1938 September
From HPV to LJT
Chinsura
Sept 1st
My dear Joan.
Indeed I am sorry about the antrum and hope that it will prove a small thing for you. That is the operation that they proposed to do for me if the trouble continued after the hole into the tooth gap healed up. Maybe it is all over by now, bless you. And by the way you never said if the other ill cleared up: or whether you will have to try a third time.
Silly of me to put a message about Chakramurti in Rosemary’s letter. I saw the craft pass under Howrah Bridge – looking quite smart: can they ahve painted her?
Heron sent messages. He thought that the leader given to the Himalayan Journal was poor: but I dont see how they could have done more. Wordsworth whom I met said he thought it a real contribution to mountaineering literature: but they would hardly be so enthusiastic in print.
I am more behindhand than need be having spent some three hours criticising and redrafting rules: quite unnecessary: but they were probably drafted by me in the first place when I was in L.S.G.
Dismal weather. Grey.
There has been a lot of rain. Your dressing room still not done
Much love
Toto
From HPV to LJT
Chinsura,
Friday. Sept. 2nd
1938
My woman of the world,
Be convinced of my continued affection.
Messages, to begin with. H.D. said that it was most important to tell you that before taking hold of any metal lamp or fan where there is alternating current you should touch it with the back of your hand: for if there is a short the effect of the shock is to make your fingers grip convulsively so that if you have hold of the thing you can by no means let go . . . . thence death as the Sanskrit crib would put it: but if you get a shock when you touch it with the back of your hand the effect is to fling the hand off, and not much harm is done. This I should have put into the omnibus letter since all would be better for knowing it. The other thing that I was to be sure to tell you last week but did not was about the Pujas and such. They start on Wednesday Sept 28th. They end on Saturday 8th October. The Commissioners’ Conference has provisionally been fixed for the four days Monday 10th October to Thursday 13th October, which last is an easy day for you to remember. I have marked Thursday 27th as the probable day of your arrival in Calcutta.
Curious how the sensation that there is a vast mass of things to write about disappears when I start to record them. Naturally it is easy enough to rattle on with the day’s doings in a family letter, but I feel that I have no end to say to you personally. Probably it doesn’t amount to more than variants of “I love you, darling” which I have said in the past and am shy of repeating in the present, since I do not show any particular signs of it when we are together; but there it is.
Today has to this extent been a happy day that there has been no interruption of any sort and I have worked away quietly. A vile damp morning with the damp condensed on the bedroom floor. I ought to mouch round opening cupboards and spying for mould. It looks rather as if there was mould in the lenses of the binoculars; field-glasses; I could not remember the word.
The deads in the river-flower-bed have got the upper hand. Slimy like most of them. The gaillardias are a matted mass; a fair litter of debris has been dumped on them in places by the river water and among it was but water hyacinth? Some of the plants have rotted. I cut off hundreds of deads yesterday and today; good for the tummy to stoop thus except when anything is wrong with it. the cosmos which has all gone to leaf and lies prostrate has apparently enjoyed being swamped for it has flowered much more these latter days. And the zinnia of that long bed has revived, though all over the place and diseased-looking. Sunflowers done for really though still with a lot of tiny flowers. The main zinnia bed still makes quite a show but the numbers of plants is sadly minished. The cannas are blooming but not with the satisfying unanimity of the Jalpaiguri ones. Those in the front garden of the policeman at Howrah (whose abode is over the Circuit House) are a forest. Thick and high; too thick for the flower to show much – I wonder why. The crepe flower near your cistern thing by the drain or gutter lost all its foliage some time ago and looked as if had been scorched. Therefore I thought it to be dead almost from age and contemplated having it out; but lately it has put out new leaves delicately. The cook and his son assiduously sweep the lawn; it was cut two days ago; it is said that they thus collect grass which they take home. My soft heart prevents my raging against this; but it is so much lost to the humus heap. The fact is that there is nothing to make humus with. Nothing satisfactory like real jungle. I paid the servants today, reviling the cook as a swindler because he demanded the same amount for coal when I have been away for half the month as when I have been here throughout it; however I paid just the same. On the analogy of paying the mesalchi for firewood though it appears to be a known fact that he supplies nothing beyond what he picks up in the compound.
On Sunday H.D. and Winsome are coming up for the day. Winsome said that she did not want anything special to be prepared; a nice salad was all that she would like. Of course there is no salad to be procured here; and of course Mogul would have been cut to the quick if special preparations were not made. He is going into Calcutta tomorrow to get salad and grapefruit (which I noticed that Winsome always had for breakfast) and some grapes (which she likes) and some ham and some Apricot jam for Harry; but what there will be for lunch I have not cared to ask; I hope nothing too grand.
This day I returned to the French detective stories out of a sort of despair, since all my reading matter looked too solid or too dull; what regular mines of phrases they are! If only I could remember them! Funny how sometimes one can read them as if with relish merely for the phrases and at other one is revolted by the sameness of the tale. The one that I have taken up today is, qua story, among the most futile. I never write that word nowadays without remembering how Voila l’Amerique described the Americans as voyaging for the most futile reasons. A matter of no interest in itself.
As regards comparisons with Cyril and comforting in connection therewith, know that people do not welcome people because they amuse but because they are comforting to be with. That is a profound thought. I do believe that all the servants are out of my debt now except the mesalchi – and the belief is manifestly falso for clearly I have forgotten to recover his advance from the newly married mali; and I seem to have kept no account of what I did about it last month, or the month before.
Sunday Sept 4th. 1938
It occurs to me that I ought in view of the scant time before your return to give a list of things desirable.
There are no gardening tools for the use of the amateur. Trowel. Fork, hand-. Secateur.
At Port Said, sponge for me. And I should like you to buy for yourself as the Silver Wedding present a Leica camera or the equivalent. Harry for 8 or 9 pound bought one which he says would have cost 17 in England and there is no duty to pay on one camera brought into India; by leaving your present one behind you all difficulty on this score would be avoided. By the way have you bought the little exposure meter?
Looking glass – I become more and more unable to see things in the big glass. There is never enough light. By day the table is dark and at night it is in shadow. That steel glass is a washout except to shave by; it is dim and it distorts.
Do you think that silk socks would be cheaper in England than out here? probably not
Shaving brush. Mine is beginning to shed bristles; and when that happens deterioration is often rapid.
I rather think that Harry would like an Allegro strop for his Wardonia blades; that is the same as for Gillette. He remarked the other day that the rubbing-in-a-glass method seemed to have lost its potency; and on another occasion that he had given away the Allegro to me when he took to a Gillette and that I had had the sense to do what he had not and buy a Gillette-blade holder for it.
If Richard does not use the toilet roll which was lying about at Highways and which I told him to take over you might bring it out; mine is in the last stages – and the straps holding the things are beginning to go; I had a couple repaired by Morrison Cottle last week. No urgency of course and if R does use the thing, say nothing.
I demand myself whether I should not get myself or you get for me some respectable shirts to be worn with Khaki shorts instead of those khaki shirts that I now use and that make me look like a Reserve Inspector. I shall be wearing them on the Forest Committee tour.
But when you ask, my dear, whether I have any ideas about an anniversary present, the reply is easy – none.
Add to the list eyebrow tweezers. As to shirts perhaps I shuld have contemplated wearing the blue shorts rather than the khaki, which after all were made for someone much younger and slimmer; is it not a fact that they were purchased when I was at Jalpaiguri, before I put on the more-than-extra-stone by non-smoking and (for a little time) remaining serene? And, while I am meditating such things, what about stockings to wear with the blue shorts? I have the bright-topped blueish ones made for me by the miserable Thomas, a pair of grey ones which are, I believe, in some way spoilt (was a foot burnt off one?) and a pair of disreputable old, 27-year old, dirty-green and too small ones. With the new boots thick stockings are essential; they weigh the devil’s own amount; and with thin socks they hurt the ankles. I wonder whether for down-hill walking one should not have two laces in each boot, one for the ankles and one for the instep.
The Allegro strop is Swiss and if bought should be bought in Port Said. From Harry’s account it might pay to do all one’s buying there; but there would be some snag in it. Like missing the boat.
Did I tell you that there was a spidery growth on the lense of the field glasses? I went so far and was so energetic as to write a letter to the Mathematical Instrument Department for the cleaning and to affix a label to them, so that Harry might take them in and leave them there. And then, of course, as you will have guessed, knowing my methods, I left them in the drawing room and wasted my pains.
That last paragraph was yesterday’s. Today is
Tuesday September 6th.
I have seen none of the station-members for at least a month, barring Hartley on business and him not for weeks and the Holman baby when we went to see the church on Sunday. Winsome was saying how wise was Henry Ford for not tolerating the least inefficiency, saying the he would have sacked Miss Whatever-H.D.’s-stenographer’s-name-is years ago; then she added “How efficient Mrs. Henry Ford must be!” at which Harry gave a hoot of laughter. Today’s great deed was now that I think of it yesterday’s; I was led by a thought to look at the little Home Industry string seated stools in the drawing room; they fair stank of mould; it stood out on them like saltpetre on a wall. The united strength of the establishment was devoted to them and now they have vanished. Other things that need cleaning are the rugs in the bedroom and for that matter the carpet.
Half the zinnias have died overnight.
My darling, your letter from London was a pleasant one to get; but I suspect you of being a deceiver. Also how absurd to say that I am not jealous! No one more so. But a form of vanity prevents me from feeling jealousy of this one and that one.
I don’t think that the photos flatter you. I was pleased none the less to see them. You are right about the pretty figure of that Rosemary. What an infectious grin Annette has! I shall keep them for you all right.
Much love, sweetheart.
Your
Toto
Wednesday. Sept 7th
Nothing came of my intention to send off my letters today. Two appeals. Some peevishness. Visit after tea from Hartley. He says that Tufnall Barrett is coming in his place in November. After changing I went across the Maidan, intending to see if anyone was in the Club. But I took with me the Geographical Magazine to leave it for Lossing: and finding him in sat there instead. Mrs Lossing will be out here in a fortnight. The two Miss Babineaus have been sent by him to the P.G.H. One of them in a hopeless state, helpless and knowing nobody: the other as she was before but sent there because she wouldn’t stay here along. Pathetic things.
Much love again
Toto
Sunday Sept 4th. 1938
A busy day. H.D. and Winsome had announced that they would start at 7 sharp; I reckoned that this meant arriving at 8.45 or so but the driver had told their’s that it would take less than 1 ½ hours and there was a possibility that at that hour on a Sunday they would be able to come straight through with no interruptions, so I decided to be up and ready by 8.15. Which I was, and after doing all my exercises without any cuts (I think), by the easy method of spending only ten minutes on the verandah over morning tea. I wandered about, looking at bathrooms and having some flowers put in the spare bedrooms both of which smell fusty although they have been aired every day, and seeing that the specially procured apricot jam had been opened for Harry as it had not been – so Winsome had Little Scarlet which she prefers and H.D. the apricot; there was riches. The fustiness must have been due to there being not a breath of air. I sweated great drops as I walked about; they fell splash from me. All having been supervised I retired below the fan in the drawing room and started reading the newspaper. They arrived at about five to nine, very cheerful and not hot, because the breeze of the car had sufficed; also H.D. was in shorts and sleeveless shirt, and Winsome is not one for much in the fan line. Full of bonhomie (the first time that I have ever written that word) they appeared to enjoy the breakfast. H.D. ate a lot of ham. The one contretemps was that the applies brought by Mogul were on the tart side. Thereafter a wandering round the gardens which thanks to the cannas and the shrubs were looking gay; gardens – kitchen and two flower – one the goldfish garden (the fish was looking particularly ferocious) and one the real garden. Ejaculations about the lilies; the feathery-red-flowery ones in the Fish-garden in particular; perhaps not feathery, let us say moth-like; the two rows of them did look well. Also about the others; she says that if they were thinned out they would flower at once; and that there is no real reason to suppose them spidery. The roses called for admiration; and it is true that if one sniffs they smell well. It is amazing how the mali succeeds in producing a bowlfull day after day. The Krishna Chura and Radha Chura were doing their utmost and so were the little red flowers on the shrub near the corner of the drain by the bearer’s garden. I showed the last survivor of the brave yellow again and again de-deaded things in that neighbourhood, and perversely Winsome insisted that they were a sort of small sun-flower, which I denied on principle; but maybe she is right. But I shall not lead you round the whole place. Suffice it to say that I showed the humus; that first made, lying in the pit and losing merit – a rich black earth; near it the mali’s brew, the latest and not really beginning to disintegrate yet; and in front of the house in the real pit by the manure (to which I ought to give some attention) the two half finished lost which played up by looking as if they would turn out first-class. Then I went to deal with my letters; there had already been an interruption – telephone message from Hartley that there was likelihood of riots at the Angus Mill; a woman had collapsed while at work and the rumour went round that she had been laid out by an Assistant who had been ticking her off an hour before and then that she had been maltreated in hospital by the Civil Surgeon; the message was to ask what was to be done by way of stopping the riots in view of certain Government orders and I said to go ahead and neglect them. H.D. and Winsome had established themselves on the drawingroom verandah; there was now a good breeze blowing. The river did them proud; and endless procession of craft sidled past the garden wall; at one moment there were eight, two large country boats with eight men each and six small all with sails up huddled together and getting in each others’ way at the south corner where the wall turns. And there were all manner of parti-coloured and patched sails. I remembered that they took tea at eleven. Entertainment eventually was the reading of extracts from letters; prize adjudged to Annette for being pleased that he could bend iron bars; I thought it charitable myself. Public sympathy is with Parp in the matter of the humus; I doubt if Harry is a believer.
Lunch went well. An excellent fish-moli; really out of the way good. Cold tongue and cold chicken, which after all was tender, for I had made sure that it would not be. Lettuce beet tomato pomolo by way of salad; and as well unnecessarily French beans, of which however Harry ate a lot. They both had two helpings of the salad and of the chicken, to Mogul’s delight. Sweet a peach tart over which Winsome exclaimed. Gruyere which they didn’t take. And Firpo’s plain mixed chocolates. A selection of varieties comparatively strange to them (strange to say) and partaken of freely. Thereafter they went off to sleep and I to write some official and urgent letters before lying down myself. Tea at four but they were 10 minutes late for it. Then a visit to the Dutch church and then their departure. They seemed to enjoy themselves. As for me I retired to deal with the deads and finished the bed along the drain, the zinnias, and certain beds of cannas. For some reason it was only seven by the time that I finished my bath and change; sopping was no word for my clothes when I came in. I decided to read quietly; but for no apparent reason felt so done up that I merely lay on the sofa with my eyes shut till at last I could without being unreasonable call for dinner.
Those Grindlay people! I sent a Readers’ Digest back addressed not to Annette because she was in Germany and the postage would have been outrageous but to my wife c/o Grindlays. And what did they do but strike out the London address and sent it back to their Calcutta branch who sent it on to me. Six weeks wasted. But it is annoying that they should do this sort of thing.
Monday Sept 5th 1938
The break-off was due to sudden uncontrollable weariness. Let me finish off the Grindlays topic by saying that I have sent the Digest this time direct to Highways, still addressed to Mrs H.P.V.T. and that it should be opened there instead of being sent back to India. Also the cover with the readdresses should be preserved so that a nalish may be laid against the offender. So much for Grindlay’s and their misdoings, for which I pay them large sums in commission.
This day I have received two letters from my wife and one from Rosemary; photos of Wales and visitors thereto enclosed. These I have studied with interest. Through a magnifying glass they are admirably stereoscopic. Has the family been introduced to the trick of looking at photos in a magnifying looking glass? (Separately I am reminding people that there was a scheme to buy me one such for one shilling maybe at Swan and Edgars’) Anyhow even if it hurts everyone’s feelings, it is to be said that plus-fours are among the more hideous garments. As a working rule in life also, I recommend Friend Richard (the “friend” was to use up an F which came on the paper by mistake) to keep his trousers up. But the thing to which I am really working up by slow degrees is that my offspring have. They have, as I feared, forgotten the only useful thing that I have passed on to them and that is exercise 1100 or MC. I perceive that they have based their stance on the boy not the dog Hervey Harvey to whom the words were said “Don’t push your stomach out. It is full of my vittles”. This sort of thing is almost saddening. But avoidance of wind is to be attained not only by neck-stretching but by a certain serenity which I am far from possessing. It may be said however that devotion to physical jerks these latter days, although owing to mosquitoes biting me at such times I have renounced doing them also in the evening, has made me more trim about the waist than I have been for years and I can touch the ground in the course of them with a carelessness not seen in the ring since Mendoza’s day. Let it be said too that under pressure from the clock I have sloughed my ambitions to get that school-girl figure and do one only of the six beauty exercises, to wit rolling with the shoulders flat on the ground. Leap in the air I cannot; my attempts at Russian Ballet have given me permanently stiff ankles. How the Division would laugh to see their Commissioner prancing and kicking with nothing on each morning.
I have substituted 50 prancings or curvettings for the 20 on-one-leg-standing kicks at the beginning of Muller. And still after maybe three weeks of this my ankles are painful. If the chaprassis were not always hanging around it would be a good preparation for the Darjeeling conference to walk up and round and down and up and round and down our magnificent staircase. Winsome was roused to jealousy by this room and told me several times about the glory of the firm’s house that they will have next year. Also she rebuked H.D. for as much as he being Bara Sahib to be ragged childlike with the servants. Finger clicking and hissing, and such. When I saw the photos of Gavin and Pip and John and they two H.D. and femme were discussing the new sturdiness of John (little) and the extraordinary sturdiness of Pip, I - - - - - my dears, in one word I solved the problem. Russiandancing. He has the authentic Nijinsky figure. “Out” said Harry, always willing to play. And I also gave myself best on that. Winsome did not: she said in fact that I was talking tripe. I refused to go and look at the fish when I stayed with them.
This morning, waking plumb at seven (it was a beautiful clear breezy sun-shining morning such as we ought to have had yesterday) I was very reluctant to getup. Was it good or bad luck? I had no fewer than five appeals fixed for this morning. Three of these were adjourned beforehand by a petition moved on Friday; no harm. But the other two fell through today owing to pleader’s illness and such with the result that I shall have about ten to do in the two weeks before the Pujas. After lunch I lay in a stupor. This growing tired is not so good. Rains Weariness maybe. All the afternoon went in dealing with a regular defile uninterrupted of Babus discussing knotty points which had cropped up in the course of my inspections; I have told them to bring up the files and discuss instead of writing long notes, but it did not occur to me that they would all come together.
The P W.D. have marked in white paint on the Bougainvillia pillars the height reached by the flood. So it has become historic. I now suspect that it did more harm than I thought for the gaillardias in those parts are rotting on the stem in a strange way. I have failed to note the fact that the Tithonia have grown into forest trees like those in Jalpaiguri with not more than two blossoms on the lot of them and those two withered before I saw them. The Dhobi plant has done well and made a gay little show; why have I scorned to mention it? Those who suspect me of carefully dedeading the weeds are right; thank you for not mentioning the suspicion. The failure or omission of the year is the not getting Bougainvillia cuttings or whatnots from Cossipore. The gap by the way-to-the-club path remains unfilled. I wonder if Idris got a fresh lot of layers down as he said he would; and I don’t know how to find out except by perhaps reminding him that he has forgotten to.
Tuesday Sept 6th. 1938.
The damage done by the flood was more than and other than I had suspected. During it the top of one of the pillars on the wall above the projecting bit of the compound where once maybe there was the dwelling part of this house and the end bit of the balustrade of the same wall nearest the river were carried away by big sailing boats crashing into them. Today I thought that one of them would not clear it and perhaps it did not. However when I reflect how we used to drift downstream in the old bauliya backwards or sideways or anyhow, quite out of control, I cannot blame these birds for following the same method; and one of them at any rate does hold the steering oar or tiller.
A lot of work today with no satisfaction from any of it; none of it counted according to my methods of reckoning disposals, i.e. things done which have begun to get on my conscience. Enough for this week. I am tired and I suspect also bored; as happens when one is tired.
Family letter from HPV
Thursday. Sept 8th 1938
Chinsurah.
My dear
There is no real sense in starting a new letter today; it is mere habit; a way of filling in the evening. And there is also this to be said that there is no real sense in writing at any time, seeing what tripe I fill the letters with.
This morning Mogul produced a piece of Lux soap, gnawed at the edges, and revealed that on the day after my return from Howrah they had found the soap missing from the bathroom and, thinking that someone must have stolen it, procured another piece from the Bazar at the cost of two annas; but this morning they had found the soap under a box and had realised that a rat had taken it, and so they felt that now they could ask me for the two annas. The abject Islam says that in Burrows Sahib’s time they had caught a rat as big as that (about the size of something that I myself once measured off with me hands to the universal disbelief but I have forgotten what it was; an even vaguer standard of measurement than those that annoyed Idris so much; but what on earth could it have been? this may spoil my sleep; once when Richard was beyond endurance, our endurance, inquisitive about something at Barisal I persuaded him to silence by suggesting that the thing should be a secret between us till we were in Darjeeling, and when at last in Darjeeling I tried to remember what it was I had forgotten and so had he, and so the matter has been lost to the world and has become a worry to me on occasion because I hate being done out of anything even if it is useless) and, to return to the rat, Mogul says that no one ever catches a rat except by some suicide-accident in an iron trap (not that we have an iron trap) and that we must buy a big wooden one. Me, I am already beginning to sorrow for the rat. I suspect that the rat explains the disappearance of a handkerchief that I left lying on the floor that same night and could not find in the morning. The bearer was led by this into one of his disburdenings of the soul. Having spoken about it he went on to say that this was not a house, not a real house like Jalpaiguri, for here no one was of the same kind (rakhm) or lived with anyone of the same kind, and no one was any good except (extraordinary selection) the chokra who had a wife and son of the same rakhm and the mali: the chokra is the abject Islam. The fat chaprassi has a wife who isn’t his wife and one of his sons is one rakhm and the other is the other rakhm; and another chaprassi is something or does something only to be mumbled about; and for that matter Mogul has a wife who is a different rakhm and their daughter is a different rakhm; and generally speaking this is a very poor sort of place. He mentioned also the cook as being a different rakhm from his son. The whole thing was beyond me and left me completely fogged. Is the whole compound merely living in sin? or is there some strange secret here?
Yesterday a strange thing happened. Raidak went simply roaring down the river; for no apparent reason; no boat within sight; no calling at any wharf. Roaring for the fun of it. I shall be compelled to renounce that boat. Since yesterday some craft has barged into the wall that slopes down the river bank beyond the first humus heap site and has knocked the end crooked. There is no safety.
H.D. at once solved the problem of the two crooked dens under the stairs. Winsome said “Of course, guardrooms” and as a second choice “Lovely store cupboards”, but he bowing to the right said with old-world courtesy “Ladies” and pointing to the left added “Gentlemen”. So now we know.
I worked like mad today but am more behindhand than when I started. Two hours of it went in calculating charges necessary if the big Hooghly-Howrah scheme is put into effect. It looks and I am almost sure that the looks are not lies as if the charge per acre would have to be so high that the Ministers will not have the courage to give effect to it; and this shows that I was right when I told the Irrigation men that they were playing the fool when they designed the canals to supply three times as much water per acre as had been thought necessary for the Damodar Canal; before I went on leave I had arranged with the man who was designing the thing to cut down the dimensions but when I got back I found that he had stuck to the previous figure because he had discussed it with someone or other. They have proved a poor lot to work with; doing things behind my back and keeping things back because they like to feel independent and superior; which would be all right if they could put any big scheme through by themselves. I wonder if even now matters can be straightened out; anyhow my labour was devoted to a letter explaining the financial difficulty in terms so simple that even the Irrigation Department ought to be able to see it.
Saturday September 9th 1938
I was a plain fool to take on a job, when I was young enough to have a choice, which meant that I should have to have transfers and to tour. Apart from the woe that touring usually means inspections, there is the worry of the actual journeys and of the arrangements to be made; tomorrow (this is the real grouse) I have to go to Asansol for a meeting, and I have arranged that I should go and come back the same day. The reason is silly in a way. I dislike the idea of imposing myself on the S.D.O.; and in the Circuit House there is established Sarkar, inspecting; if I turn up with servants and so on to spend the night then in effect I evict him; alternatively it would mean imposing myself on him for as second comer I could not very well take over the one night the arrangements. Burrows avoided such difficulties by staying with people; there was one merit about him at any rate – he was no snob and stayed gladly with subordinates; not his own but of the Steel Company and such. There was apparently criticism. My solution is to arrive at one thirty, go to the meeting at two, catch a train at 4.30 and arrive back here at 7.45 or so. And the prospect like every prospect even if it is a pleasant one which this is not dismays me. There was a big accident on the Asansol coalfield two days ago. Curious when this meeting is to discuss arrangements to prevent accidents.
A lot of work today. As usual none to speak of that I wanted to do. After lunch, having worked for a bit, I decided to lie back for 15 minutes and give digestion a chance though these latter days have not been so bad as regards that sort of thing; and when I woke up it was an hour later; I must have gone to sleep as soon as ever I lay down, which I would that I could do at night. Hartley who came in after tea was remarking that he never felt it hot or sweaty but woke each morning feeling too ill to move; it is in a sense true. I don’t feel the heat specially or feel the weather unpleasant but it is very trying. The more marvellous that I should continue so fit; as I really am. He had tea here and sat on so I did not go into the garden and am probably all the better for avoiding the strenuous labour of bending double for an hour or so. I went across with him to see the Holman’s movies; their first roll; a new camera. The pictures were poor in themselves, wrongly exposed and dim; but they were delighted with them and in a sense the pictures were amusing. Then I read about coal and after dinner I read about coal again for tomorrow’s meeting; Burrows’ report and the Trade comments on it, which were candid. The meeting is to discuss the proposals of the Government of India on the basis of the report; and they seem to me to be fair bilge. I hope that they do not arouse so much discussion that I miss my train home. It is only 9.45 but I shall go off to bed
Sunday Sept 11th 1938
Good. Hurrrah. Now perhaps I shall be able to sleep quickly; I have remembered what it was that I measured off so extravagantly with my hands; Of course, it was the frog. That famous frog with which I bribed my dear wife to abandon flying dangerously.
When I said that I should be back by 7.30 from Asansol, I had made a slight mistake of two hours in arithmetic. 12 from 21 leaves not 7 but 9. It was by no means the same thing to arrive back here at 9.45 after a sandwich lunch and a small tea as to be back by 7.45; so I told the driver to bring the car to meet me at Burdwan where I should have had to change into a slow train after a forty minutes wait. Extravagant; for it was 46 miles each way, costing something at 13 miles to the gallon and at Rs ½ per gal. It was a rather tiring day. My sandwich lunch was dull; in a sense; it assuredly started well with ham sandwiches, but it ended there also, for Mogul had provided nothing else whatsoever by way of relief. However by Fletcherising them I made them appear more and with a thermos full of water and another of tea did not do so badly. It was a stinking hot day but I did not feel it so in the train. The S.D.O. sent his car to meet me and I went straight to the Circuit House. Just as well that I had decided not to stay the night for Sarkar had his wife there; quite a young girl, looking too young to be married; speaking English but shy. I merely said How-do-you-do and then suggested that they should carry on with their lunch which was obviously waiting for them; and while they ate I read files in the next room, pleasantly enough for there was a fan. The meeting went off better than I expected. It started late because the chief Inspector of mines was delayed on the road by a puncture and we waited for him. Afterwards we chatted for a short time with the members so as to show ourselves genial and then Sarkar ran me back to the Circuit House and sent me in his car to the station. There is a large upstair refreshment room nowadays with electric fans but it was not a particularly good tea that I got there. The strange thing about the motor trip from Burdwan was that the road was thick with people and with bullock carts far more so than by day; so it was a slow business driving. Also we were held up for interminable minutes at two level crossings, at one of them for two trains.
This morning I spent some time over yesterday’s letters with which I had not been able to deal before I went off – and some arrived afterwards – dealt with two three callers, and prepared the fortnightly reports for the typist by the simple method of scratching out most of what the Collectors had reported and changing the word “I” to “he” etc; even this took time; and I dragged the taktaposh in the drawing room beneath the fan and started to read sprawling comfortably till after ten minutes I drowsed; but this came to nothing because the telephone bell rang and afterwards my conscience forbade my returning to sloth. After lunch I did a thing; I punched and filed all the fills that have accumulated since I took over the housekeeping. Perhaps someday I shall even do the accounts. What discouraged me the first month was the thought that my Wife’s chequebook was not available and it was a shock to discover it in the drawer today when I was kunjing round for the fill-files. I also discovered the file of Family Letters of last year and at once stopped off to read them or some. What treachery! Not mine but her’s. For I found a description of crazy flying, full of relish, and a warning added that no one was to tell me of it because I was not an enthusiastic advocate of such doings. No need to say that I should not have read these; but my previous existence was Blue Beard’s Wife’s, omitting the more intimate bits of which I have no memory. What struck me most about those letters was that they were so objective; unlike mine which are merely a long disquisition on the manner in which this or that affected my temper, powers of endurance or health. Also they were letters and these are merely a Leading-up-the-garden sort of imitation business. You ask Why so much of it? Because if I leave it till the end of the week I should have to rack my brains for something to say; and whenever I put the papers and the carbons into the machine I feel that I ought to finish the sheet. Mostly bad habit.
Tuesday Sept 13th
I had decided against letter-writing but bad habits will out. Of my trip to Calcutta yesterday nothing. A quick journey in and not a slow one coming out; of course quick is merely a relative term, for the car now rarely goes at more than thirty. I beguiled the way first by trying to describe it to myself in French (but my mind wandered to other things in about two minutes; what strength of mind Dantes must have had to teach himself languages by repeating and rearranging the words he knew over a period of twenty years!) and afterwards, all the way almost and all the way back by neck-stretching and feeling the corset muscles take the strain as we lurched round corners. The pictures that H.D. took when they came here showed me that I have a middle or old aged stoop; but it must be the cut of my trousers surely that makes me look so Bara-Sahibish about the middle. After all I am half a stone less then I was three months ago; all due to the physical jerks.
The administrateur called this evening. He had told Hartley that he so much regretted having missed me that he must call and asked him to arrange when I should be in. We had agreeable discourse for some time, in English while it was mere talk and in French when he got on to shop about the opium convention, and then when he got up to go and I escorted him to the front gate where he had left his car who there but his wife. He is not nearly such good class as Monsieur Baron and his wife who speaks English fluently is a common looking little creature who may be Eurasian or Eurafrican for he was stationed for some years in Africa – in the Cameroons. He has shot several elephants and a gorilla and was before this Labour Conciliation Officer for French India, stationed at Pondicherry. He says that it was a local intrigue which caused Baron’s recall; there is bitter party faction and the disappointed party pulled vigorous strings. The wife said that she had refused to come up and instead had watched football which she finds fascinating because she knew that her husband wanted to talk shop; so for politeness’ sake I called upon them to come up again and have drinks (he had already had one) and they did, for about half an hour. My French when it came at all was Bengali.
In some ways an auspicious day. One of the two appeals fell through because they compromised it and it turned out when we looked at the record of the other that it concerned a section on which there was no right of appeal at all, so that after a little I could chuck it out without having to write a judgment. I slept for twenty minutes after lunch, did a great deal of miscellaneous work, labouring to make up for two working days wasted on tour, and did not exhaust myself in the garden. There are no words for the sticky hottishness of things today; no breeze.
A think unknown to me. Government provide the bulbs in this house; they are covered by the charge included in the rent for upkeep and repairs. So I told the mistri that if this so he had better provide at Government expense two more plugs that would fit the sockets for the “power” part of the equipment which we don’t use and which could be switched on to the light circuit. He was all sympathy for he leapt to the conclusion that I wanted to pinch cheap electricity without having a meter for it and without using it for power. But he brought round a Babu who says that what I want can be done. That would give three plugs in the bedroom and do away with the three-way connection plug which seems to grow more and more rickety and more and more to promise danger every day.
The garden has been neglected these three or four days. But I did go out and look at the seedlings in their boxes. I was asking what had happened to the lettuce planted some weeks ago; the answer is that three seedlings appeared of which two have died.
Enough for this week. I suppose that if ever I got any real news I should not know what to do about it when it came to letter-writing.
From HPV to LJT
Chinsurah,
Monday Sept 12th 1938.
My dearest,
the result of having skimmed through half a dozen of your circular letters yesterday has been to fill me with a disgust for my own cumbrous and self-centred volumes. I had not realised that I was writing twice and three times as much as you used to; and though it had not escaped me that it was all repetition work I had not realised how intolerably so till I read through your letters with their real news of doings.
Today I got your letter of September 3rd, with its news of the Graham wedding, the visit to Cape and your going into hospital or intending to do so in two days time. Also news of the arrival of the seeds at the beginning of October; which dismays us somewhat because unless at the last moment I cry off I shall be in Darjeeling then. How sad it was to read in your letters before each holiday speculations about getting away and realizations that I was too lazy apathetic or unenterprising! If I do not go now it will mean exposing myself to derisions. Perhaps the question will solve itself by the outbreak of communal trouble. Harold Graham was presiding over the meeting about anti-air-raid precautions. I told him about your having been to the wedding and he was interested because he had not yet heard anything about it; he says that Gwen is not too good at letter-writing but he’ll have some idea of what happened when the bill comes in. Not looking at all well; he says that touring in Jessore and Morshidabad and accepting hospitality from Indian Collectors he has picked up dysentery from which he has now been suffering for over a month.
Islam announced yesterday that a son was born to him three days before. I advanced Rs 5 in consequence
Yesterday evening saw me paying a call on the new Administrateur of Chandernagore. He was out. One of the policemen on guard said in French that they were out and that I could find them at the football. Strange to say I was so flabbergasted to have a Bengali talk French to me that I had the utmost difficulty in scraping any French at all together. Returned I began cutting deads, an endless task, when the mali came and asked about planting out the cosmos. I went along to see – he says you said the bed along the wall by the stable. Then I went and looked at the cabbage and cauliflower and beet seedlings already planted out; they look quite flourishing. The tomatoes are a foot high; there are some cabbages, the mali’s I think which are nearly that. What has happened to the lettuce, I cannot think. The morning glory have done well and are standing study like along the wire fence by the kitchen drain. All the labels are illegible; they are merely cardboard with ink lettering; I had not contemplated their being put out in the rain. It looks as if these seeds had been treated rough. There are only four or five of the hollyhock seedlings surviving and some of the other things have not done much better. The Brussels Sprouts have started well and the mali speaks with confidence of their prospects but they look to me as if damping off were likely at a given moment. To please the mali who says that to wait till the beginning of October will mean missing the first crop I bought today carrot and turnip seed. He laments loudly about dahlias. Suttons say that the end of the month will be ample time. A pilot at lunch today says that the monsoon as far as wind is concerned is over but there should be more heavy rain. Salvias are not too successful. Only four or five survivals out of all those that came up.
I left to be repaired by Morrison Cottle my despatch case which is ungummed inside and to be cleaned at the Mathematical Instrument Office the field-glasses which they say need it badly. They are providing a new strap for them saying that there will be no extra cost; I didn’t ask what the non-extra cost would be. I went into the Army and Navy to buy new plugs for the two lamps and the fan because that three-way contraption looks more and more precarious, but the 3-point plugs are not standardised and I could not judge from memory what size ours’ are. These errands I did before lunch. The meeting was from 2.30 till 3.45 and then I went into the Secretariat and saw Jerry Symons and Twynam. The former said that at Darjeeling, at Faridpur and at Chinsurah Burrows notoriously took money; with circumstantial details. Jerry and Mrs. Gladding whose name I cannot for the life of me remember should get together and have a real good sit-down talk about these things. When Dash relieved Burrows here, Sanat Mukherjee said reflectively to Symons “Well, at any rate the new Commissioner is a gentleman.”, which was a back hander.
But think of your craft in telling the children not to reveal your doings to me! I take great credit to myself for always letting you know everything about me, but you are right in supposing that it is merely because I cannot keep chup.
Hartley goes, I think, before your return; then there will be six weeks of a Muhammadan; and then the Tufnell Barrets.
All Cape’s geese were swans even when they grew up to be geese; he was one of the original crowd that saw the Emperor’s clothes before and after the flowing-on-them by the child. But all my goods were always in the shop-window; only I never gave delivery.
These two days of absence, at Asansol and at Calcutta, have thrown me terribly behindhand again; tomorrow there are more appeals and I have not yet written judgments on the last lot.
Wednesday Sept 14th 1938
Alas, I have been testy and worse all day; a sad day with visitors and interruptions. One was the Impost gentleman; it turns out that he only started on it a fortnight ago in spite of all his talk and he has invited failure by departing from the directions, in the hope of expediting the process; making too little at a time so as to get plenty of air into it as he says. I went out with him to look at my stuff in its various stages; but the mali has used all the first lot on the vegetables and has dug vigorously into the second lot too. The new heap which the malis made without my supervision is not going right; no air getting in underneath and a caking of earth and cow dung on the top. And I suspect that it is not damp enough but I didn’t look into it because I don’t like touching cowdung. Then there was a youth who came in about a Sports Club; to fix a date for a meeting; I remained polite the first time but not when he came back ten minutes later to say that the date which he had said would do would not after all. The next thing was the electric mistri about the plugs and the connections and I did remain calm over this though I felt like screaming. It has been a hellish hot day, Hartley says, though I have not noticed it as such. He came in after lunch with problems; I doubt if he realised that I became desperate.
After tea I cut deads with determination because that is a performance in which there is nothing to irritate, and I continued till it was quite dark. September and there is therefore no wonder that the evenings are shorter but it astonishes me each evening afresh. The probability is that I have a bit of a chill, for my teeth are aching to such a degree that I have removed the false teeth and had dinner without them and there is a feeling of stiffness and a slight ache along one jaw into the ear.
You realise perhaps that yesterday’s news is in the family letter.
Your letter has arrived with the news of the success of the operation of which I am glad. A good thing to get it over. How lucky it is that you take these things so lightly. The other night at about four I got up and poured chlorotone into my nose out of a sudden fear that I was getting catarrh. This was before you wrote about your antrum so do not claim the credit for it. My real worry in life at moment, apart from any really real worry, is a feeling that my breath smells; when this fear descends on one a visit to the dentist is the antidote; not that he would tell me, though Pearse did when I came out of hospital with the septic hole on my jaw. Is it not lucky that you were able to get the operation over in peace without my hanging around to worry you by worrying about you. Indeed I am glad that it is over, though I wasn’t worrying.
A very readable letter from Annette; long too. Why should I think of that silly thing in a recent Punch – a gentleman is a nut rarely tight and never loose -? though that is not quite it.
Now I shall stop, for a solid dullness has come over me. It was hard work today; the little stenographer is pathetically bad though he tries harder than hard; perhaps what makes my temper so bad is not losing it with him. Harold Graham has a girl typist, stenographer, taken on originally by Dash; rather competent. I asked if he took her on tour and he responded by telling me about the dysentery; which to anyone but me would have been interpreted as evasion.
A white cow went down the middle of the river, fast, today; high out of the water. I should have telephoned to Idris to say that it was coming and that he might have it if first telephoning was not such a business and secondly I had not been so rushed.
With which kind thought I say farewell as for this time
Much love, sweetheart
your
Toto
Thursday Sept 15th
What courage on the part of the rat! It came up the drain into the bathroom while I was there, through into the bedroom and so away. Also it took the soap again during the night.
Also there is a musk rat at large downstairs: Enemies press thick upon me.
Family letter from HPV
Chinsurah,
Saturday, Sept 17th
1938.
My dear
“I know you know all about fish - - - - “ but today I am talking about rats. The rat. It has been deliberately vexatious and impertinent: taking away the soap each night, gnawing the edges and leaving it beneath the big box in the bedroom. (Of course things might be worse, for Stein says that when he was in Midnapore last week, not a mere rat but a cat came to take his soap in the night and broke the soap dish as well; a fantasy of grandeur.) So the order was given that a bundobast must be made. It consisted of a wooden trap. I knew how it would be; and it was; Snap! went the trap in the middle of the night, and I who had taken aspirin on account of pains in the jaw leapt in my bed, in my sleep, and awoke. The rat was not in the trap, of course; it returned later and sported with it dragging it round the bathroom and shaking it in the hope that the bait would fall out. I heard it several times and cursed it but was too drowsy with the aspirin to do anything. When I was in Calcutta yesterday I did the dirty on the beast by buying rat-poison; and the bearer put down four great bits of bread for its undoing beneath the washhandstand, also the trap. It remains to be seen whether there was any result.
The jaw-ache concentrated suddenly in one tooth; such is the strange result of putting a little salt in the mouth. It fair made me rock myself this way and that, as there was no one looking. And later at tea time I rang up the dentist and arranged to go in yesterday. Of course the tooth was much less painful, and there was less inflammation, in the morning but it was still painful enough, and in I went. It rained like blazes the whole way and we had to go slowly both for fear of skids and because we could not see very far ahead; I was five minutes late for my appointment. The dentist felt the gum near the tooth tenderly and said “Is that tender?” I replied “No; it is when one touches the top of the tooth that it hurts.” And he waggishly gave it a smart tap on the top with a probe. The joke would literally have been on him if I hadn’t shown great self restraint for the tap gave me a violent spasm and I narrowly escaped being sick. “Abscess,” he said, when I told him this; and he proceeded to give a series of injections right at the back of the jaw which took twenty minutes or so to have any effect. A dope new to me. It didn’t nearly as violently as the old kind and did not have the prostrating aftereffects. Waiting for it to work he dealt with a stopping that had come loose; and then at least had the tooth out, in two bits. It was one heavily stopped and bound to go before long anyhow, but I regretted it. It was only half past eleven when I came out and there was time to get back to Chinsurah for lunch; but I felt all googahish and instead sat in the Club the whole morning and for half an hour after lunch. Coming back was a weariness especially as it rained madly the whole way back and there was a strong wind. Not too bright when I arrived home I spent the evening lying on my bed and went back there immediately after dinner; strange to say I was running a slight temperature. But the jaw didn’t hurt at all and is not really stiff this morning. Seeking reasons for things let me suggest that my not collapsing today as usually I do after a tooth-outing is due to my taking barley sugar yesterday evening; which is a curious thing to take for toothache, but efficacious.
None the less I have not got much work done today. It is the day of the district Board meeting and as usual I had visitors. This afternoon I went as you will have guessed for it happens whenever anything happens in this mad town, I went to the unveiling of a portrait. That of the father of Banerjee the Secretary Board of Revenue; the father died in 1899 at the age of fifty one and Banerjee was then one year old. They have not waited all this time before thinking of commemorating his memory; but the previous portrait had as they said “worn out and was no longer an inspiration to young men” and so his grandson a High Court Judge had paid for a new one. The garlanding of the Judge who performed the ceremony (very badly) was done by the great grand-daughter of the unveilee, a graceful and indeed charming child of 12 or 13. It seems to me that little Bengali girls have much more charm than those older and I consider that no further explanation is needed of the obviously from this point of view sensible custom of child-marriage. It was interesting to see that Banerjee the son, The High-Court-Judge the grandson and the little greatgrand-daughter whose grandfather had been another son (the Judge was descended from a daughter – and the Judge who did the unveiling was no relation but Mr Chunder who looked fatter than you can believe) all three had the same shaped ears, with a lozengy lobe to them like Buddha’s. The speeches were interminable; I didn’t have to make one. Afterwards there was tea, and genial conversation; all pleaders because the show was in the Bar Library. I have been asked to attend a show tomorrow; you will not guess what it is to be – the unveiling of a portrait at the municipal office. And this time I have bluntly refused to go; for that’s enough about portraits.
Set out this day, with me looking on and protesting mildly at the methods, carrots and turnips; broadcast and not in rows as any human being would arrange them; but it occurred to me that it was too early for them anyhow and it was therefore wise to leave everything to the mali who must have something of a knack in such matters to get cabbages a foot high by now when other people have not begun planting them. Sutton’s people, Babus, said that it was early to be putting in the cabbage seed and did not believe about the planting out already.
Before dinner I went round to Stein’s (newly back from Midnapore) and attempted to borrow a trash book; I came away with Cicero’s letters Loeb edition, Latin one side and English opposite; how strange a book for him to have; it proved to me that I have forgotten all my Latin, though I doubt if I could ever have read these letters through offhand at my best period; too colloquial and full of allusions. Letter writing as this exemplifies has changed a lot since his day.
You (that means my dear wife (bless her)) and I do not that this double bracket is exactly a success) said that the Graham-girl bridegroom was not exactly intelligent. By gum, he is not, to judge by the photo in yesterdays Statesman! dribbling at the mouth almost, so to speak. But then she looks little better in the photo whereas she is not a bad looking wench really in a way; so maybe he is better than he fears. Do you realise that there are any number of young policeman and I.C.S. too who were born after I came out here? it has just occurred to me as a strange thing which arithmetically it isn’t; yet it remains unbelievable. I have a queer feeling that someone in a recent letter told me that I should soon be a grandmother but that must have been in a dream.
Sunday Sept 18th 1938
A snake has just been killed during dinner in the bottle-khana; one of the worst types of snake says Mogul: they always are. I fear also for the rat; of this there has been no sign and the bearer says that without doubt the poison has been effective. Illogically I provide poison while feeling that it is brutal.
This has been a poor day. I woke at seven exactly after going to bed early and sleeping fairly well; but I felt unable to rouse myself and deliberately went off to sleep again. It was 8.15 when I woke again; and I had a late breakfast. At 11.30 I went round to Hartley’s by invitation to a gathering on the verandah and stayed till one. And for no good reason except that it was offered I drank beer. For this cause perhaps I slept this afternoon from two till four twenty. And it was only after that, during tea, that I remembered the possibility of liver and not of exhaustion due to tooth-elimination. Liver is a strange thing; and although my morning leapings or hoppings and twisting ought to have certified me against it, all things are possible – e.g. that the local anaesthetic brought it on.
I have been reading the Cicero letters and feel more and more as he blithers on lamenting his fate and saying that no one before him had ever been done down to dirtily that there but for a complete inability to write Latin goes H.P.V.T. There is a strange fascination in reading letters; and I doubt if it matters much whether they are well written or not; the interest is in picking up stray scraps about people. The interest in these Cicero letters is rather different for one knows that he came to a sticky end and feels superior. Which reminds me that lately when I have read detective tales I have not taken the trouble to look at the end first – a bad sign for it indicates a lack of interest and vitality and is besides insulting to the author. How long I shall continue reading the Ciceronian laments about his bad luck and the disasters of the age I do not know; the alternative is the little French history of Europe which proves so triumphantly that the only hope for the world is to return to the Roman Catholic Church. This has a lot of good phrases in it; good phrases are those which have no meaning at all when translated word for word into English and which do not appear in the dictionary; to discover them and realise that here is real French gives a strange satisfaction akin to stamp-collecting; but it palls.
There was this morning a merry breeze from the south and the fat-bowed craft came hissing up the river with their bellying sails most joyful to behold and with foam at the bow too, a thing not usual. Later Ganga went past, but I never give myself marks for seeing Ganga. It is the ditto of Raidak but more pompous.
Monday Sept 19th 1938
OH! OH!!
(said Aramis, as Peter Waddell always said softly when he heard that lamentation) otherwise Woe and alas! Life has been hard, very hard, today. I do not refer to the fact that the Cicero becomes duller and duller, or that letters arrived from home (Annette one and my dear wife two) or that there is a great dung-beetle flying this way and that and behaving like a menace; also I grant that I had certain luck, since an appeal had to be postponed. But ----- the woe is this; ever since 5.30 I have had no peace. Hartley came in to tell about the row that attended the visit of the Ministers yesterday to a jutemill area and stayed till 6.30; and Stein came in at 6.45 and stayed till 9 laboriously reverting to the endless disputes between the District Magistrate and the superintendent of Police of Midnapore with speedy digressions so that again and again I thought him to have finished until just as I expected him to go he launched out on a new and most complicated tale of a quarrel which kept him here indefinitely. Of this no more, except that I must tomorrow write something masterly. The opposition had prepared for the Ministers’ arrival by decorating the streets, arches and festoons of old boots black monkeys and domestic articles. These, sad to say were removed by the police and they also drove off the many who awaited the Ministers armed with lathis. The ministers themselves had a large crowd armed in this way, who came from across the river and disobeyed all the police regulations for the conduct of processions. As they were moving off the police started examining the licenses of a lot of lorry drivers who were breaking the law in one way or another, and suddenly found that the Hon Chief Minister and the Hon Mr Suhrawardi whose car had been held up behind the lorries were casting furious abuse on them and threatening them first because they ought to have been at the meeting and secondly because they were challenging the right of the supporters of the Ministry to break any police or traffic regulations they pleased so long as the Ministers were there. Now I shall put the facts regarding the decorations in the fortnightly report. But it is no joke for the sad subordinate police; the Assistant Sub-inspector has been weeping ever since; and it is grossly unfair for they were only doing their duty and were acting under orders.
Naturally I had dinner after Stein left; and there was peace then except that I had a caramel which pulled my false teeth out in a humiliating manner.
Tuesday Sept 20th 1938.
The secret is out; at last I realise why I am oppressed; there must be some fatal fascination which causes them to flock around me. After taking up (yesterday) between hours of my time, Hartley and Stein both came back and took up hours today. And by a coincidence that dung-beetle has just come in too! Hartley had two new problems but Stein had merely had some fresh thoughts, which were the same as yesterday’s in other words, about his yesterday’s problem. I had spent about an hour this morning writing that masterly exegesis which I had promised, but I resigned myself almost without lament to a chewing of the cud. This morning too there were visitors. Throughout I resigned myself, seeing without any emotion the minutes pass in which I might have done some of the long outstanding files. After tea I went into the garden and addressed the mali about more cosmos (was it cosmos?) in the vegetable garden and about marigolds --- but you know they do stink something cruel. He led me with extreme pride to see the Brussels sprouts seedlings now out in the garden under a bamboo and mat contraption and looking very sturdy; an inch or so high maybe, but no other seedlings except the cabbage, the morning glory and the tomato have promised better. It is all very well but the vegetable garden is rapidly being filled and there will be room for nothing.
Thereafter retiring I cut deads or rather pulled them; cannas; the yellow kind are all leaf and no flower, not worth worrying about. When it became dark, I came in and having bathed went down and worked till 8.30, thus finishing a letter begun perhaps ten days ago. In consequence I am not bright but brighter, I think, than after a visit from Stein. Hartley was telling me yesterday of visits from John Farmer when he was ill and how after gazing fixed like for twenty minutes at the maidan Farmer would produce a remark. Not quite so bad as that with Stein but conversation does not make itself.
Today I wrote to Twynam to say that if Government do not object I shall go up to Darjeeling; but in a way I should be quite content if they did object; except that I have groups of small bubbly sores on my hands, very small but enough to make me wonder if I am clean. Today I tried to find in the telephone book the address of the office where berths in the train can be reserved intending to write for reservations and to drop in on Friday and pay; but there is a note that the office is closed on a holiday which Friday is and so I stagger round bewildered like and demanding what can do. Forsaking the Cicero (I much resemble him so far as capacity for seeking reasons and for lamenting goes) I have been looking into Tartarin in the Alps. In a strange way I always feel that we must have met Tartarin on our travels in the Pyrenees but the only person whom I know much resembling him is again myself. In a sense were all these resemblances visible to the eye I should be like some chimaera. Idris came over in the plane the other day flying very high, then turned and came up river quite close and again turning came down river nearly as close; by this I know that he must be feeling lonely.
(handwritten addition at bottom of copy of letter to Annette) Thursday Sept 22nd Thank you for a most interesting letter. The same news received from two different people becomes different news in a most interesting way. Tooth, weather or eating Pomelo, whatever be the cause (and it is hardly the third of those suggested) something has reduced me to jelly: mentally. So you shall have from me no bright thoughts.
Much love
Dad
From HPV to LJT
Chinsura.
Wednesday Sept 21st 1938
My dearest,
I perceive that I am tired for I have started off by making four mistakes in typing; a sure sign. All my efforts these last few days have failed to get anything done; it has been very hard to concentrate. Callers have been a nuisance. Today there rolled up that ancient sheep-like man, our friend of the Legislative Council, Manindra Deb Ray Mahashay, whose notebook of speeches Azizul Huq stole. Looking very thing and frail; he now has diabetes; he is off to England next Sunday from Bombay, for the sea trip, which is I suppose why he goes via Italy. He is Chairman of some Municipality in this area. In a sense I was pleased to see him but it was a sad waste of time; there is a judgment at which I have made five or six efforts but as soon as I get five lines written there is some interruption. Hartley has been a nuisance on the phone; but always with good cause. Tomorrow I have three appeals; on Friday I have to go to Calcutta because Naz has summoned Hartley and myself – and I must be back for a physical jerks demonstration at the school where they had the Bratachari show, by 5 o’clock. Why not put them off? because I had given a promise to come after first refusing and because it is a humble enterprise, and because I have told Hartley who was to have been there that I shall be the sacrifice.
I was a sacrifice this evening. They had a Soirée at the College; it was merely a little concert with a couple of dramatic sketches, all very friendly with a double row of very small, very enthralled and heavily breathing children in front who gave me a lot more amusement than the entertainment. Little Mr Ghosh has had a triumph; this appears to be the only College in Bengal where there has not been a Students’ sympathetic strike in support of the Students’ strike at St Xaviers. The concert itself was a triumph for him because today had been proclaimed as a hartal day for Colleges. The St Xaviers row seems to have been due to a refusal to allow a brother of Subhas Bose who is a student there to read out an impertinent speech at their speech-day; I hope that as they are Jesuits they will not knuckle under to the agitation.
In my hurry on Monday I omitted to enclose one of the letters which had come for you. It would have brought the weight above the 1.2 ounce anyhow; but I omitted it because I had left it on my dressing table and forgot. You asked what about the digests? one of my letters which you will have received before now will have told you that the fault was Grindlay’s. The French Motor Car Co also are not too clever about addresses; they sent their bill to Roland Road. They charged half price for the screen. The Driver at the same time got them to put in a new washer to the bonnet; it is annoying when he does this without telling me first, but I suppose my habit of grunting when he asks me anything puts him off.
It is a pity that practically all that you wanted me to do in the garden falls at the beginning of October when most likely I shall be away. I wrote to Twynam saying that I should like to go to Darjeeling, which is not true for I feel no wish to do anything and do not look forward to being up there with nothing particular to do; and I also wrote to order a car to take me up there on the first day of the holidays. Now it is apparent that this was folly for it would have been better to leave myself a couple of days to finish off some of the files instead of working against time to get them done beforehand.
The stenographer came in to see me two days ago, looking much better; I am inclined to think that what annoyed me so intensely about his was fidgetiness which may have been due to his seediness. Anyhow this time he didn’t arouse distaste.
Today the P.A. asked me if there was any truth in the rumour that Blair is to come here as Commissioner and that I am to go on some special job. It will be annoying if there is for I have no heart left and am tired in my bones; to start on anything new would be a heavy burden. Not that I can claim that I enjoy this work. Deb Mahashay said today “So you have lot enthusiasm! Then who is there who will have any hope?”
I am not sending to you the Everest account that is being repeated from the Times in the Statesman because it is not really of great interest and there is a chance that you will have seen it anyhow. But I have cut out the two instalments that have so far appeared and put them in the draw. There is a thing in the Geographical Society’s Journal which sounds thrilling. Aeroplaning in British Guiana; landing just above some 900 foot falls on a river (it’s a seaplane) and taking off by going straight over the brink of the falls. But perhaps one would see nothing from the plane and the idea is more thrilling than the reality.
Much love, my darling woman. It does not seem possible that you will be starting in a little over three weeks.
Your
Toto
Family letter from HPV
¥
Chinsurah
Bengal
Friday September 23rd. 1938
My dear
That Chinese-looking thing at the top is the word Chinsurah telescoped. I had not realised that I had put the back stop half way across the page. Today my visit to Calcutta; it was about licences for Muhammadan-owned buses; I went through the papers this morning and when I met Hartley before we saw Nazimuddin I had to tell him that I was sure of the illegality of the orders passed by the previous District Magistrates and by Burrows – so we compromised with Naz to his intense gratitude; the compromise need not be illegal for there is a way round; all very edifying. “Thanks awfully; I knew that you’d find some unscrupulous way out of it” as Kerr said to me once; the devil is in this machine; I can do nothing but hit the numbers. Nazimuddin was very agreeable; so I thought it wise to tackle him about the Fazl Huq-Suhrawardi attempt to get the policeman into trouble and I think that we have stymied the two blights; I carried the war into the enemies’ country by telling about the black monkeys and the chamber pots and by adding that it was unfortunate that the Chief Minister should have lost his temper so badly in front of subordinates and thus let himself down in the eyes of the local public; I added also that everything I said could be accepted as absolutely impartial because personally I was not mixed up in the show and he knew that I was friendly to them all; which in a way is true. Naz gave us lunch at Peliti’s. He says that Hogg’s handling of the Ministerial crisis, far from being the muddle represented in the newspapers, (if I try to type fast, the second letter comes before the carriage has moved on), was masterly and that he completely outplayed the Congress attempt to take office without a majority and to have three months’ time before they faced the Assembly during which they would have used the whole machinery of Government to influence the waverers and thus get a majority together. He would enjoy that. If trick-work is to be the part of Governors, lucky that I am not one; but maybe I should have scruples when the time came. Naz adds that of all liars known in history the Assam Congress men are the chief. He was more cheerful than for some time. he expects the worst sort of row when the Terrorists realise that he is not going to release the convicted murderers. Item he told me that Blair is to be the new Irrigation Dept. Secretary (MacPherson has gone back to Excise) and that he himself fixed this so as to have a real good man to run the Schemes; I looked rather dolefully at him when I said that it was yet one more man to talk over and he asked me to make a point of pushing all the figures at him and getting him keen. Anyhow it looks as if there were nothing in the talk about my moving; I didn’t ask him directly for fear of putting ideas into his head.
The dentist did nothing to me today barring one small filling and a syringing of the hold in my jaw. It has not healed enough for him to try adding another false tooth and he wants me to come in when I get back from Darjeeling. I bought the tickets and reserved my berth after visiting the Secretariat after lunch. P.D.Martyn says that the Sikkim Guide is a menace and a nuisance because whenever he makes a suggestion about the trip which he Hartley Saumarez Smyth and (is it?) Dutch are making this Pujas, one or other of them says in an awed way “But Mrs. Townend says . . . “ They are doing the Phalut trip the wrong way round for no particular reason; I added my quota of condemnation. On my way in this morning I went in to see Idris Matthews who is incoherent with talk about a big flying show that he wants to fix up at Alipore for charity. His garden is ablaze with cosmos; I felt quite annoyed because ours’ is merely greens and feet high while his is reasonable height two feet maybe and all flower. Yellow and a bit monotonous. He has some gaillardia too, not much, but cosmos everywhere including the hopeless bed by the memorial house, in the fenced off bit. If I hadn’t reached the end of the page I should add about the squi
Saturday Sept 24th 1938
Squirrels. Idris was upstairs and seemed delighted to see me, not because he saw of course but because he thus had someone to whom he might tell of the water-borne sewage system; there are workmen in the house and he moves from room to room as they progress; he was sleeping in the big room that I used to have but moves daily almost he says. He led me into the bathroom and caused me to pull the new plug or rather turn the new handle; but as I was discoursing to him at the moment I did not notice if the thing worked well and cannot report on it. We stood on the verandah discussing the garden when there was a whisk of a tail and a squirrel raced past; a thin tail but not Old Mangy-tail. Idris makes noises just like a squirrel himself now and having thus enticed it told me to keep it in play while he fetched some nuts. And in a disdainful way it accepted two or three. The bougainvilleas have not succeeded – the layering, I mean; he has put down no seed yet nor bought any. It is a pretty garden beyond a doubt.
The road from the river front to the bridge was so blocked with buffalo carts at all angles, jammed, that I told the driver to turn back and go another way, but I reached the dentist in time. To be late for anything gives me nervous spasms. At the club the glasses were waiting for me; new straps and the buckle part of the case replaced; cost in all Rs 12. They certainly needed cleaning but I believe that the fungus has marked the glass; the article about aeroplaning over the falls in British Guiana said that there whiskers grow on glass and on leather and mark the blass.
My weariness has largely passed off; now I ought to be able to say why it existed at all. The jaw-hole is healing; there has been no pomolo these two days; the weather has been no less foul, I think, but the Holmans say that there is a chill in the air in the evening – not that they pretend to have felt it but they quote Hartley as authority; I haven’t been sleeping any better; there has been no less work. No. I don’t know why. The physical jerks class did one good exercise; Muller no 3 is the one where with arms outstretched one bends sideways after twisting and touches the floor between one’s feet with the hand (is it not?); this was a variant, for having got into that position one twisted round till the other hand touched and then back again. They did some exercises recommended by the fashion papers, Vogue and such, and as many of the young men ran muchly to bosom already I did not approve of this. They had told me that the show would last 1 ½ hours and so I went 40 minutes late; and then they finished in 15 minutes. Then I had to make a speech; I adjured them to abstained from big bellies; three cheers by numbers afterwards, each Hoo and each rah marked by a concerted handclap, a trick new to me but effective when done by such a crowd. I give full marks to the young Bengali instructor for chest and shoulders. They had had these classes for three weeks, apparently six hours a day at the exercises, including marching running and jumping, and the youths really look as if they were filling out; the headmaster remarked as a curiosity that there has been no sickness, no headaches, no indigestion among them during all this time. They are to be village schoolmasters and all look as if they had been short of food since they started life.
The wife of Islam is in hospital; the baby left in the compound. I wrote to Lossing about her this morning and he says that she is getting on but is quite unfit to have the child with her. Inflammation of the kidneys. The baby is a puny little thing according to the bearer; they are feeding it on cow’s milk, because they say the nurse miss-sahib gave orders to do so. I feel that I ought to look into the matter and arrange something more suitable. All the servants had been advising for the last three months that Islam should tell me that his wife was ill, but they say that they could not tell me when he didn’t because they couldn’t speak about someone else’s wife.
The cabbages are really a foot high. But there is no sign of their forming hearts; perhaps they are cauliflower. The brussels sprouts look unspeakably study. The carrots and the turnips, planted out broadcast are springing up. Now here is a real sign of the cold weather – we have had to start watering the vegetables. It was dark before I thought of looking at the seedlings in the pots and it was impossible to see if the parsley ever came up.
Sunday Sept 25th 1938.
It was cauliflower; or is; I ascertained today. The lettuce seed is dud for none of the second sowing came up at all. Dud also the seed from Cossipore stored in a bottle; the mali with great pride showed me that it had a label which he had got the stenographer to copy for him off the bottle; it is “Sow Sept”. The parsley came up but there is not very much of it. We put down more today; also more Salvia and more carnations. I wonder whether I ought to have bottled the Agrihorticultural seed as soon as it arrived instead of leaving it in the envelopes; I did put them in the cigar drying-tin. This evening also I started cutting two inches off the poinsettia; it brought out swarms of midges, and the cut branches simply poured out what might be dandelion juice (or is memory deceiving me? dandelion juice is a cure or perhaps a cause for warts. We sat in a field opposite the house at Ealing, when I was five, and such matters were expounded to me. I do not remember investigating the juice since. But I can think of no other flowers of the field more likely) – white milky stuff and I had more and more the feeling that all this ought to have been done weeks ago till finally after two bushes I gave up.
I wonder whether you all think it strange that I have not mentioned the crisis and the risk of war and imagine Bengal to be untouched by events. My silence is due to sheer funk; talking about it would make the writing of any letter impossible – all these trifles not worth the putting down at any time.
This morning started auspiciously. I was asleep and told myself that it was time to get up; and in my dream (a dream that I was dreaming that I was dreaming) I pulled my watch from below the pillow and saw that it was only twenty to seven. How cunning is the sub-conscious; it succeeded in making me oversleep by half an hour. You ask how I know that it was in a dream; because the watch really was tucked away at the other end of the pillow so far back that I had to sit up to find it. Things started going wrong after breakfast: I had told a Deputy from Midnapore that I should see him, but I did not count on two zamindars rolling in immediately afterwards to expound their impending ruin, due to Government policy, and to ask me to take them under Government management. These are the people who gave the big tea plus dancing show in my honour and who this week entertained the Ministers and a crowd lavishly. Then the third mali came in about his debt (marriage expenses) about which there has been talk since I have been left to run the establishment; I had told him that he might bring in the moneylender, a jute-mill sardar; and I ended by paying off the 24 rupees principal and having the interest washed out; all right provided that the interest will not be paid all the same by some private arrangement and that more money has not been borrowed on the strength of this. There were a great many letters today too. The net result was that I forgot to pursue the investigation about the baby’s milk. I wish that I had decided to go up to Darjeeling a day later so as not to be rushed as I shall be.
Knowing that I should have a lot to do these next two days, I should if wise have cleared off a lot this afternoon. Instead I lay down and slept heavily. After the garden and my bath I went over to see if the Lossings were in – they were not – and then on to see Stein, to return the Cicero and to talk a little shop. I had not realised that he intended to retire at the end of March; in fact he debates whether he should not do well to go as soon as MacKenzie comes out in December. He has started selling his furniture.
It looks as if the rains had for all practical purposes ended: which will not prevent it from being soaking wet on the Darjeeling cart-road. I have been vainly trying to remember whether an early end to them means an early beginning to the cold weather, and failing. I expect that it would merely mean a sticky October and November.
From HPV to LJT
Chinsurah,
Monday Sept 26th. 1938
My dearest,
It is late for me to start on your letter. I did files before and after dinner, and since then have been addressing envelopes, sorting out the family letter and writing the children’s names and my signatures on them. It is inconceivable how long this takes. A letter came from Annette today with an account of the lad’s 21st Dance; very gay. For her at any rate it was a success. Strangely, she does not mention how Richard himself enjoyed it, looked or behaved. You and Grace must have worked like beavers.
The mali says plaintively But what about peas? I had entirely forgotten that you had sent me a list of seeds coming out and in a vague way assumed that they would be forthcoming. I am wondering now if you forgot them or decided against them. You know, I am not very good about getting things done; the mail has still not got the sweet-pea trenches dug, unless they were done today – there was a farewell tea to my P.A. and afterwards I went round to see Hartley who is laid up with flu and running a high temperature each night. The trip round by Phalut is off, not only for him but for the others because the two Political Department lads have to stand by in case war breaks out. I have for weeks past been havering whether or no to refrain from going to Darjeeling for the Pujas, because if there is war I shall have to come back here and shall have wasted money for nothing. Hartley was on the verandah while his bed was being made; I stayed some time, not knowing whether he was bored stiff with me or would be bored stiff if alone again.
Three times today I have tried to get H.D. at Alipore and twice at his office; the twice were wash-outs because I couldn’t even get through to Calcutta; but although I held on to the line for five minutes at a time I still do not know whether I was ever onto the south Exchange, let alone the number. It is annoying that with this little extension line one is left to guess whether there is any reply or not.
If that drain about which the Martins agitated is remade, Rs 6/8/ will be added to the yearly rent. What about it, the amount is small but it seems a swindle.
Looking back I see that my remarks about the sweet peas were not exactly lucid; I meant that I did not know what had happened today in the garden because I had not had time to visit it.
Mogul says that the baby is mere skin and bone and has bad eyes. But they are taking it to see the nurse this afternoon to have some drops in the eyes and she advises about diet. None the less I feel that I should do something.
Did I tell you that I sent Pewter Beer Mugs Two to Curtis Millar as a wedding present? I feel that you will criticise my having sent anything at all and my having sent that. Why send? answer, because out here he may not get many presents (though as whip he may get dozens) and because he was very friendly (professionally perhaps) when we met; and why mugs? because I happened to see them in the shop (Bosecks) and have always had a feeling that they would not be duplicated.
My problem is to get money for the trip. I have Rs 300 but shall have to pay the servants before I go. Vaguely, and I am growing most vague, I thought that I should be drawing pay before the Pujas which I have not done. This morning I had the idea of asking H.D. to prepare himself and draw money to cash a cheque for me tomorrow evening – for I can hardly get away in time for the Bank. “Hardly” means “by no means”. I shall have to send someone in tomorrow in advance, though I do not like trusting anyone like that.
More and more spots come out on my hands. Not till this identical moment did it occur to me that they might be the itch. I assumed that they were Calcutta Foot, so to speak; with a side thought that they might be caused by some irritating plant in the flower bed, even by the gaillardia which do make the fingers itch a bit, if that were the right word which it is not.
It occurs to me that this will be almost my last letter to you before you sail, which means if the war does not break out, I suppose.
Tomorrow I am off to Darjeeling. No time for more before I start, I feel sure. So now I say, Goodbye, my darling.
Your
Toto
No time – true, but I scrawl a line.
Two letters from you this morning. About the dance and the following days. Very vivid and interesting.
As to the Leica – it is the only thing that I ever heard you say you’d like. Of course I don’t mind if you prefer something else and something later. If there is any later – alas for these threats of war and such.
Kingdon Ward letter also came this morning. The post mark is LOKRA and whether that is a complete word or the end of one I can’t say.
Love
Toto