1936 December
From LJT to Annette
The Towers
Cossipore
Dec. 2nd 1936
My darling Annette
At the moment I am feeling just the sort of rushed and irritated feeling that I am always telling Dad not to give way to – Each morning this week I have set aside in my mind for writing my Christmas Mail and each morning I have had so many interruptions that I have got practically nothing done – There’s a great deal of “renovating” going on in the house and Idris Mathews bearer is a lazy old boy with very “bachelor” ideas. As long as the things that his master needs look alright on the surface, the amount of disorder behind the scenes does not matter! This is a time of year too, when people keep on turning up on brief visits to Calcutta and it seems piggish to say you cant see them or do anything for them because you want to write letters and do this and that. That is where people who work in an office have a pull – They can always say “Sorry – I don’t get out of office till 6 o’clock”.
There! Writing that down has made me feel better – and I can now send you my Christmas Wishes in more of a Christmas spirit – They will arrive a few days early – but it cant be helped. I imagine you will be having a pretty busy time at Highways, with Joeys’ dance to cope with as well as Christmas – Auntie is really a marvel – the things she manages to do.
Presents, as usual, I have left to her – so I don’t know whether you are getting money or “things” – Anyhow I hope you will be pleased with what you get – and accept it with best love from Dad and myself.
We shall be having a quietish Christmas, I think. We are all dining with Uncle Harry and Auntie Winsome.
We are really very pleased to hear that Rosemary is working well at French. She is a little brick to have put her back into it so throughly.
People are coming to lunch and I am sitting in the garden waiting for them. Its perfect under the trees on the river bank – neither hot nor cold – and there’s just a gentle caressing breeze! Here are my guests – just coming to the gate, (which is guarded night and day by a police sentry!) Best love, darling and all good wishes for 1937, which will probably be an eventful year for you –
Mum
Family letter from LJT
The Towers
Cossipore
Calcutta
Dec 3rd 1936.
My Dears,
A Happy Christmas to you all! I wish we could be one of the family party, but its nice to know that we shall be home with you all so soon.
I am not going to attempt to write a long letter this week, for I am frightfully behind-hand with my Christmas mail – With all the good will and intentions in the world, I have had nothing but interruptions to my attempts to sit down to cope with it on each succesive morning this week.
First of all there is rather a sad bit of news. Poor Winsome is laid up with some trouble in her ear. She was at the pictures a couple of nights ago, and suddenly had a terrible pain in her ear. She stuck it out as she did not want to make a fuss, but I gather that when they got up to go, she could not stand because she was so dizzy. They got her home and phoned for the doctor. He gave her something, but she was in very great pain all night, and no better in the morning, so they called in Dr Norrie, the Ear Specialist who did my nose operation in the summer. I don’t know quite what he did, but he was able to aleviate the pain a little, and is pleased with the progress Winsome is making. H says there is very severe inflammation of the inner ear on both sides, due he thinks to some sort of germ connected with influenza. Herbert saw Winsome for a minute or two yesterday. Both her ears are plugged up, and she is still in a good deal of pain, poor darling. Luckily Nannie, who has been away for her holiday, got back on Saturday, and Harry says the children have been very good.
As usual I have been busy about a number of things. We are really getting on with the works in the house, and it is looking so nice. The garden is coming on well too now. The cosmos is out and giving us plenty of cut flowers for the house, and orange Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) is just beginning. Its nice to have flowers to cut, for we have just been through the most barren time, as far as flowers are concerned. October and November are very much an off season in India, and the few shrubs that flower at that time are no good for picking.
I wonder if you remember my telling you about a dear old American lady of over seventy, who is a great devotee of the Rama Krishna Mission out here, and comes out and stays at the Guest House (which she and her sister built incidentally) in the cold weather. She has just come back again, and Idris and I lunched with her last Friday at Peliti’s. I am never quite sure that she is not a wee bit “goofy”, as the young people are fond of saying, but she is extremely wise and charming in many ways, and we always enjoy being with her. In spite of her advanced age, she travels all about the world alone. During this summer she has paid a visit to Russia, and though she is inclined to look at everything through rose-coloured spectacles, she has come away with the most unhappy impression of the Soviet. She says everyone seems to be poor, hungry, under-clothed and hopeless, and that instead of the peasants being lifted up to a higher standard, everyone seems to have sunk down to the peasant standard.
Herbert and Idris have had a wonderful contraption made for cutting the dead leaves off palm trees. It is a small saw set in the top of a long wooden pole. Herbert was out in the garden quite early on Sunday morning working away with it, and he continued his good work after breakfast, till the whole garden seemed to be strewn with the huge fan-shaped palm leaves. The palms had not been cleared for years, and there were such a collection of leaves hanging on them! It is a great improvement to have them cleaned up.
Best love to you all
LJT
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
Dec 3rd 1936
My dear Annette.
It is the half hour before breakfast; I have just finished dressing: and a short time ago I was doing physical jerks. Observe how intimately mind or emotion is tied up with matter! Because I was more energetic than usual in the swinging of Indian clubs, my arm muscles are quivering: and, because these quiver, my nerves have gone on edge out of sympathy. Rather, because it is a task to make the fingers keep the pen approximately steady. It is a pity that I have never learnt to play the typewriter by ear: for this I might rattle off letters and retain equanimity. However the typewriter is not itself since I dropped it off the table: so my shortcomings are of less immediate moment.
My state of health is definitely Christmassy: in other words I have a cold in the nose and a sore throat. – oh! not “definitely” – say rather “approximately”, for I lack chilblains. Otherwise I am very well. It is of course a sign of comparative health to be irritable. The main discussions on the emotional thermometer as a guide to knowledge of one’s health are
Top serenity
Middle irritability
Bottom indifference or apathy
Such symptoms as cheerfulness or gaiety are possible in any of these: they mean nothing. Your mother confounds state three with state one and is pleased when I cease to be angry with the Government, even though my motive is blank despair and my condition that of one who would not resent annihilation.
As you may see from the above this is to wish you a Happy Christmas. I feel sure that if no major catastrophes intervene you will have it. You may be wise in wanting money instead of gifts, but if so it is the type of wisdom that is confounded by the folly of fools: for the whole point of gift-giving disappears if the element of unwantedness is passed. Who really even wants anything, except such things as one would be ashamed to buy? – (for instance, fifty small glass bottles of sizes in a descending scale to tininess.)
As for news. I have had the Legislative Council debates on my Development Bill and the Debtors Bill bound, in separate volumes (of a pleasing red) and can now peruse them at my ease instead of searching through three volumes of the Proceedings of Council for each – six in all. Last night I read with some interest Sir Nazimuddin’s speech on introducing the former (my speech except for the last paragraph which was tub thumping supplied by him) and reflected how good it was: also how little had been done to give effect to the promises made in it. But further on I found a speech of my own which emphasised the difficulty of getting money out of a Finance Department even if Council passed the Bill: and in it I said “It will be very difficult to get money then – but it is impossible now: and I would rather face a difficulty than an impossibility.” So I anticipated then what is happening now: and this ought to be a comfort. However I am not sure that it isn’t better to face an impossibility, after all: for one doesn’t waste time over it.
Last night we went to have drinks with an American who lives in the flat on top of Tower House, the tallest building in Calcutta. There is a small balcony which he had lighted with old fashioned ships lanterns, - starboard lights – of vivid green. As we drove down Chowringhee I noticed the gleam of them high up in front of us. An effective decoration: but I don’t know that I should like to live with it.
Two of three times lately I have put on Linguaphone records in the evening: at your mother’s suggestion. But always she at once goes off to sleep when they start. The Bevington tradition: her mother always slept after dinner and always denied it. So (but often, not always) your Aunt Grace.
Well – have you happy Christmas and bless you.
Much love
Dad
From LJT to Annette
The Towers
Cossipore
Calcutta
Dec 10th 1936
My darling Annette
I feel rather like Browning’s Dante when he complained that he could not get on with his job, because “in they come, those people of importance” – My “people of importance are not the great ones of the world, but humble folk like the electricians who have come to carry an electric wire to the far end of my sitting room and fix a double wall plug, so that I can have a lamp on my writing table and also run the electric stove when cold or a table fan when hot – Idris’ old berer – troubled because master’s pyjamas are worn out – the dhurzie mending Himalayan Club tents – a series of people on the telephone – Its a pity I cant manage to keep my life just a little emptier! I have had “News from Tartary” for nearly a week and have not managed to read the first chapter yet –
I’m sorry you had to be away from school for so long – and I do hope the eye is better –
Its a pity about Peg and her tiresome ways. I had heard so little of them for so long that I hoped she had reformed. I suppose it was just Ginney’s influence. Let’s hope it will last after they are married.
My letters are really almost a farce this week – The sense of hurry prevents my thinking of anything the least interesting – so you will just have to take them as an assurance of my continued respect and affection – In other words – I send you my best love and wish you good luck in 1937
Mum
Dad is sorry he had no time to write. Explanation in Rsy’s letter –
Family letter from LJT
The Towers
Cossipore
Calcutta
Dec 10th 1936
My Dears,
A Happy to you all. 1937 is going to be an exciting year for lots of us. I feel it will especially exciting for me, coming home to see an almost grown up family!
The long expected telegram from Ron Kaulback arrived the day before yesterday, announcing the arrival of himself and John Tracey in good health, and craving the immediate loan of a thousand rupees. Harry arranged to have the money sent up to him yesterday morning, and we hope Ron will be with us in a day or two.
The news of Winsome is much better, though she has had a horrid time, and a great deal of pain. Dr Norrie pierced her ear drums a day or two agi, since when she has been much more comfortable. She can still near very little, as her ears are all stuffed up. Luckily she can understand Nannie very well, and she said she could follow what I was saying. I fancy it will still be quite a time till she is up and about, and Dr Norrie says she will be deaf for about three weeks.
I am sorry to say I have allowed all sorts of things to distract me from writing my mail, and have foolishly promised to lunch in Calcutta to-day, so this will be a very sketchy letter. There is not a great deal that is of much interest to tell as a matter of fact. A Himalayan Club Committee meeting on Friday resulted in a lot of urgent work, which I have had to deal with during the last few days. We have had a good many people out here, to lunch and tea and different things. Idris and I dined with some people in Barrackpore on Saturday night, and had some very good talk about psychology, yoga, hipnotism and such things. How parties vary! So often one goes out, and there is not talk that is worth thinking about. After dinner we went to the Barrackpore Club to dance and watch a cabaret.
Idris had a small dinner-party here on Monday and took us to see Romeo and Juliet afterwards, which we thought wonderful. I think it is almost perfect, and wish that now the film producers have shown that they can produce Shakespeare so well, they would do some more.
Herbert has done more works in the garden over the week-end. He has been bothered with a sore throat, a very common complaint at this time of year in Calcutta, but is otherwise quite fit.
I have had great fun re-arranging all the furniture in the drawing-room and the little room that leads out of it which is known as the cocktail room, and really they do look much better. Idris is very pleased with them.
Last Air-mail I had a letter from General Bruce, asking me to befriend a young man, Charles Crawford, who had actually brought a letter of introduction from Edwin Kempson to me, and whom I had already introduced to lots of people. The General says that he is coming out to India but only for a month to Abbotabad, and he is afraid he wont be able to visit Calcutta. I wish he could!
It seems a mean little single sheet for you this week, but I am afraid I have no time for more.
Best love to you all
LJT
From LJT to Annette
The Towers
Cossipore
Calcutta
Dec 14th
My darling Annette
We have had a sad disappointment this week – You have probably received the news in London, that all the English Mail for Calcutta, was burnt on the train journey between Bombay and Calcutta. It seems a great blank when no letters arrive –
I am making a real attempt this week to write you more than a scratchy little note – and that is why I am starting on Monday – Idris and I take off in his plane at 7 a.m to-morrow morning for Chittagong and we shant be back till somewhere between 10 and 11 on Thursday morning, so I am bound to be short of time for writing on that day.
I am just going to write to Miss Heath-Jones, to tell her that you want to leave at the end of next term – Do you know yet when the scholarship exam takes place? Also have you any idea what you would like to do from after the Coronation till July? I did write some vague suggestions to you sometime ago – but should like to know whether you have any special ideas. Whether Dad would agree to a tour across Germany and Austria, I don’t know, but I think it would be nice not to tie yourself down for that month, in case we can persuade him
Some people have a most curious attitude to learning and to “school” – At a cocktail party the other night I was talking to a girl, recently out from home, but about 20 or 21 years of age – I was speaking warmly of the film of “Romeo and Juliet” – and she said “Oh I don’t like Shakespeare because we had to learn ‘it’ at school.” The ‘ ‘ are mine! What an attitude! I felt quite dumfounded – I hope everything you have read or studied at school, wont be distasteful to you in after life! I am glad to say that it has not been to me. Is that sort of attitude something in the girl herself do you suppose, or was something very wrong with the way she was taught?
Uncle Harry and Auntie Winsome seem rather keen to join forces for August and go to that Hotel at St Jacut. If they had their car there and we had one too, it might be rather fun. I think we could make more use of going out in fishing boats too. That’s a wonderful way of getting out to the Islands.
The Factory is shut to-day and Idris and I have had lunch out under the trees by the river and now we are both sitting, he at the table and I in a long chair, writing mail letters – Its a perfect spot and a perfect atmosphere – Scarlet poinsettias and cascades of brilliant magenta pointesettia make lovely splashes of colour along the river bank, with a background of sparkling grey blue water. There’s quite a strong breeze – neighter hot nor cold – In fact the light and the feeling of the air are what I have experienced in two or three beautiful dreams which I have had during my life. I do like being here. The only pity is that I have not more time to spend in this lovely garden –
Idris has been much happier and more himself the last few days – He is getting over the shock of his mothers death and feeling “the accustomed train of things grow round his sense again –“ I am glad – It was a pity to see him so sad.
We have just got a nice weather report for our flying jaunt to-morrow. We shall probably have a following wind, and if we fly high at about 600 ft. it will likely be 20 miles an hour which will help our speed enormously –
Best love, to you, my darling
from
Mum
From HPV to Annette.
Calcutta
Dec 16th 1936
My dear Annette.
The news of the week so far is that Dr Norrie the nose specialist says that there is no need for the operation which Major Drummond, the surgeon in Darjeeling, thought to be inevitable. Dr Norrie spent an hour splaying about with my nose and throat, and incidentally piercing and washing out the antrum. He did this last most adroitly: we were not awarded by the sight of any agreeable mucks: merely a very little mucous which, he says, always exists in any antrum. He decided that there was a sufficient passage for air on each side of my septum (division in the nose, at top) and that “better leave well alone.” He said that there must be space enough in my nose for air because otherwise could I breathe exclusively through it, as he could guarantee from the appearance of my mouth nose and throat that I did. “So that Miss is that”. A relief because I didn’t want to waste time on it: ten or twelve days: probably not being fit I should have been slower recovering that your mother was.
Your aunt Winsome is much better. Dr Norrie had to pierce both eardrums to relieve pressure. She says that, after he had done this, at once the pain went: and all sorts of Shtuff came out during the night. It is a paradox that the more revolting the stuff from an abscess the more satisfaction the patient feels: something justifying the pain and trouble, perhaps.
The tide has just turned and the boats are thronging up the river. Strange to say, all bow first on this occasion: usually a large proportion drift sideways or backwards. It is a holiday: the Eid – end of the Ramazan fast of the Muhammadans. I have not gone to office: and what is more I have done no work. All morning I have written letters. A long screed to Richard chiefly: not that such do any good. There are 10 men rowing one boat and 12 another: standing up and walking two paces forward, two paces back: but I suppose that they do not walk as far as if on land, for the run of the boat – and of course the tide which I was forgetting – these two things help. The ferry boat rowing against the tide goes rapidly back but the crew is unmoved: the boat touches shore somewhere and then creeps along to the ghat. Two men in a small smoothe boat, like a dug out, are dressed in the brightest of green.
There are 36 boats of all shapes and sizes (but no shape at all human except a lighters’) going past at the moment. All is peaceful. A cool breeze mitigates the heat. It is lunch time but probably the servants do not realise that I am out by the river. Even I am peaceful.
I have not been so much this week. Feverishly working on figures about output of paddy – rice in the husk, in case you don’t know the real meaning of the word. A question of assessing rates which could be charged to the people whose lands are irrigated, if my Development Act were applied: the Bengali officer who has been making the estimates has fixed figures for outturn of paddy with irrigation at far too high a figure, as I judge: it makes no difference at the moment for we cannot legally charge more than Rs. 5/8 an acre in the area so far irrigated: but if we overestimate the preirrigation yield here and so reduce the extent of the estimated benefit due to irrigation we shall have to do the same for other areas for which I was new schemes: (then there may not be a margin sufficient to warrant us in taking up new schemes at all. However I think that it will work out all right. It is a nuisance that nothing ever goes smoothly: to get results one has to push behind, the whole time.
The house is full of mosquitoes. It is always so at night as I know: but today I find it so also in the morning. I have killed one or two of them: stegomuia, the yellow fever mosquito (not that there is yellow fever in India) which breeds in clean water in the house itself. Flower vases, cisterns, sumps, and such. One ought to make a plan and eliminate. But it would be a long business. A matter for your mother.
A telegram has just arrived from her to say that she has safely reached Dacca, from Chittagong.
The worst of sitting under a tree is that one grows drowsy. I cease. Much love
Dad
From LJT to Annette
The Towers
Cossipore
Dec 23rd 1936
My darling Annette
At 4.15 p.m. – two days before Christmas, I sit basking in the sunshine, while I write this letter – There’s quite a cold wind, to our huge delight, but I am sheltered from it here.
Your last letter on the subject of Richard’s pacifism was most helpful and illuminating. I am glad you think we take it too seriously and hope you are right about it. I think what annoyed Dad most of all was the fact that Richard had taken some sort of a pledge about not carrying arms.
I had not realized to what an extent the generation that has grown up since the Great War has been trained in pacifism – as you point out to me. I could not but fail to know that a great deal was being written and thought on the subject, but in my own mind I put it on just the same plane as the lion lying down with the lamb and scarcely thought that any one else could believe it to be more possible. I cherished a vague and far away hope that the League of Nations might so organize itself that it would be sufficiently powerful to keep peace in the world – but I conceived that as only being possible from the amount of force it would have behind it. Perhaps we have been too hard on Richard, but I felt it would be a good thing for him to have some of the opposite points of view put to him somewhat forcibly – Of course Dad is not good half measures. If a thing makes him angry, it makes him so angry that he can scarcely contain himself.
I had a nice letter from Miss Capstick last week saying how glad she was to have you back, and that she found you most helpful etc. etc! so there’s a reputation for you to live up to Miss! There have also been favourably comments from many members of the family on your patience and cheerfulness under adversity – to wit, having to rest your eye and missing so much of the term at rather an important time in your career – One way and another I feel proud of you, my dear –
He! Ho! I wish we were going to be to-gether for Christmas!
Best love, my darling
from
Mum
Family letter from LJT
The Towers
Cossipore
Calcutta
Dec 24th 1936
My Dears,
Thank you, all and sundry, for letters, cards, presents and good wishes. Most of you seem to have written by the mail that came in last week, so I hope we did not lose much in the fire which destroyed the coach in which all the mails for Calcutta were packed, the week before last.
I am sorry you did not get a letter last week. I expect most of you have heard the reason. After a splendid flight from Calcutta to Chittagong, and the following day an equally good flight to Dacca the following day, the plane struck work when we wanted to leave Dacca on Thursday morning. We eventually traced the trouble to one of the magnetos, of which there are two for the single engine. Although we could have flown with only the one working, it would have left us no margin of safety if by any chance the second one had gone wrong. Idris would not take the risk, so we telephoned to Calcutta and got another one sent up and fitted, and flew home on Saturday morning. We enjoyed our days in Dacca very much. Idris was able to talk to his second-in-command, and as there was no urgent work, the delay did not matter much, except that the extra days away, have made us specially busy since we came back. I found the whole outing most interesting, as I had never seen either Dacca or Chittagong before. From Calcutta to Chittagong, we flew right across the vast delta of the Ganges, deviating slightly from our course in order to have a look at Barisal, one of our old stations, from the air. We finished up with about thirty miles flying at 4,000 ft above the sea, across the top of the Bay of Bengal. Idris’s judgement of his course was so good that we arrived plum on to the areodrome. From there we had half an hour up the river in a motor launch, and a quarter of an hour in a car, to reach our host’s house at Chittagong.
*** *** ******
So sorry! There has been one interruption after an other. Telephone Visitors. Himalayan Club letters to sign. The cook wanting orders written for stores, etc, etc, so that now its nearly lunch time, and I have to go into Calcutta soon after lunch, and would like to snatch half an hour’s sleep before I go, for it was the Government House Ball last night, and I was not in bed till past 2.30, and up again before seven this morning.
I will really try to write you a better letter next week
Best love to you all
LJT
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
Dec 24th 1936
My dear Annette
A holiday: I am observing it. Last night I went to a ball: at Government House: and danced a bit. But as always at one of those shows (about 2000 people were there, someone said – who counts them?) the most part of the time went in looking for partners. Dances with your mother are largely a matter of stopping which she arranges to find partners for some waif or swaps gossip with some old friend. But the dances anyhow were not dances but surges round the room in slow time, as the crowd moved forward. Better to have had a man with a red flag to direct the movements as in Sylvie and Bruno. (Less bread! More taxes!) It so happened that the evening before had brought the woe: dust in the eyes or a chill in them, who knows?, but anyhow they were red like those of a heavy drinker and painful. What precisely is a bleared eye? Someone told me I had bleared eyes and when I expressed disbelief said that they were bloodshot. Not the same thing, as I believe. Bathing with Optrex did some good but the eyes hurt throughout the dance and spoilt any good impression which might otherwise have been given by my general neatness. Shristree (?) said the other day to me “What I object to about you is that the more villainous you grow the more virginal you look” but the red eyed virgin is not the most pleasing of wenches. However presumably a virgin can be permanently blotto and retain her status. Another remark in my honour was made by Dr Visser, Dutch Consul General (remember the Karakorums) at tea two or three days ago: he said to your mother “I like your husband: he is so rrrestful – he contradicts everything that everybody says, just like me!” This is worthy of record but not of remembrance. Also, let me add, when you contradict anyone by no means end by “And that’s that, my boy!” Game set and match, of course, but unladylike.
The Viceroy arrived. In his honour I wore “full dress with trousers” (as if otherwise I should have renounced them!”) and lined up for introduction – “presentation” – in front of Belvedere with 200 others or 250 maybe. Guards of honour, band, crowds of the elect; garden party atmosphere; monkeys booing at the moment of the viceregal arrival; everything fine. And above all Oh best belived (or O) the viceroy was late: half an hour late. We wandered about (we is the crowd: your mother did not get back from Dacca in time) and indulged in agreeable discourse. And I learnt that when a man with a broken back is put in a plaster of Paris waistcoat for three months he does not as you would imagine (or as I imagined at once) smell like a polecat or other small reptile by the end or middle of it. The plaster fits like a glove but they pour powder down inside it. A piece of perfectly useless knowledge but now you can put people right on it. The occasion was news that a man had broken some vertebrae in a fall. Almost beyond belief that within a short time, in the plaster waistcoat, he could go about and do this and that: but not tennis, or golf.
We went to a movie that afternoon: rather good, I thought, of its kind but your mother said putrid or words equivalent. On the way in, I pulled out to pass a car: saw that someone approaching had just done the same and that there was no chance of passing: and stopped dead. He, poor silly loon, resolved to scrape past; and the scrape was more like a dunt: he buckled my near wing and hubcap and apparently smashed his own about real proper. This made me angry – perhaps it is why my eyes became red: But I believe that is a Bengali expression for anger and the point of the remark has therefore escaped you.
Much love
Dad
From LJT to Annette
The Towers
Cossipore
Calcutta
Dec 28th 1936
My darling Annette
Thank you very much indeed for the lovely wooden dish you sent me for Christmas – It is a beautiful and most strokable piece of wood, and I am delighted with it
Our doings on Christmas Day will all be delt with in the family letter – so I wont say anything about them here – except that we thought a lot about you
I am really delighted to hear that Rosemary won a Concours prize – After the poor reports she was getting for her French the term before last, I call it an excellent achievement –
Your account of “Smell’s” moods amuses us very much – Poor thing! She is suffering from a common ailment of middle-aged spinsters. Auntie May went very badly through that phase some years ago. It springs deep deep down in the psyche, I believe, from a knowledge that they don’t matter enough to anybody – (This of course, is not recognised by the conscious mind) They therefore try to assert themselves by tempers, or sulks or tantrums – but after a while, finding that the people whose attentions these moods are designed to attract, don’t appear to notice them – the poor creatures creep back, trying to ignore the fact that they have been indulging in this mood, and are all honey and sweetness, till an unconscious impulse bubbles up in them and makes them do the same thing again.
It seems to me that you acted with wisdom and decorum over the matter. I agree with you that it is a great nuisance when people are not consistent over things – but lack of consistency is so often a sign of psychological trouble – and its a help in bearing it and dealing with it, to look beyond the thing itself and try to understand and sympathize with the cause.
By to-day’s Air Mail I have written to Miss Capstick, telling her that you would like to leave at the end of this term – I have pointed out that, whether you get an Oxford scholarship or not, we think it would be good for you to go to France for part of the summer and that if we do a continental tour in July, we should like you to be free to come with us. I’m afraid she wont be very pleased, as I expect she wants you to be there to complete your year as Head Girl – but that cant be helped!
Ron Kaulback and John Tracey are due here to-morrow morning – so I am trying to be wise this week and get on with some of my mail in good time –
Have you collected any ideas about what you would like to do from the end of the Easter holidays till July? If its possible I should think the best thing for you to do would be to live with a French family and attend lectures or classes or whatever they do at the Sorbonne. Perhaps Mddle Pinault could help you with ideas about this –
Ron was originally coming to-day – so I put off all my engagements – Then he wired that he was coming to-morrow – so I have had a wonderful free day – and am now doing what I love, and that is writing my letters by the river.
Best love, my darling
from
Mum
P.S I wish I knew when your exam is, and whether if you don’t get a schl’ this time, you can have another shot.
From HPV to Annette
Calcutta
Dec 31st 1936
My dear Annette.
A busy week, in a sense. Doing no work (one day at home and one at office, only, has been my whack) but going out more than usual. We took a party to the movies on Christmas Eve. There was a gift car to be drawn for – all ticket counterfoils went into a box; a sort of lottery (quite illegal but the police don’t realise it), with the car itself standing in the vestibule. As we came out I said to the lady next to me “See all the people looking at their car!” Near me was a Parsee who said “’ Their’ car! Good! Each feels it will be his. It is like the Unknown Warrior” an association of thought so rapid and in its twisted way so apt that my heart warmed to the man. Had it not been a Parsee, of course, or an other-than-English-or-Scotch, maybe the shock would have been less and the pleasure of it destroyed.
Not a bad film. Of its sort, indeed, definitely good. But they should gag Ginger Rogers whenever she essays to sing. We had our guests back here to dinner afterwards. One told of mass-operations for cataract in the Panjab by a famous doctor whose name escapes me. Seventeen patients at a time strapped to tables. An assistant went along the line pouring from a spoon (not dropping from an eye-dropper) cocaine into the right eye of each. Even if only one eye were to be operated on: to avoid chance of error. One assistant one eye: because when one was told off to do both eyes, invariably he missed some out. Next an assistant stitched the eyelids back. And then the doctor went down the line, deftly doing the actual job. By an association of thought someone said “They say that the 50 concubines of the Nawab of Haidarabad had babies on the same day.” I nedied it at once, saying that Henry Ford himself could not have managed it. Someone else – Mr Matthews remarked that he had been in to the Army and Navy to see if they had ready the ties of the Ordnance Factory and that they had produced ties of all the regiments colleges and schools in the world: Mr Brown commented that they had shown him once the book of them all and he had said “You haven’t the Borstal tie by any chance?” – the man with the book reapidly turned over the pages saying “B, B, Bedford, Bor - - no, we haven’t!” before he thought of its being a leg pull. Better to do than to tell about.
We have watched polo twice, and the second time saw a magnificent game – all riding like mad and hitting like hellions. I do not know what a hellion is. Christmas dinner at brother Harry’s: he made afterwards, and flew, paper aeroplances. (How much more entertaining than games!) Also we have been to cocktail parties.
Ron is here. Enormous. Gay. No one so irresponsible should be allowed loose. It is a menace to the League of Nations. He has never heard of ‘Safety first’ even if he has heard of safety, which I doubt.
Christmas morning was gay. There was a producing of gifts. Thank you, by the way, for the handkerchief. Alas my inside has gone back to its previous state: or upon me. The mistake is to keep rats inside it: at times they gnaw the linings. At such moments my vitality diminishes and my sensibility is dulled. I am therefore refusing to join further revels: though I shall this afternoon watch polo.
Much love
Dad.