sticking up above the forest, gave us a splendid view. We had climbed higher than we had realized, and seemed to be on a point almost in the centre of the saucer, which is the Elgin district, with its rim of mountains all in full view. In the slanting evening light, the smiling, fertile country side looked specially lovely. Its not surprising that the Hottentots drove the Bushmen from this fertile, temperate region, and the Boers drove out the Hottentots, though its only of comparatively recent years that the big fruit farms, and large areas of government forest have replaced the scattered afrikaner farms, which produced little more than what they required for their own not very high standard of life. From our view-point the country was laid out like a map. It was interesting to trace our last years explorations, amongst the fruit farms in the rolling country to the south-east of the river, and this years new discoveries, all about us and to the north and west, where the forests of pine and gum stretch over many miles of country. The village hides itself in the river valley most successfully. It is well screened by plenty of tall English oaks, which all early settlers planted almost as a religious rite. We could just distinguish the narrow iron chimney of the jam factory half a mile beyond it; a place which we regard with some disapproval, since it discharges its evil smelling waste, little less unpleasant than human excrement, into the small stream, which flows by to join the river, turning its clear brown peat water into turgid dirty stuff, which carries the horrible smell along with it. Herbert is angry with it not only on aesthetic and hygienic grounds, but because such waste vegetable matter could be composted to make rich fertilizer for the soil.
We waited on our hill-top to watch the sun sink behind the western mountains, and then hurried down a much steeper side of the koppje and so home again by a more direct route through the pine forests.
We have walked much in these woods during the week, sometimes near the river, where most of the trees are gums, and where there are inviting old logging tracks, beginning to get over-grown, and sometimes higher, up, where endless fire lines or forest drives divide the pine forests, and make clear vistas down which one gets lovely peeps of rolling country and distant mountains.
On Sunday evening we had supper with the Ruffles, friends of last year who fixed up these rooms for us. They have bought a little house on the outskirts of the village, not five minutes walk from here. They are both frightfully busy running the timber business which belongs to one of the sons, who is a prisoner of war. We have had various other little outings. I have been to a female tea-party, and also attended the S.A.W.A.S. weekly work-party. We still find pleasure in the company of old Dr and Mrs Davies, and have heard lots more ‘yarns’ about Canada and many other parts of the world. The Canadian stuff fits well with my mood, for I am immersed in an excellent book by Bruce Hutchison, “The Unknown Country”, about “Canada and her People”. I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes reading about other countries.
By yesterdays’ post we got notice that our exit permits have been sent to Cape Town, so now we really begin to feel that things are moving. Directly we get back, we shall have to see what sort of priority we can get. The idea of coming home begins to seem a little less like a dream.
I often wonder what sort of weather you have had in England this winter. I hope it has been mild like last year. I’ve seen no mentions about it in any of the papers. Talking of papers, the news from Italy has made one feel a bit anxious the last few days, but what wonderful successes have been piling one on top of another in Russia.
Herbert is looking sunburnt and well. He has been doing good long walks without feeling badly exhausted, though he is often tired. Oddly enough he often does not seem to notice it while we are out, but realizes it after we get home. The doctor told him that a certain amount of fatigue from walking would do him no harm, as long as he rests in between.
Best love to you all,
LJT
(hand written addition at end of letter)
My darling Annette – Just a message of love and thoughts. I’m getting so excited at the thought of coming home – Mother
Family letter from HPV
c/o Standard Bank of south Africa,
Cape Town.
Elgin. February 13th 1944 Sunday.
My Dear Annette (name handwritten)
A quarter to 12 and due to go out at half past, after changing into clothes suitable for a lunch with comparative strangers! too late maybe to start writing. It was an hour and a quarter ago that, having at last been surrendered the table by Joan who had been writing here, I set myself to prepare for writing, and since then the maid has been doing the room! if it had been a spring cleaning it could scarcely have taken longer. Now all my ideas have solidified for the day and the letter will not come.
What I have done all week except sleep or lounge away all the afternoons I cannot remember. A good deal of the time has passed in listening to the old doctor; I reflect that it must be very relaxing to listen without hope of intervening with anything of my own but it doesn’t altogether work that way. As to relaxing it is in vain that I recite my poems which were to have been charms; Joan thought highly of the last which had merit of simplicity.
“Lie so flat
on the floor
That
You would slide
Right under the door
If you tried.”
But I doubt if it is suitable for the intended purpose of inducing relaxation; the reference to trying is an error. Something more liquid is needed. Which reminds me that we have had a wet day, with a constant drizzle: a pleasant change for the English, who are discontented folk. I went a solitary walk round by the railway bridge, to the rhythm of 10 green bottles, which at least served to free my mind from the grizzly jingle about “I left her”. We went in to the forest office and got an “authorization” to walk on Forest lands, thus leaving an impression of unnecessary good manners and exorcizing that uneasiness which fills me when I walk past a No Trespass board even if it is in Afrikaans unintelligible to me. It was a pleasant walk in the coolth; small boys were adventuring themselves in small canoes made of tinplate; small enough for one small boy only to sit in each and nearly underwater even so. They worked their way with difficulty among the Palmiet weeds which stand some four feet out of the water like palms after which they are called.
My other solitary walk was yesterday’s to the stall named Mickie’s where twice a week fruit is sold in aid of the war-funds. On the way I stopped at old Mrs. Pratt’s to deliver some fish which she had ordered from this hotel; and it was a twenty minutes’ affair to get myself away, since her conscience had to be unburdened. She had described herself and two other ladies who have cottages near her as like unto Lazarus sitting outside the gate; and I had remarked that this was scarcely kind to Miss Murray whose gate it is and who might not like the eventual stay in hell fire appropriate to a successor of Dives. The old dear had brooded over this for two days; but a recital of her rebuke to the rich farmers who had engrossed all the available labour for the embellishing of their houses with new paint so that the three Lazarus-gatekeepers could not get their thatches mended restored her joy in life. She had actually told them that they were turning her in a Communist.
Interruption for the lunch; it took up the day till about 6.15 with its sequel of tea. The staff-work had been thought out carefully; we were to walk up to Mrs. Pratt’s and be picked up there at 1 o’clock by Mrs Cunninghame who would run us out to the Tanners’. But all went wrong. We sat at Mrs. Pratt’s till nearly twenty to two before we decided that Mrs. C could not be coming (she is notoriously late for everything and half an hour’s delay was considered not impossible) and then we started on the 1 ½ mile walk to Mrs. Tanners. Luck changed, and we got a lift very soon almost to the house, where we found that they had just started lunch; Mrs. C. had gone to the wrong place for us, in spite of having agreed heartily to Mrs. Pratt’s as a suitable rendezvous. We were hot and distressed at having been unintentionally rude to Mrs. Tanner but it was a pleasant lunch. Afterwards it appeared that lunch included staying to tea. A bit tiring.
To tell the truth I find it tiring to talk to Mrs. Pratt: everything is so high-souled. And she skips from subject to subject in a way that astonished even me to start with; and I am no mean skipper myself.
It is irrelevant to tell a tale of the old doctor’s. Of a man on the prairie, a neighbour of his, who weighed in to make fruit cake on one Sunday; it turned into neither cake nor pudding and he cast it out onto the prairie in front of the house, only to find the old tom assiduously and worriedly scratching earth onto it. Another tale which went on for ages and involved a history of a voyage to Cyprus was of a drunken sailor who used a cat as bagpipes with its tail in his mouth. Yet another (a chestnut?) of a lady who vainly tried to sleep in a Canadian train and finally prodded with her sunshade the fat man in the bunk above whose snoring kept her awake, only to elicit the sleepy retort “Nothing doing! I saw your face as you got in.”
Much love
Dad
Airgraph from LJT to Grace Townend (addressed to Mrs. A.B.S. Townend. Highways. Great Leighs. Nr. Chelmsford. Essex. England)
No 4 Feb 17th 1944
Dearest Grace: Many thanks for a-g rcd 11/2 & letter of 12/12/43 rcd 8/2. All requests shall be carried out as far as possible. I wanted to bring Peg a present, so it shall be the veldt schoon, but I fear they are not v. Waterproof. This country has not learnt the knack of making waterproof leather. For you I shall bring something as well as the v-s. If I can get it, a nice tweed skirt or wool skirt of some sort, with wool for a jumper to match might be the most useful, but I may get further information from you before it is necessary to buy the things. Our exit permits are waiting for us in Cape Town, so now we can get on to the business of seeing what priority we may have, & consequent allotment of passages. Its sad that poor little Dopey has gone the way of all flesh. You both must miss her. So glad to hear that there is a good prospect of Peg achieving her heart’s desire about Aug. & hope we shall be with you to help look after her. I wonder whether Romey will try to get home this year. I am longing to hear if she has gone to Montreal & what sort of a job she has got. How grand it would be to see her again. Our stay here is passing quickly. To-morrow week we go back to Cape Town, & then I shall start my home shopping. Most days during the past week, we have been out to lunch or tea or after-supper drinks, in fact there have been rather too many such outings for Herbert, who was v.tired yesterday. It was a hot brooding afternoon & night, with clouds banking up for rain, which did not come, so its still cloudy & oppressive this morning. We have had some beautiful days, & some delightful walks. One woman was so pleased with our account of old Dr & Mrs Davies that she asked us to take them along to tea at her farm, which we did last Mon. Its a good half hour’s walk through the forest to the Cunningham’s farm, but Mrs D. At 76 & her husband at a bit older, said of course it was not too much for them. We had tea under the trees, & Mrs C suggested that she could drive us home at 6.15 when she had to go into the village, & that we should go to see & perhaps give a hand with the pear-picking in one of the orchards. We left Herbert to sit in the garden & read, & enjoyed an hour amongst the fruit, but as we approached the house again, Mrs C remembered that she had let the keys of the car go with the keys of the lorry which one of the men had driven to the co-operative pack-shed. She assured us that he should be back any minute, but as time went on, we decided that we had better walk, for our evening meal is at the tiresome hour of 6.30. I feared the old people would be exhausted, but they were as bright as anything, & said they had throughly enjoyed their afternoon. Another much older lady has arrived & is sitting at our table. She is staying a few days while her cottage next door, which has been let, is done up. Her age is 85. Her late husband was in the Jameson Raid, & she used to take him & the others food when they were in jail at Pretoria awaiting trial. In 1890 she travelled the 1,200 miles from the Cape to Jo’burg by coach, a modern fast improvement on the trek-wagon, carrying a baby of 3 months old on her knee! Its interesting to listen to people with such memories. It seems to make history live. I have done one afternoon’s duty at the S.A.W.A.S. tea-garden. We were busy in spite of the petrol restrictions, which it was thought would shut down practically all the trade. Herbert has fallen to the temptation of making a sketch map, & has now gone off to the forest office to see if they will let him look at their maps to check & correct him. No one else seems to possess any maps. I have been writing a lot of letters, as I want to get all arrears cleared off before I go back to C.T. where for a time, at least, I shall be busy with our own preparations, & with my job at the S.A.W.A.S. which I want to round off nicely. Hope we get good news from Italy. The last days have been rather anxious. Best love. Joan
Family letter from LJT No 7
“Belvedere”
Elgin.
Cape Province.
Feb. 19th 1944
My Dears,
The time in Elgin has passed quickly. There is less than a week of our stay left. We have been out a lot since last mail day, in fact rather too much for Herbert, who became rather tired. It was partly due to happenings over which we had no control. On Sunday we were to be given a lift to lunch at Mrs Tanner’s, and to save the owner of the car from coming right through the village, we said we would meet her at some point near the cross-roads, where the station road joins the main (or national road). Three possibilities were discussed and it was decided that she should pick us up at Mrs Pratts’. Others hearing this warned us that Mrs C. is always frightfully unpunctual, so we were not unduly anxious when she did not arrive at ten to one, and waited fairly patiently till a quarter past. The telephone does not function on Sundays, so we could not make enquiries anywhere. At 1.30 we decided to walk, though it was the best part of a mile and a half and it was a very hot day. At this juncture our luck changed. A car passed and offered us a lift. It turned out they were leaving the main road and going right past the Tanner’s gate. We arrived to find they had just sat down to lunch, Mrs C. having gone to look for us at both the other places that had been mentioned! It was decided to stay on to tea, and though H. was given a room in which to rest, it was an exhausting day for him, especially the nerve wear of the muddle about the lift.
Mrs Cunningham invited us to take the dear old couple, Dr and Mrs Davies to tea with her the following day. In spite of the fact that the old lady is 76 and the doctor a bit older, they walked the mile and a quarter to the fruit farm without turning a hair. After tea under the trees, Mrs C. said she had to go into the village at 6.15 and could drive us in, if we liked to wait, and meantime go down into the orchards to see how the picking of the pears and apples was going on. We left Herbert in the garden with the run of the bookshelves. As the car was standing in the drive, it did not occur to me that there could be any hitch, but as we strolled back from the orchards just after six, Mrs C. said, “Goodness! I have let the keys of the car go with the lorry driver”. She added that he should be back any minute, so we waited a little, and then decided to walk. We might have been frightfully late for dinner if we had not, for we were quite half way home when we met the lorry, but almost at our own gate when Mrs C. passed us!
Our luck in plans going wrong was still not finished. We went to see the Ruffles after dinner on Tuesday, and they suggested that they should pick us up at 9.30 the next morning, when she was to drive him out to his timber mill seven miles along the road, and that then she would drives us to visit Mrs Gordon. We pictured having a cup of morning tea with Mrs G. and getting back here about 11.30. Everything went differently. Mrs Ruffle did not come till past ten, saying her husband was having his hair cut in the village. At the hair-dressers, he popped out to say he was still waiting for his turn, so we waited about half an hour, talking quite pleasantly, but it was v. hot. There were more delays for shopping, and finally we got out to the Blackburns’ estate on which Mrs. Gordon is now staying, about 11.30, having met Mrs Gordon driving into the village! Mrs Ruffle wanted to get some things from the “shop” on the Blackburns place, which is run by the estate, and often has things which are not obtainable in the village. By the time all this was over it was getting on for twelve, and poor Herbert, who is not allowed to drink with his breakfast, must have been wilting for need of moisture. Luckily the Blackburns were in and produced tea immediately. They are the most hospitable creatures! When we got home just in time for lunch, poor Herbert was very tired, and glad that we had no engagements on Thursday.
Yesterday (Friday) was a great occasion. Old Mrs Pratt invited us to lunch, and gave us a perfectly cooked and served little meal. She had wanted us to meet her future grandson-in-law, who owns a large estate here, but he was tied by a meeting, so said he would come at 3.30 and take us to tea at his place. Herbert funked being out so long, and having to talk to people for such a length of time, so he went home after lunch. Nothing would persuade Mrs Pratt to take the hour’s rest I am sure she ought to have, and I must say all through our outing, and when she got home she seemed as brisk and gay as anything. The estate we went to is an old one, and has a most remarkable approach. Near the pack-shed, which is the original house with its original insides knocked out, there is a great plantation of oaks, two or three acres at least. Beyond this a quarter of a mile of road leads to the more modern house, and banked on either side of it for the whole distance are blue and mauve hydrangeas. There must be thousands of them. When in full bloom they must be a wonderful sight. Even in their present faded condition, they are beautiful. There is a large and very lovely garden, and a big swimming pool, with a pretty thatched cottage alongside, containing dressing-rooms. Round this house there are five thousand acres of fruit!
All this detail about people you have never seen must be a bit dull, but perhaps it gives some idea of this part of the country. Going about in people’s houses, one hears the local talk too, and gathers an impression of local history and events. You perhaps know that the predikants or ministers of the Dutch Church, are the yeast working amongst the people to stir them up against any connection with the British Commonwealth of Nations. They are bitterly political, and have not the slightest compunction in using their considerable influence against the British, the South Africans who sympathize with them, and the war. From the local talk it seems that they have a particularly bad specimen here, about whom I have heard many unpleasant tales. That such men should dare to claim to be ministers of religion seems most monstrous.
Some more tales were told of an Irish Doctor, a SinnFeiner, who, obsessed with hatred of the British, became a local centre for the disloyal Dutch, and was eventually interned. The tales deal not only with his political furies, but with the fact that he was drunk as often as not and often consumed a bottle of brandy before breakfast. The well-to-do folk used to go down to the doctor at the town of Somerset West, or get him to come up here. Recently a first class English doctor has settled here, to the joy of the whole neighbourhood. There seems little doubt that Elgin is developing into a place where retired people from Cape Town or from the hotter parts of the Union, will settle, and I dont wonder, for it is a beautiful and temperate part of the world.
An old lady has arrived, aged eighty-five, but full of energy and fun. She is sitting at our table, staying here while she gets her cottage next door into order, after a “let” of two years. She is full of vivid memories of early days in S. Africa. As a child she remembers her mother being advised by a doctor to get off the high lands and down to the coast for a while, so the parents with three children set off in their wagon, with ten oxen and a kaffir driver, making their way through the Drakenstein mountains, the father shooting buck for food as they went along. I dont know how long the trek took them, or how long they had by the sea, but they were away for three months. As a young married woman, she travelled from the Cape to Jo’burg by coach, with a three months old baby to care for. Her husband was in the Jameson Raid, and later in prison in Pretoria for it, where she used to take food to him and the others. She is always pulling herself up and saying she talks too much, and that we must stop her. When experiences have become the history of a great country, its interesting to hear them first hand.
Herbert made up his mind not to make a map here, but somehow he has drifted in to doing so. The forest office let him study a map of a sort to compare to his sketch, but it was limited in scope, and is only interested in forest doings. No one else seems to possess a map of any sort.
This morning (and such a lovely fresh morning too) - - we walked once more to the kopje in the forest, where we found ourselves one evening after supper, and from there Herbert checked much of what he had drawn. It commands a grand view. I should like to be up there in spring when the fruit blossom is all out.
The Davieses left yesterday and we were sorry to say goodbye to them. Their company had been a pleasure. Their departure has had one advantage. We have moved into their room, which is much nicer than the one we previously had. It is a special boon, for there is one tiresome woman who will bear down upon one and try to talk, however much one sits at the far end of the stoop, making it evident by book or by writing materials that one wants to be left in peace. The previous room was small and got very hot in the evening. This one has a big bay-window commanding a grand view of the mountains, and there is lots of air in it.
We are thankful to see in to-day’s paper that the Germans second great attack on the Anzio beach-head has been held. It is interesting to see what bits of news are selected to have headings in the heaviest type, of the same weight as the most important war news. Some times the subjects seem to us so trivial by comparison, but I suppose local interest feels many things to be vital that dont appear of outstanding interest to us.
Here’s the end of the paper, so best love to you all,
LJT
From LJT to Annette
At Elgin. CP.
Feb 20th 1944
My darling Annette
Thank you for your air-graph of 27th Jan. Dad laughed when he read your remarks about life at Highways with Peg criticising all the time and the wireless going at all hours. Aunt is a Saint to stand it! I wonder she has not become disagreeable and nervy long before this. What I long for when I get home is to learn enough about cooking all her jobs, to be able to take over the house and send her away for a months holiday – Then, perhaps, when she comes back, we could induce Uncle to go away for a bit.
I have often thought of the question of rooms, and quite independently Dad and I wondered whether we could, so to speak, “rent” Byways and get our own fuel, so that we could have the stove going in there. Dad will badly need a room where he can have all his papers and work. Of course I shant say anything about this till we get home and I see how the land lies. The “Jam Factory” will be the great obstacle, I suppose and I have not idea whether it would be possible to make any other arrangements for it.
Its terribly nice of Anne to say that we much go and stay with her people sometime. I am looking forward to meeting them, and the Drakes and the Roscoes in the longed for days when the war is over – Do tell her how much I appreciate her thought. How much we shall be able to move about before then I don’t know. I feel that its up to me to do all I can at Highways, especially if Peg is going to be there for the arrival of the infant. Perhaps you were too small to notice how tiresome; how definitely rude and naughty; she was to her parents in her late schooldays or during the period when she attended the London School of Music. I got so angry with her one day, that I told her I could not go on staying in the house without telling her what I thought of her behaviour – What I thought, reduced her to tears and had a little effect – but habits are not mended in a moment.
Its extremely generous of you to suggest that instead of paying you the money that the operation and treatment of your eye cost, we should buy a present from you with it, when we set up house. Like you, I am always having dreams, some fantastic and some plausible, about what we can do in the future (I have even reviewed the possibility of a mass migration to one of the Dominions!!):- I have often thought that it would be a nice thing to get a good “radiogram” so that we could build up a library of records and hear them to the very best advantage - If something like that is possible that would be a real pleasure to you too, we might perhaps put this money to-wards it. What a contrast you have been to many daughters, whose great idea of the use of presents, is to wheedle more money out of them!
I’ve enjoyed – still am enjoying – this little visit to Elgin, especially the afternoons on the stoop with knitting and a book – I borrowed a book from Mrs Pratt, by John Middleton Murry with the strange title of “God” – From quite a different angle of approach, he has arrived at many of the ideas which Gen Smuts rather labouriously works out in his book “Holism”. Middleton Murry takes the purely scientific stuff as read – or easily available for any one who wishes to do so, to read and he goes for the study of the integration of “Mind” and “Heart” – (Gerald Heard’s “Conscious and Unconscious) which he calls metabiology. It would no doubt infuriate Dad, but I find it most interesting and vital. If only Dad could integrate “mind and heart” – Intellect and Emotion – he would be able to rise from his exhaustion and get over the physical results of the war which is always going on in him between the two.
This letter started out to be a short note – so its about time I stopped it!
Love – and thanks again for your thought about the “eye” money
Mother
Family letter from HPV
c/o Standard Bank of South Africa,
Cape Town.
February 21st 1944. Monday.
My Dear Annette (name handwritten)
It was an error to start on a sketch map of the neighbourhood, for its complexity is such that anything done without measurements of distances or angles is bound to be out. I had declared against pacing of distances when first we came; and the compass seemed to be out of gear, refusing to swing freely. The mapmaking was intended to show myself and the old doctor where Joan and I had been, but each attempt revealed itself to be altogether wrong and I have gone from one to another, fudging vainly. Finally I dropped in on the Forest Office where they had a detailed map of the woods with a half-inch index map in the corner; the latter has proved to be vaguely drawn and inaccurate thing. The compass recovered tone after being shaken, when a piece of dirt came loose; but it is too small to be much of a guide as used by me. The difficulty is that the whole country-side is so heavily wooded that it cannot be seen from any vantage-point; though the kopje to which Joan referred last week gives a splendid view of the surroundings. A second difficulty is that Mrs. Ruffle whom I consulted re distances gave decisions re directions which proved on test by the compass to be altogether wrong. Yesterday I finished the map and inked it in; today therefore I shall probably find it to be misconceived.
I have been certain walks, but my chief exercise seems to have been fly-swatting in the bedroom. Lest there should be a shortage of material for this sport they spread manure on the surface of the flower beds; and they are not too energetic about cleaning rubbish bins. This room is more convenient than the former one for fly-swatting, but more flies come in perhaps. There have also been mosquitoes; of which most, to judge by their whiskers, have been males and so non-biters. I have slept better in this room, though with many dreams. But the luck has been against me in six social doings and I have been tired; and in addition the bread has been doughy and indigestion has resulted. No letters all this week; no typing except on one evening; and no work of any kind. I didn’t finish my notes on the causes of the Bengal famine, for example. Letters from Calcutta have not satisfied my curiosity as to the existence of famine in the Damodar canal area; there ought to have been a good crop there and there ought not to have been famine.
Much time has gone on hair-cutting. The local barber, the haarkapper, does not attract; his shop looks grimy. So I reverted to the nail scissors; which are effective up to a point, keeping the hair in subjection but not short.
The old German refugee gentleman invariably puts on his cap when he visits the lavatory in the morning; for this the only possible explanation is that he wants to be about to show his respect of the place by doffing the cap when he approaches it (with his cap pyjamas: that is why he looks comic).
On my way to the Forest Office I suddenly saw a dog in front of me cower down and gaze behind me; turning, I saw an Alsatian running after me full bat, and recognized the hotel dog, Remp. There were leapings of pleasure all round me and expressions of delight at having overtaken me. When we reached the Office the dog came in too and spread himself everywhere. I apologised and explained that there was no controlling the hotel dog, but the forester said “That’s my dog” and so it was. Rex, once a visitor to the hotel till expelled for killing the hotel cat. Since then Rex has galloped up whenever he sees us and comes walks whenever he can. But we have not had more than two dogs with us at a time.
When you sharpen razor blades in a glass, have it half full of water and not merely damp; the water as it were floats the blade so that it is easy to rub it very lightly. Skilled folk will not need this assistance but will rely on lightness of touch.
The old doctor exclaimed when we told him of the fallen arches and the exercises that I had not got such; now the question is (1) is he right? (2) did I ever have them? and (3) have the exercises worked? If they have, it is something unique, for curative exercises are things done for their own sake and not because they produce results.
After experiences of the doings of the Circus local opinion has it that the only way to get rid of the Palmiet weed which ruins this river here is to keep elephants. It seems that the two brought by the Circus tore up the weed with enthusiasm for the fun of it.
Much love
Dad
Airgraph from LJT to Annette (addressed to Miss Annette Townend P.O. Box. 111. Bletchley Bucks. England)
No 4 Feb. 23rd 1944
My darling Annette: Thanks for a-g of 27/1 rcd 17/2, which I much enjoyed. Its warming to the heart to think of you making plans about us. My detailed answer has already gone by surface mail. Please thank Anne for her kind thought that we should stay with her people. The Carey Morgans, Peggy Williamson & others suggest visits to them, but I want first to learn enough to take over Aunt’s work & get her away for a holiday. Then I hope to be able to help when Peg’s babe comes, as there is bound to be extra work in the house. It might be a good thing to get Dad away somewhere at that time. I concur completely in your admiration for the way Aunt runs the house, now single handed. I dont believe I shall ever learn to be as efficient. So glad to hear she was having a day in town with you & Pam & Betty. I suppose its impossible to get Uncle away. Romey’s Xmas present for Dad arrived yesterday, & is most valuable. It is glucose wafers, pepsin, & a big bottle of concentrated tablets with all kinds of vitamins & nurishing things in them, all of which may be most useful on the voyage, when we have no idea what the food will be like. I’m looking forward to hearing how R. Likes Montreal. If she has to do routine work, it will be something to be connected with penicillin, for some interest attaches to being in a new field of work. Its strange that she should have exactly the same narrow formation of the left nostril that I had. Its also lucky that the op’ to put it right is so simple & so quick. Its extremely nice of you to think of giving us back the money which your op’ and treatment cost, with which to buy a present for our home when at last we are able to get one. We’ll have to discuss it when we get home. It would be nice to use it towards some really nice thing that would give you pleasure too, such as a radio-gram which would show off your records & any I might get to the best advantage. The house would have to provide somewhere for Dad to sit where he would not hear the music. Its sad that music irritates & tires him. To me most music is restful, but it seems to set some vibration going in him which makes him feel all tensed up. Like you I have so many dreams & plans for the future, some of them no doubt, quite fantastic. Its amusing how convinced S.Africans are that once having lived in this country we are sure to want to come back. I think it must have been clear from my letters that we do not feel attracted by the idea of living here. If we did feel like emigrating I suppose British Columbia would be the best choice, but lets hope that old England will be a possible home for us. Our visit here is almost over. It has been a success. We have avoided a terribly hot spell in Cape Town, for though it has been hot here, the extra 1,000 ft of altitude make it a good deal fresher. Dad has been walking well, & has recently fallen into the temptation of making a map. He’s clever at it, & it does make places more interesting. We have met most of the personalities & ‘Characters’ in the neighbourhood now, & people have been most hospitable to us. Edward Groth had been hoping to come up for a night & drive us back, but he writes that he is so over-burdened with work he does not think it will be possible to get away. It was nice of him even to think of it. I was told yesterday what will probably be the best shop to go for your coat. I feel quite excited about going shopping next week! I had a litter from Idris Matthews a couple of days ago. The Supply Dept has been reorganised & he has to take over another big section. Says he wishes I were there to help him. This makes me feel quite homesick! I really did like the job I did under him. What stupendous raids have been reported in the papers the last few days. Best love & thanks again. Mother
Family letter from LJT No 8
The Settlers’Club
Cape Town
Feb. 27th 1944.
My Dears,
Looking back over my diary of our last week in Elgin, I see quite a press of social engagements. People there are friendly, and say they enjoy meeting other people from outside the district. Its amusing that each tells one confidentially that most of the others will do nothing but gossip. As a matter of fact there are a good sprinkling of people who are interested in things other than local doings. Of course there are the usual little feuds and differences of opinion, but not more than are common in any small community.
Two brothers, Ted and Harry Molteno, younger members of a well known Cape family, started with little or no capital many years ago, to build up a fruit farm in Elgin. Now they have enormous estates both there and in the Karoo. They are men of great enterprise, and were the first to try cold storage and then the latest type of gas storage for apples. It is said that they have the largest gas storage plant in the world. We had wanted to meet them, but unfortunately there had been a great split between them and the late husband of our hostess of last year, so we did not like to try to get an introduction to them while staying with her. Last week Mrs Pratt arranged for the more outstanding of the two to come to tea to meet us. Herbert was interested in all his ideas for possible developments in the district. He has pulled off so many of his experiments with success, that its worth considering his further ideas. He is much occupied with world reconstruction after the war, but Herbert thought his ideas on that subject entirely unsound. I did not hear them, for Mrs Pratt and I left the two men to talk to-gether and had our own discussions as a tête-à-tête on the sofa. She is of an age now when I think she likes individual conversation. I was sorry to say goodbye to the old darling on Thursday evening, when I went round paying a few farewell visits, while Herbert did a final walk, in order to link up the last small section in the circle of the map of our walks round Grabouw (the village centre of Elgin district).
Our other old lady friend, the eighty-five year old one, invited us to her cottage one evening, where she has got a good many of her treasures unpacked. She wanted to show us things she had talked about, notably an album containing pigs drawn blindfold and signed by all the men who were imprisoned in the Pretoria Jail, for taking part in the Jameson Raid. A lot of them were very good pigs, and it amused us to wonder whether they expressed anything of the characters of their authors. Old Mrs Beachey-Head is a remarkable old lady. To see her stepping along as briskly, and with as upright a carriage as many a woman of half her age, you would never dream that she was well past the four score years. Like so many of the people who made fortunes in Jo’burg, her husband, from being almost a millionaire lost almost everything, and when their affairs were settled up after his death, she found herself and her youngest son, who had just been recalled from school in England, with only a few pounds to her credit. Nothing daunted she came to Elgin, hired a tiny two-roomed cottage, and took a contract with the local store for making sausages. She also made jams and pickles. The boy worked in the local garage, and later joined up to serve in the Kaiser’s war. And so, one way and another by her own hard work, she supported herself, and saved enough to buy and build on to her present little home. I dont quite know why I tell this little tale, except that it illustrates the ups and downs of a pioneering life. Discussing the subject with Mr Ruffle, with whom we spent an evening, Herbert said he found it so hard to understand why, when men have made big fortunes they dont settle something on their wives and children. Mr Ruffle replied that one thinks ones on top of the wave and that nothing can go wrong, and forthwith told us how he risked one fortune, believing that he could double it without risk or trouble, lost it all and had to start again. He also told us an entertaining story about taking part in a diamond rush, much later than the Kimberly diamond finds. It was in one of the native territories, and in the days when those who got concessions to stake claims, were all lined up at a certain time on a certain day, and raced for the places they wished to stake out. Mr Ruffle said that though he had only gone up there by way of taking a few weeks holiday, he has never felt so excited in his life. He worked his claim and found nothing but crystals, when almost on the last day, his native boy, to whom he had promised 10 percent of all findings, picked up a big diamond on the edge of the river which bordered their claim. Unfortunately it was badly flawed, but even so it fetched £49 10, and paid all expenses for a month’s holiday. I still find it amusing to meet people who have actually done all the things we read of in the adventure books of our childhood.
Another evening we had supper with the Blackburns, where the dog who had destroyed my hat, greeted me with the greatest friendliness, sitting beside me and offering me first one great paw and then the other. Mr. Blackburn still insists that his wife must get me a hat on his behalf, and she said she would ring me up when next they come in to Cape Town. However, as the one who destroyed was my only black one, and as I have several garments with which only a black hat can be worn, I had to run out and search for one yesterday morning. I was lucky enough to find a very nice one at a moderate price.
During the latter part of our stay our co-guests, with the exception of old Mrs. Beachy-Head, were not interesting, and we sat mostly in our nice big bedroom, with its lovely view of the mountains from its bow window.
Herbert became v. interested in his map and we had some most agreable walks, linking up sections of the country that we already knew. Walking in the forests was fun, for when one starts down an old logging road, one never knows whether it will fade out. It reminded us of our explorations in the forests on Mount Tamborine in Australia. The two Alsatians from the hotel nearly always went with us, and looked most suitable ranging in the woods.
Our train on Friday was supposed to leave at 1-2 p.m and was only a modest quarter of an hour late. It was a hot day in Elgin, not bad in the train, but very hot when we arrived in Cape Town. That kind soul Edward Groth, had come with his car to meet us, in spite of the fact that he is so busy. He came to lunch with us yesterday, so that we were able to exchange all the news, for we have had letter from people who are also his friends, both in America and in India, and he has had letters too.
Its rather nice coming to a place we already know, but unfortunately we were bothered by the heat, mosquitoes, and noise the first night and neither of us slept well. Nets are provided, but having seen no mosquitoes about, we decided to do without them on account of the heat. At 3 a.m. we had to put on the light and put down the nets. Luckily the weather has turned much cooler and there was no hardship in sleeping under nets last night. I went out shopping in the morning, and Herbert, to get our exit permits. To-morrow I am to go to the Board of War Transport to get our priority fixed, as Herbert thinks I shall put up a more convincing case than he would be able to do. The thing is I really believe we have good reasons for getting home, and he does not.
While I was out yesterday I called in at the S.A.W.A.S.’ office, to find that they want me to take on another bit of work, and that is to interview the R.A.F. men who come to the office in the afternoons asking to have hospitality fixed up. The woman who does the actual arranging of places for them to go, can only come to the office in the mornings, so I shall have to leave notes for her, or ring her up in urgent cases. The men can always go to the Soldiers Club for one night, if they have just come off a train, but many come in from the local camps, to say they will be getting leave the following week, or whatever it may be, so that there is no desperate hurry about them.
A lot of air-graphs from home and from Canada have come since I last wrote, as well as a big mail from India with long letters from several of my old friends. I will put a list of the air-graphs received as a post-script, so that those not concerned, need not read it. We thank all those who wrote.
Best love to you all.
LJT
Air-Graphs received:
From Grace dated 2.1.44 Rcd 22.2.44
From Romey “ 10.1.44 “ 19.2.44
From Helen “ 3.1.44 “ 22.2.44
From Romey “ 21.1.44 “ 22.2.44
From Annette “ 27.1.44 “ 17.2.44
From Barney “ 2.1.44 “ 25.2.22
Letters received
From Harry dated 16.1.44 Rcd 25.2.44
From Ron “ 14.1.44 “ 25.2.44
(hand written addition)
Darling Annette
I wont send a letter this week, as I have written a good deal lately and have a lot of things to do –
Best love
Mother
Romey we have been so glad to get your airgraphs. It is in time of trouble or illness that one feels the burden of being ‘so far’ apart. Now we are looking forward so much to hearing from Montreal. Glad you have friends there.
As always,
Mother
(to Romey) Romey we have been so glad to get your airgraphs. It is in time of trouble or illness that one feels the burden of being 'so far' apart. Now we are looking forward so much to hearing from Montreal. Glad you have friends there.
Family letter from HPV
c/o Standard Bank of South Africa,
Cape Town.
February 27th 1944 Sunday.
My dear
Back in Cape Town, which according to the couple who sit at our table is crowded: they have to leave this club on Wednesday and have fallen into grief after being repulsed at hotel after hotel.
My final days at Elgin were made hideous for me by suffering from a nervous desire to make the map more like the reality. A walk with Joan along railway (trespassing probably, though the footprints and cycle-tracks showed that many went that habitually) enabled me to link up a piece of country where entries on the map had before been guesswork; Mrs Blackburn’s running us out to their place again by car allowed of some more plausible fudging than I had put in before; and a longish solitary walk while Joan was at the S.A.W.A.S. meeting on Thursday provided me with figures and bearings which at the cost of trudging in hot sun through thick dust joined up the two or three walks done soon after we arrived and made the map look quite respectable. We were within 100 yards of getting through to our objective on an early walk when we turned back because there was no sign of a road in front: as I discovered on this last afternoon it was there all the time, hidden by fruit-trees. I did not finish the map eventually, though I sketched in final corrections.
There left with us a German girl (brother in South African army and a prisoner of war in Italy) who had had a pocket-dog, black and hairy. She carried it for the train journey in a special bag out of which its head protruded; and on this occasion she had put in the bottom of the bag a chicken, cleaned and plucked and wrapped in paper, on which the dog sat comfortably. No worse than eating the steak on which Father Lowe had been sitting for four days in camp at St. Margaret’s Bay; after we had lost it; but the idea of eating that chicken would turn me.
There was a setback in the haircutting, by the way: unable from a perverse disposition to refrain from leaving well alone I made a fresh effort to clip the back in a manner more worthy of me, and it has a rats-have-been-at-it look. Now the debate is whether I can go to the hairdressers as it is or shall have to wait till time has hidden the furrows.
The old lady at our table at Elgin told how the man she has hired to do the garden and odd jobs (a strange dwarfish-looking creature, coloured) informed her that he had had thirteen children “but, alas!, six are dead.” “Never mind,” she replied kindly, “they are much better looked after where they are than you could manage.” A truly Christian sentiment which struck us as comic; seriously meant.
I discovered in the dictionary that Père Gateau meant a father who spoilt his children; Joan commented that I could not rightly use the expression when signing the letter to Annette, in view of the incident of coaxing Rosemary to eat her tea by offering her Lace Cake and omitting to coax Annette similarly because she was tucking in anyhow. True; this was not worth mentioning.
As soon as we had arrived here, at least after drinking the tea which was ready almost at once, I marched down to the Library and set myself up in books; I could not resist looking at the Bottle-Tree but it had not had a crop. Perhaps like any ordinary tree it fruits only at certain seasons. The squirrels were much in evidence; no longer proud but begging. I had nothing for them. I saw the old and hairy Seafaring Man: he does not look as if this sweltering weather had tempted him to wash.
My letter to Stuttafords’ about their sending in a bill for three consecutive months after I had settled with them led only to a humble letter of apology; so no more fun there.
Sleeping miserably these latter days I am jaded; if this letter reads poorly by comparison with those of better times the explanation lies in the weariness.
Much love
Dad