Letters from India
1932–1945
Mary Puxley
edited by Molly Titus
Letters from India: 1932–1945
Copyright 2009 by Molly Titus
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for review purposes, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without prior permission of the author.
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Cover design: Brenda Conroy
Painting by Mary Puxley
Published 2012 by Molly Titus
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Contents
Lumbering, at Sunset, on and Elephant’s Back
Almost in the Water but Dry and Comfortable
Tiger, Panther, Dear and Bear Abound
He is Very Good and Comes for Love
A Matter of Saving a Child’s Life
A German Cruiser in the Harbour
A Steady Stream of Visitors from the Village
As Convenient and Well-Run as Canada!
Jimmy and Mary at “Struan,” the summer of 1932
Introduction
A closed blue section of an old steamer trunk from the 1930s lay around our house for a year after Mary Puxley’s death until, one wintry afternoon, it became a distraction from the weather. It was time to open it. Out slid hundreds of letters written by Mary to her parents in Toronto, week by week, from the time in 1932 when she, a new bride of 20, and her husband, Jimmy, stopped over in England to visit his family, through the voyage to India, the first romantic years getting to know people and places in India, the births of three children, the war years, and the return to Canada in 1946. Laying them out methodically on the card table, I as yet had no clue about the unexpected delights that lay there. I began by reading them to myself, but in no time was saying to my husband, “Bill, listen to this!” The parents with whom we had lived during their last frail years were being revealed to us in the glow of their youth.
This book is an edited selection from more than 400 of those letters written from India mostly by Mary Puxley, with one or two by Jim Puxley, to their families in Canada and England. There have been times that I have been tempted to edit out phrases and ideas which today we find shocking. Early on, as I was busily typing away, transcribing the letters, and came across the word “wop,” I let out a shriek. I had never heard my mother use that term or anything like it. My first reaction was to delete it, but I changed my mind and left it as indicative of the time and culture that Mary was part of — warts and all. Mercifully she matured, as our culture has.
Explanations of acronyms and words, many of which are Hindi or Urdu and spelled a variety of ways, can be found in a glossary at the end of the book.
Mary (Sedgewick) is brought up a well educated, well dressed, amusing, artistic young woman. She goes to the Bishop Strachan School in Toronto, and then successfully sits the entrance exams to Oxford University. She canoes, swims, plays golf and tennis erratically, and reads avidly. She is brought up in a comfortable Canadian family, strongly independent and democratic. Jimmy Puxley (actually Herbert Lavallin, but Jimmy’s family rarely uses real names) is brought up as part of the “landed gentry” in England. Sent to a “prep” school at a distressingly young age, he then goes to Eton and Oxford. At Oxford he gets his M.A. by, he told us, “paying 10 pounds and staying out of jail.” At Oxford he meets Willie Holland, principal of St. John’s College, Agra, India, not realizing the important role Willie would play in his future.
Following Oxford, the event that changes the direction of his life and Mary’s is his Commonwealth Fellowship to study at Yale. On his way from England to Yale (by ship, of course) Jimmy meets Mary and her family, who are on their way home to Toronto from a trip “abroad.” She is 17. During his three years at Yale (where, he said, “grown men slept in the daytime, and drank milk!”) he makes visits to Mary’s family in Toronto. The first time he stays with them he puts his shoes outside his bedroom door at night, and Mary’s father, the judge, quietly takes them, polishes them and puts them back. He receives another M.A. at Yale.
After completing school in Toronto, Mary spends about a year and a half in Oxford, preparing for entrance exams, but towards the end of that time she writes to her parents, “I doubt very much if what I will get out of 3 years here in a women’s college in Oxford is enough to make up for the years at home with you and my friends. It seems somehow an artificial sort of existence. I know how Mother feels but, Daddy dear, I would like you to tell me honestly exactly what you feel about it. I know you say I have to decide things for myself and choose my own life but after all what are parents for but to advise their perplexed infants? If I were a man I should jump at it because (1) I would have to go to the University because—well, naturally, a man who wants to follow a profession has to have university training, and (2) there is an indefinable something about Oxford, a scholarliness, age, wisdom, I don’t know what to call it. You feel it in the quadrangles of the men’s colleges, and to live in that atmosphere would be really a chance not to be missed, but I don’t know whether or not there is that something in the women’s colleges….”
Young George Sedgewick and Molly Robertson
In November 1930 she writes, “I had a long letter from Jimmy yesterday, very satisfactory, telling me all his plans… [he] says that ‘no deans, departments, nothing’ are going to keep him from coming to Toronto as soon after I get back as we’ll have him! I should love him to come for the Easter weekend, but I suppose that it would be rather unconventional—but oh glory, who cares.”
In June 1932, a week after Mary’s 20th birthday, she and Jimmy get married in Toronto. Armed with an M.A. in economics from Yale and a book, A Critique of the Gold Standard, looking for a publisher, Jimmy is ready to take on the world of economics. It has not always been his goal. When at Oxford, he had planned to join the famed ICS, the Indian Civil Service, but was two years too young. Two years at Yale would bring him to just the right age.
Jimmy turns down a position at an English bank, one at Eton, and one at the Japanese Naval Academy in Tokyo, where, he told us with a chuckle, he would have received the rank and salary of vice-admiral, and opts instead for a position as professor of economics at St. John’s College, Agra, India—a position financed by the Church of England Missionary Society.
In Mary he has found someone up to the challenge. There is one hitch. The CMS does not want Jimmy to marry until he has been in India for two years, but he and Mary absolutely refuse to abide by this custom. “A wife would never catch up!” she says. So together they become missionaries. Well, not “they” exactly as in those days a wife simply appears as a small “m,” for “married,” beside her husband’s name in the missionary rolls.
Mary’s letters home are tailored to suit the interests and sensibilities of her parents, particularly her mother, Molly (Robertson) Sedgewick. Recently, when my granddaughter visited one of the grand historic houses of Nova Scotia, Uniacke House, I told her that her great-great-grandmother Molly went to a ball there as a young woman, and remembered coming home back to Halifax in a horse-drawn carriage, in the early hours of the morning, stars still in the sky. Molly loved balls. Dancing and looking nice were high in her list of interests. So it’s no wonder that her daughter, Mary, talks to her in her letters about how she looks when she goes out on various occasions in India as a young bride. For my brothers and me this was a surprise. The mother we knew was ever practical and “sensible.” (Actually, even as a bride, she was practical enough to have a small early morning wedding — wearing a white suit, and allowing Jimmy to change into his beloved “plus fours” after the wedding, as soon as they had rounded the corner of the church.)
While Molly Robertson waltzed romantically through the ballrooms of Uniacke House, and Government House in Halifax, her future husband, George H. Sedgewick lived in Middle Musquodoboit, Nova Scotia, part of a farm family, one of whose sayings was “Boys, while you’re resting, pitch that load of hay!” Family lore has it that he was christened George Herbert after the sixteenth-century English mystic poet by the same name. George went to Normal College, then taught school. Next he went to Dalhousie University in Halifax, then to Osgoode Law School in Toronto, and practised law in Toronto until he was named to the Supreme Court of Ontario. Mary’s Indian letters refer to what happened to him next — his appointment as the first Chair of the Tariff Board of Canada.
In England on the way to India, referring to a list furnished by the Church Missionary Society, Mary writes to her mother “You and I have chosen very well and wisely. Everything was to be ‘simply and prettily’ made. They have two evening dresses on their list so they are quite human. But they do say — though I think it’s an old list — that all dresses should be below the knees — which mine are — and have sleeves even if short — which lots of mine haven’t but I have jackets and anyway, I’ve been told that in the cities at least, the Indians are quite used to sleeveless dresses.
Last Friday Jims and Mawsie and I went up to town together to see the C.M.S. and do as much shopping as possible... They seem very human people — not at all the four square gospel types — and some of them are particularly charming — an old lady who interviewed me, for instance, with snow white hair and a complexion like strawberries and cream. The women all said to take out my china and linen as it was much better and prettier when you bought it in England, but that it was possible to get it there.”
Mary said later that she had had no “orientation” at all. The winter before her marriage she attended the School of Missions in Toronto and learned about Hinduism, linguistics, first aid, anthropology, bookkeeping and birth control. In hindsight, she must have felt that this preparation was wanting.
While she is in England in 1932, she loads up on what she considers the essentials. “We did necessary errands first of all and then went to W.H. Smiths and bought or ordered some books we particularly wanted — cheap editions except for some highbrow ones of Jim’s.” These included “2 P.G. Wodehouses at 1 s. each and a detective story! These with those the Hudsons [friends who gave them 62 books!] sent us will make a rather good library. Then we went and bought seven prints…. A family friend gave us two rather blotchy little water colours which look quite decent by night. Then we went after records. We bought nine — Harold Samuel playing a Prelude and Fugue and a Brahms Intermezzo; Hungarian Rhapsody and ‘I call upon thee Jesus’ — ‘Le Cygne’ and ‘Autumn,’ and John Goss singing 4 Schubert songs and the Eriskay Love Lilt & somebody playing Schubert’s ‘Ang den wasser zu singen’ & the Don Cossacks. Altogether they are a grand selection — we reveled in them until we had to pack ’em yesterday.”
It is the day of large steamer trunks, and people to carry them!
It is obvious from the list above and the discussion of clothing appropriate for a missionary wife that Mary feels it necessary to take all the trappings from the culture to which she belonged to an entirely foreign environment. She sees herself as the kind of bride her mother had been, with the same taste in literature, art and music, heedless of the impact that India might make. It is also obvious that Mary and Jimmy are preparing to stay in India a long time.
Mary and her sister, Anne, have been brought up on debate and discussion. The family dinner table is a place of talk and the testing of ideas, and religion is a major topic. At a Church of England school in Toronto Mary might have learned the “39 articles” by heart, but she is a staunch Presbyterian. She has heard her parents, and other relations, many of whom are ordained ministers, debate “Church Union.” Theology is not seen as the purview simply of theologians; it is the rightful realm of the person in the pew. Mary marries a Church of England man, and becomes C. of E. herself, but her Presbyterian questioning outlook never leaves her. In India she comes up against attitudes which are new to her, so she asks her family to send her “a shorter catechism — a Westminster Confession of Faith” so that she can have the real thing to arm herself with when she goes to the many C. of E. study groups.
The collective memory of World War I is still very strong and the Depression has begun, but the world of 1932 for a 20-year-old, romantic Canadian in love is a pretty heady place. The first few years of letters are a lyrical report of the beauty and romance of India and of the interesting community that Mary and Jimmy find in their new home. Mary and Jimmy seem to move easily in the Indian Civil Service, the political, and the military communities, but their real centre is the missionary community and the Indians with whom they work.
In this day of e-mail and quick response to any situation, Mary’s letters are a treasure. They are well written, immediate and lively, and illuminate a certain place and period — India towards the end of empire — seen through the eyes of a young Canadian woman. Her questioning, Presbyterian, democratic, colonial make-up, perhaps, allows her to see India through eyes different from those of the run-of-the-mill imperialist.
Mary is one of the proudest and most patriotic of Canadians. She was born, brought up and educated in Toronto, but the Canada to which her heart belongs is Nova Scotia, and “Struan,” the summer home, in particular. In the letters there are many references to “Struan” — its night sky, its gentle scents and breezes, and its family hearth.
It is sad that nearly all of Jimmy’s letters to his family in England have disappeared. A few of the remaining ones are included in this book. He writes wonderfully.
In October 1932, Mary writes from England, “Well, the trunks have gone. The house is strewn with paper, string and excelsior, but all the ant proof boxes and coffins [big wooden boxes] have been taken to the station. Counting our golf clubs, steamer rugs and cushions and a parcel of pictures which were too large to go on the bottom of the trunk we have 11 packages and 13 more in Birkenhead!”
They’re on their way.
The Taj Mahal taken by Jimmy or Mary
What Thrills!
Oct. 15th /32, S.S. “Tuscania”
My darling family,
What thrills! I woke this morning with a great commotion round about & the ship lying still. So I woke James and we grabbed our dressing gowns and rushed from porthole to porthole out in the corridor, looking at Gibraltar on one side and Africa on the other! It was so beautiful we had to pull on trousers and overcoats and go up on deck. The sun was shining but there were clouds hanging about the top of the “Rock” and rolling around the tops of the African mountains, and a rainbow over them too. It was simply exquisite. A tender came out to us and a great many little boats with dark men in them shouting Spanish to each other. Now there are mountains on our starboard side as we go up to Marseilles. It is gloriously warm and fine and smooth.
The Tourist Third deck space, lounges and food and dining saloon are as nice as possible, though crowded, but our cabin is not awfully good. Instead of being first or second class, it’s the old steerage or third. It’s badly ventilated with no wardrobe or table or sofa, only one tiny chair, and no plumbing, only a tippy-uppy basin under which the water stands and grows staler and staler. Also the walls are very thin and families on the same deck might as well be in the same cabin. Also there’s a baby that chokes and squeals with anger all day. And the door doesn’t lock, and there’s only one light not good to read by, which turns out miles from the berths. But none of these things really matter except the bad ventilation and untidy bathrooms. We are fortunate enough to get seats at the second sitting, but unfortunately were too late to choose our table and were put at one of the only two long ones with some rather unprepossessing table companions. But most of the people are very nice. We have made particular friends with Mr. & Mrs. Sisnett — awfully nice, with a dear little two-year-old daughter, Bubbles. We all sit together and play tennis and dance and bridge together. Very pleasant.
Our gramophone is a joy — we play it now and then when no babies are asleep, in the cabin and now and then on deck — when most of the crowd has gone down to dress for dinner. We are wonderfully well supplied with books. I have finished “The Country House,” Mother, and simply adored it, and “Purdah.” J. is reading “Death comes to the Archbishop.”
We entered a bridge drive last night — terribly dull — all old crocks or dangerous looking wops — really terrifying one of the latter was — kept pressing me to have some gin on him saying “it would be sporty” — Ugh! However not all the dark skinned ones on board are like that. I played with two charming ones.
Oct. 20th /32
Well, we have been having exciting days. At the present moment we’re passing Crete with Mount Ida rather dim in the distance. It is very hot — we are all in summer clothes & melting completely. There are hundreds of tournaments on and we have to play regardless of sun and heat. Most of the ship is terribly crowded and it’s extremely hard to find any corner where it’s possible to rest. J. and I have solved the problem by having our own deck chairs at the stern near the games and a hired pair up in the bow where it is cooler and less crowded and also easier to watch the scenery. There is an extremely nice lot of young people on board including a perfectly sweet girl whom we call “K.K.” We all had a grand time last night. Dancing was scheduled but was cancelled because the deck we usually dance on had been drenched in a thunderstorm. So “K.K.” brought up her gramophone and we danced till all hours on one of the lower decks. We were so thrilled with the dancing we went on very late and were completely dead when we finished as we had had very little sleep the night before. The reason was volcanoes and all that. We were due to pass within a mile of Stromboli sometime in the early morning, so we tipped the night watchman and he woke us up when we were nearing it. It was about five o’clock and still dark when we went up on deck. Just ahead there was a darker patch than the rest — cone-shaped. As we got nearer and it grew lighter it was quite distinct — a cone with two peaks and a red glow on the side near the top. Apparently, this came from a small crater not from one of the two main ones. Every five or so minutes the glow deepened and we could see a spurt of flame of red hot lava shoot into the air like a geyser and then a wider patch of red, fading gradually as the lava cooled. Apparently, Stromboli is always doing something — if it were to stop people would expect some awful calamity. We were tremendously thrilled and awestruck. It has always been my ambition to see a real live volcano — but I was a little relieved when we had passed by safely. We saw it against the early morning sky — very lovely. Then we went back to bed, and at breakfast time found ourselves just coming out of the straits of Messina, with Etna on our right capped with snow and showing up beautifully against the bright sky.
Our absolutely super day was the one we spent in Marseilles. We got in early in the morning — at least at breakfast time. It was as lovely a day as we could wish — sunny and warm with a fresh breeze. We were, for a wonder, first in the dining room and, I think, first out. We dashed on land immediately. We had docked miles from the city itself and there was no Cooks near and no bank. We went to the American Express and changed our money and found out how to get out of the city in the quickest way. They told us to take a bus to Aix-en-Provence — an hour’s ride, and have lunch there. We resolved privately to get off between Marseilles and Aix, somewhere in the country, and have a picnic. We found a patisserie and bought cheese, cakes and cherry tarts and milles feuilles, and then Jims got a bottle of light wine and I a bottle of Perrier water, and we each bought a 6 franc ticket on the bus and were off by 10:30. The first part of the drive was through the city — streets of queer little cafes with blue shutters, and plane trees. After we passed a place called Septêmes we got into the real country, and after about 40 mins. or an hour we passed an asphalt road leading off to the right up a hill, with woods on one side and fields on the other. We stopped the bus, got out, and walked up this road. We knew that buses ran back every 15 minutes and we didn’t have to be back at the ship till three, so we were quite carefree. It was so glorious to be on shore! We swung along with our bottles and our pies and soon left the road, following a track beneath a grove of pine trees up a hill to the left. When we got to the top we found it rocky and clear except for some stunted evergreens, with a view on all sides, down into valleys and across at mountains, while nearby was a tiny little village, the houses huddled round a high rock, very bare and steep. Here we ate our lunch — simply delish, and lay and basked and smelt the land breeze, and then went and explored the village — Jimmy hugging half a bottle of wine which he hadn’t been able to finish and couldn’t bear to part with. However, he did manage to tear himself away from it — we found a man clearing out a stable and said “Voulez-vous?” and he did, so we did. By the way, we were frightfully proud of the way we made ourselves understood, and understood in our turn. We were only stumped when it came to finding a short, plain, black evening jacket after we got back to the city; and a bathing suit. We asked for “coutume à nager,” but that was useless. However, I finally got a nice red wool one for 50 francs reduced from 95!
Can he bear to part with it?
Well, we gave away our wine and then explored the village — “Bouc-Bel-Air” it was called and it was perfectly lovely — all tiny narrow streets, funny little gardens and balconies, with a heavenly piney square on a terrace looking across at a range of heavenly blue mountains. You certainly must go there if you ever get a chance. We walked down again to the main road — a bus came along immediately — and whirled us back to Marseilles at breakneck speed, back-firing all the way! We laughed uncontrollably — we were so happy — everything had turned out even better than we had hoped — such luck finding a beautiful place and having a scrumptious time for about 20 francs!
We get into Port Said at 11:30 this morning. Everyone’s going ashore to make whoopee and buy topis.
Sunday afternoon in the Red Sea
It is very hot, but not unbearably so. There is a breeze on the deck and there are awnings up to keep the sun off the open part. I wrote to you just before we got to Port Said. The arrival at Port Said means a change all over the ship — awnings go up, the stewards and officers put on white linen, and topees are considered necessary at once and everyone wears shorts and no stockings. It is the first glimpse we get of the East. We arrived about midnight. We stood out on deck watching the lights come nearer with a very deep yellow, half moon behind us, shooting stars, and a lot of little ghostlike sailing ships moving past us out to sea. The main street of Port Said runs right along the canal, with only a line of palms between, so we could look into the windows of the one European shop from our decks. This shop, Simon Arzt’s, is the one place in Port Said where bargaining is impossible. It is supposed to be owned by Selfridge’s and you can buy anything there — at a price.
We had to walk down the side of the ship on an improvised stairway into a rowboat. Then we were landed at the end of the street and made our way to Simon Arzt. A very kind Mrs. Murphy from our table had offered to come ashore with us, show us the sights, and tell us the right kind of topees to get, as certain ones are not worn. For your benefit — if you ever come out this way — the cheap khaki ones are the best. The nicest things for women, however, are not topees at all, but a thing called a “tari,” which is two felt hats inside each other. They are more expensive but far, far nicer. First of all we both bought khaki topees, but mine looked so perfectly ghastly I fell and changed it for a tari — a large creamy sand one, both inside and out. Some had green or blue linings, but I thought all beige would be more useful. It’s really rather becoming although it makes me look like a toadstool. Jimmy in his looks like a picture of an Empire builder in the B.O.P. We wrote some postcards in Simon Arzt’s — there is a lovely writing room and restaurant looking out over the canal — and had some Turkish coffee, which is given you free on the ground floor, and then went out into Port Said again and down the main street of native shops. The streets are full of vendors of all kinds who attached themselves to us and gabbled and jibbered at us as we walked. There were so many about us at one time that a policeman came up to see what the matter was. There are a great many small boy beggars too, with brown faces, rolling eyes, and little white night gowns and fezes. They are extremely fascinating and when they look up at you and show their teeth in a broad grin and say, “I am Scotchman — gif my penny!” they are hard to resist! Knowing how Scotch the Anchor Line is, they call themselves Mackenzie and Auchterlony in order to melt hearts! We went back on board about half past two, and the ship sailed soon afterwards, but we didn’t go to bed. We sat on deck to try and see something of the canal until nearly four. The Egyptian Railway and an asphalt road run down one side, but on the other there is nothing but desert with an occasional hut or two, straggled over from a station on the other side. Camels we saw a-plenty, and funny little African settlements, and groves of queer trees. A lot of sandy hills with camels beneath only needed the wise men to become Christmas cards. The French have a very impressive war memorial about half way along that stands out against the sky and looks extraordinarily firm in the midst of the shifting sand. Some Egyptian pedlars had come on board at Port Said and were being carried to Suez. They laid their wares out on the deck and did a little business — Chinese nightgowns for 11 shillings and three piece sets for 25! And in Port Said they have lovely dressing gowns for five bob! We very luckily had forgotten to get our money out from the Purser’s office and had to borrow a pound or so to buy our topees, so we could only spend it on things we needed and couldn’t waste any. But oh we were tempted! They have the loveliest little brown Turkish coffee sets for seven or eight bob. Remember, if you go to Port Said, not to buy anything at the price named except in Simon Arzt’s. Everywhere else they expect to be beaten down.
We reach Bombay sometime during the night. Ever since we got into the Red Sea we have been perspiring night and day. When you come out Mother and Anne, bring lots of dresses with short, loose, or no sleeves. Long sleeves wrinkle terribly at the elbow. There have been two fancy dresses, one for costumes made on board, and one called “Grand Fancy Dress Ball” for which people produced wonderful creations bought on purpose. We made up our minds to miss both as our cabin was unbearable and it was much too hot to spend all day there rigging up something to wear. But we did go to one as we suddenly thought at about six o’clock that we might go as Jack and Jill which would give Jims a chance to wear shorts to dinner. So he wore a blue pyjama top and a beret and some brown paper on his forehead, and I wore a very old pink cotton dress with a short sleeved blouse underneath, and did my hair in two pigtails, and we got hold of a bucket and delighted all the children on board. They have called us “Jack” and “Jill” ever since and were terribly disappointed when we didn’t dress up at the next fancy dress.
Nov. 3rd 1932, Willie Holland’s House, S. John’s College, Agra, U.P.
What a funny place! I’ll begin from the beginning — Monday morning at 5:30 we got up, passed the immigration people, collared the railway man and made reservations, and had breakfast. We also had our thermos bottles filled with tea and got hold of some clean ship apples and beef sandwiches as some slight provision for the train, where, we thought, meals were expensive and poor. Then our luggage was taken off by a coolie and we had to collect our custom’s declaration and get our luggage through. We were met by a large pleasant C.M.S. missionary, Canon Butcher, on whom, at first, I don’t think I made a good impression; he was speaking about Agra and said that they’d been having “great doings” there. I said, “Oh, riots?” and he said, “No, spiritually I mean; several of Holland’s students have come to him to be prepared” (or baptized). So my remark was rather a faux-pas. We got our things through the customs quite easily. Tips and things like that puzzled us very much at first. We didn’t understand a word the coolies said and they couldn’t understand us when we told them to get out. You tip on a much smaller scale, about an anna a package, but we found we had so many porters it was very muddling. In the Customs’ house our 25 pieces had to be moved from one end of a long table to the other. The result was that twenty coolies stood in two rival gangs on opposite sides of the luggage and shouted at each other and at Jimmy all together to establish which of them had really moved our bags. Without a Cook’s man we would probably have given a rupee to each coolie, but as there was a Cook’s man there we were rescued, and he told us to give each gang a rupee and leave it at that.
We got our luggage safely settled and then took an open taxi to the Army and Navy stores. Bombay is not awfully different from a continental city — it has its trams and its buses and its smells. The people, of course, are thrilling. The men all wear their shirt tails out instead of in and everyone looks as if his clothes were falling off. The Army and Navy Stores is a glorious big, cool, spacious shop, with everything in it you could possibly want — lovely tinned and bottled groceries, all sorts of drugs, nice dress materials, Vogue patterns, books, and a cool cream and green refreshment room where we met pals from the ship, and had some ginger beer. We had several errands there — towels and paraffin and meths and other odds and ends. You have to take absolutely everything with you on the train. There is nothing in washroom or carriage.
We went out to the C.M. House for lunch, walking part of the way. It was supposed to be very hot but we weren’t uncomfy a bit — there are so many glorious big trees with gnarled trunks and roots and very wide spreading branches that make a grand shade. The Mission house is right in the Hindu quarter. We turned off a street where a modern cinema house advertised “The Passionate Plumber,” into a narrow street with little shops down the side, very dirty and untidy, and off that into a shady compound with a church, school, and the very cool comfy Mission house. We ate lunch at a long bare table with a lot of other missionaries from the boat and the three that live there. After lunch we went upstairs and lay on the wide verandah and looked out into a green glossy-leafed tree where queer birds kept up a continual squawking, and thought how lovely it was to be still and cool. The verandah was really a hall with open arches down one side. We had no books with us and apparently the only available literature was “Good Housekeeping” and “Physical Culture,” so we dozed and did nothing. We left after a rather stodgy tea and made for the station. We were lucky enough to have got hold of one of the only two second class “coupes.” That means a carriage for two people only. First class is about twice as expensive. The Sisnetts had one (only because they couldn’t get a 2nd) and it was very comfortable and clean — two berths, a comfy chair, table, mirror, fan, and even a shower bath in the wash room. Each carriage has a separate washroom but only 1st class ones have showers. We had an upper and a lower berth and a fan and a table and we made ourselves quite comfortable with our rugs and cushions. We bought some permanganate of potash and washed everything we could find with some water with a few grains dissolved in it. Then we got out our Primus stove, paraffin and meths and began a long, long, struggle with it, expecting to be blown up any minute. Jims, however, conquered its mysteries and it really is a marvellous invention — gives a tremendous heat and boils a large kettle in a short time. We stupidly put in too little paraffin and the kettle had just begun to boil when the stove went out. But we had water that did for teeth and a good wash. Washing was useless — hands were dirty again the minute we finished and the dust that came in the windows lay inches deep on everything. When everything was settled we sat down to our tea and sandwiches. Alas! The sandwiches, though wrapped in grease proof paper and kept in a tin box, had become very nasty. So we dined on tea and apples — quite satisfying enough because of our stodgy tea. Then we spread out our sleeping bags and undressed and went to bed. We saw nothing of India that night — it had been dark before we left Bombay, However, there’s an odd sickly sweet smell that keeps blowing up that I think is typically Indian. I slept beautifully till about three or four when my feet began coming out below the rug and nothing I could do would make them stay in. I was glad when it was time to get up. I went in to the first sitting at breakfast time. There is no corridor in Indian trains and to get to the restaurant car I had to get out on to the platform at a station and walk along. I had such a long wait before we came to a station that I felt very faint by the time we did get there. However, I summoned up my senses and went. James stayed behind to guard the carriage. He had been sleeping up till then. I sent back a kettle of drinking water for us to boil and then use, and then had quite a good breakfast — eggs and bacon and toast and marmalade and tea with no milk. On the train we avoid curry (because the meat may be bad and you can’t tell if it is) salad, cold meat, butter, milk, and cold pudding, and fruit unless we’ve washed it ourselves in perm. of pot. Soups and hot meat and vegetables and bread and jam and eggs and cooked puddings are all right…and tea. Contrary to expectations the meals were cheap — 2 rupees for breakfast and 2 for lunch. I had breakfast with the Canadian missionaries, which was jolly. The Indian oranges are luscious — they have soft green skins which come off very easily — they of course don’t need to be washed — and are beautifully juicy. The country we were passing through was very dull — dry soil with white, dried grass and small grayish trees. Only in the villages the trees are large and very green. We saw all sorts of queer birds — brilliant jays and large white cranes, and monkeys and bullocks. About five o’clock James and I left the boat train at Barratpur, and waited for an hour and a half or so there on the station platform watching the sun go down, and the people on the platform — mostly men. Since we left Bombay I have hardly seen an Indian woman — except in the fields — only a tiny girl of four or five dressed like a grownup in a pale blue silk sari. Our train for Agra was quite crowded. There was only one 2nd class carriage, with two men in it — one with a turban and bare feet sitting cross-legged in a corner seat; another in European clothes lying down on another. We had a two hour journey through the dark. We expected Canon Holland to meet us at Agra but he and all the Christian staff happened to be busy that evening, so we were met by a charming Indian professor, Mr. Gideon, who had bicycled all the way. He got our luggage safely on to two “tongas” — horse cabs — and us into the college car, and then bicycled all the way to the college beside the tongas to see that Jimmy’s books, whose case has been gradually falling to bits since we arrived, did not fall out. We couldn’t see much of Agra at that time of day. We saw only that it was not a modern city like Bombay. We were taken almost out of the city into a large compound — filled with trees and a miserable show of grass — and driven up to an awfully attractive house — a curved verandah leading into a pretty drawing room where the girl who looks after the Holland children met us and showed us our room. We go up a long narrow flight of stone stairs from the verandah — with one door opening off the stairs on to a balcony — to the third floor, where our room is by itself. It is large and emptyish — with windows on three sides and large double doors on two, opening on to a large verandah on the top of the house — partly roofed — with a view out over the college and the city — heavenly! Our beds, with mosquito netting around them, stand in the middle of the room in front of one of the big doors, so we can lie in bed and look out at the stars. We have a bathroom to ourselves down 6 or 7 stairs — stone floor with a raised stone barrier across one wall, inside which sits the tin bath and from which the drainpipe runs. The servants bring up hot water whenever we want baths and everything is kept beautifully clean. After we had washed a little of the two days’ grime off we went down to dinner — a good one and we did appreciate it. The dining room walls are hung with posters of Connemara — one of which I had in my bedroom at home. The drawing room is lovely — cream walls and slip covers and green hangings. Oddly enough the drawing room is cream and green, the dining room blue — just the colours I want in my bungalow! We went to bed that night without seeing the Hollands and had a glorious, still, long, quiet night. We were allowed to sleep till eight — breakfast’s at nine — but generally everyone gets up about six, has chota hazari (early morning tea) and goes to chapel in the college at seven — a simple chapel that was really meant to be a book cellar. The Hollands are awfully nice — Canon Holland a dear, white-haired and pink-cheeked and a darling. Mrs. Holland much younger with dark hair and an interesting face — an awfully good principal’s wife — and also awfully nice. She says to tell you she’ll try to take care of us! There are twins too, Mary and Michael, five — a very winning pair. Michael has taken a fancy to me, oddly enough.
Agra fire engine
We are allowed to do anything we like. We spend most of our time up here writing and resting as Canon H. is out all the time and Mrs. H. is busy and we think it must be a relief to them to have us amuse ourselves. Yesterday we unpacked and then got our things ready for the dhobi. He came, a queer, thin, bearded person with a pink turban, knelt on our bedroom floor and counted out things into piles while we made a list — Sahib’s, MemSahib’s — etc. He does an enormous wash and charges an anna a piece — an anna for a handkerchief, an anna for a dress. He also took away all my clean dresses which had been horribly crushed and brought them back ironed beautifully in time to change for tennis at four. There are people here for every meal — members of the staff, Hindu or Christian, for breakfast — and to tea a young Englishman out here on short service, and two women missionaries, one old and one young, of a much more missionary flavour than the Hollands. After tea we played tennis on an extraordinary court meant to be grass but really weedy — with ball boys all over the place fielding for us — then bathed, and rested till dinner time. Canon Sully, a charming bearded Englishman — the vice-principal, came to dinner, and a new missionary who is teaching at the girls’ high school. At half past nine we have compline in Canon Holland’s private chapel, and then everyone goes home or to bed.
This morning we got up early and went to chapel. Then I went with Mrs. H. into the store room and watched her housekeep. It consisted of arranging meals with the cook — a jovial white-turbaned and coated man — giving him the rice and sugar and flour and gelatine that he needed out of the stores — and going over yesterday’s accounts with him. He buys the things in the bazaar cheaper than Mrs. H. could buy them, and makes a small profit, when he charges her for them. Something that would cost a serviceman 12 annas costs Mrs. Holland, a missionary, 10, and the cook, 8. Then he charges her 9 and she gets it for an anna less than she would if she shopped herself! Three Indians came to breakfast — 2 from the college, and one, Glani Lal, an oldish man, a convert, who is rather well known I think and was interesting but rather frightening. His first remark was a demand for our first impressions of India which were rather hard to give as we’ve seen so little. After breakfast we wrote letters, (I’ve been writing this for days — it’s now the third of November) and then went out in the community car for which we pay 6 annas a mile. J. had to go to the bank, and get a tennis racket, and we had an errand to do for Mrs. H. I sat outside in the car while J. opened an account, and watched the people and the chipmunks. The bank is in its own compound and there was quite a wide patch of green with trees and a well in front of it and fascinating people passing by, or lounging about talking, all the time.
This afternoon after tea we went with a sightseeing nephew who is staying here — a nice boy — and Miss Costello and Michael, to see the Taj. You know what it looks like — all I can say is that it quite came up to my expectations and is utterly satisfying. I want to go and sit and look at it for hours. We got there late in the afternoon and saw the sunset and when we left it was twilight with a tiny crescent moon. We climbed to the top of one of the minarets where we watched the sunset over the city and fort on one side, with the Jumna (complete with crocodile and ferry man safe in boat) beneath, and looked out into the country on the other. It looked rather like parkland in that light but is probably more deserty by day.
Mother, your information about calling on everyone first in India is quite right except when you’re a bride. If you’re a bride, the others call on you.
Nov. 7th /32
We are having a really heavenly time. The only snag is that now and then Jims has to go to staff meetings and lectures and business meetings and things without ME — and I’ll never get used to it! He says he won’t either though, and that’s cheering. I don’t know whether we will do the Indians much good, but living here ought to do us a lot of good — an opportunity to do worthwhile work — with time for regular morning chapel and prayers which I’ve always wanted — and evening chapel while we stay here and such a jolly and inspiring atmosphere — not a bit the “grim” missionary atmosphere as Mrs. Holland calls it — but everyone loves beautiful things and there are evening sing-songs, and you borrow each other’s records and do all sorts of ambitious things like trying to sing the Christmas Oratorio or play trios. The Milfords — the other young married couple here — married in March — are frightfully keen for J. to learn to play the cello (he has the ear for it which I haven’t) — so that they can play trios. Mr. Milford plays the piano, Mrs. the violin and they say the cello is not difficult — at least it is not difficult to learn to play simple things passably. James would love to and I would love him to, but, puzzle, to find the cello, and the time!
Did I tell you how nice I thought Indian houses were? This is a particularly lovely one, but is much bigger and more luxurious than the ordinary mission bungalow. There are so many verandahs and wide doorways in them all and the plain wall and stone arches and things are such good foundations for pretty rooms that I’m sure we will like whatever bungalow we are put in. We won’t know for sure till later on in the year into which we are going, so that I can’t buy things like rugs and hangings now, though I am sorely tempted. Mrs. Holland has just brought a baleful of things down from Kashmir with beautiful embroidery and papier-mâché work all for a song. I wish I were sending home Christmas presents — there are so many lovely and cheap things. This handkerchief is just to remind you that you have a daughter and son who love you and wish they were with you at Christmas time. It’s made by an Indian Christian. It may need a little more bleaching or washing before you use it.
Agra bazaar
I am thinking of getting a small Perfection oil stove and oven so that if Mr. Gillespie’s cook in Aligarh [where they will go for language lessons] is too terrible I will be able to do something. It will be useful afterwards too, as very few Indians are good at cakes and puddings. Mrs. Holland’s cook can make lovely light cakes but his idea of a festive pudding is a chocolate stripe. The food here is good though simple; although strange things sometimes happen to it as you shall see. The other evening I noticed a peculiar smell when the meat was brought in. I said to myself — “the meat’s bad — I shall wait till someone else tastes it before I try it myself.” I helped myself to vegetables, and noticed no one was hesitating about the meat, so I ate some. It was quite all right, but the smell was still very strong. Then I took a large mouthful of spinach — it was soaked in kerosene! Everyone else discovered it at the same time so we didn’t have to be heroic and eat it up. We thought we had seen the last of it, but next evening, when several people were here to dinner, a savoury was brought in — a little circle of toast with spinach and a sliver of egg — the same spinach! Poor Mrs. H. was most upset. The bearer had not told the cook about the kerosene the night before, and the cook had a cold and couldn’t smell it! We have only had curry once — not at all hot — not really hot enough — a fruit curry into which we sliced bananas. We were introduced to another strange dish — a fruit of a good consistency with lots of juice that looked like sliced peaches but tasted terribly bitter — I didn’t like it much but the taste for it may be cultivated.
I am not quite sure how soon I should write to get to Toronto for Christmas. Your last letter took just under a month, but of course at Christmas time they will take longer. So my beloved Mother do have a very happy Christmas and we’ll be thinking about you and praying about you.
Preparing for the shoot
Lumbering, at Sunset, on an Elephant’s Back
Nov. 10th /32, S. John’s College, Agra
We were frightfully thrilled with the news in Mum’s last letters about Daddy and Mr. Bennett — and proud of you Daddy darling. We don’t know what we feel about it — except that we think your idea of being lent to the tariff Commission from the judiciary, a good one, if constitutional. But Jimmy says that he does want to be able to say some time “My father-in-law, the Chief Justice of Canada,” so please take care that he can.
We have started Urdu with an old Moslem who sits with us on the verandah for an hour every day and says, sometimes, how intelligent we are. But the mere learning of what he tells us in that hour takes us every spare minute up to the next day’s lesson. Urdu, however, is not a hard language. There are very few things to decline and the verbs are very regular. The pronunciation is catchy, though, as there are several new, and for me unpronounceable, consonants — gh — kh — tch — and every other consonant is sounded separately — thus “rakhna” sounds like “rakhana.”
The end of last week we sight-saw a lot with Mr. MacNeil, the boy who was staying here. Friday morning we spent at the Fort, which is really a group of palaces inside two walls. It was frightfully interesting — a lot of the decoration was still there and we were able to see just how Akbar and his wives lived and amused themselves. A great many of the buildings are in white marble with wonderful marble fretwork, and in the blazing sunlight you can’t look at them without dark glasses. The Fort is just above the river, and we were always getting lovely glimpses through arches, of the Taj, with the river below. The pearl mosque was lovely too. The next day we trained it out to Fathephur Sikri — a palace and mosque built on top of one of the very few hills in all the Plains I would say. They have been robbed of all their gilding and precious stones and there is nothing left but the red sandstone — so the court after court of red buildings in the rather ornate Hindu style, with no grass, or at least very little grass — there was grass in one courtyard — was interesting but not as interesting or beautiful as the Fort. Besides Fathephur Sikri was only used for ten years and hasn’t as many stories or ghosts about it as the other places.
Fathepur Sikri
Sunday was a quiet day — church at eight a.m. with a choir made up of Indian high school girls, and again at six, just after sunset. A very interesting and charming Indian doctor from Central India came to tea. On Monday evening all the missionaries in Agra assembled for their weekly “do.” The women, as the chaplain here said, all looked as if they had lost the Pearl of Great Price! But they have hearts of gold. A very interesting man who had, I think, a quadruple first at Cambridge, and who taught at Eton, but who is now taking care of a hostel here for Christian boys, spoke to us about his journey out here by air — interesting enough but not exciting. We then had pale coffee and cakes and walked home in unbelievably bright moonlight. We saw our first mongoose at the bungalow gates — I was much thrilled, remembering Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.
We have been entertained twice by Indian members of the staff and last night we went to a staff dinner. Mrs. Milford and I were the only women there. It was rather fun — Hindus, Moslems and Christians all eating together — something that would have been impossible a few years ago, Canon Holland says, and enjoying themselves tremendously. There were four different dinners being served — an English dinner, a Hindu dinner specially prepared, a real Hindu dinner, and a dinner of fruit. James and I had the English one as we are advised not to try any funny stuff until our insides get acclimatized. I sat next to the head of the Botanical and Natural History School — another delightful man who has asked us to go and look over the gardens and museum, and has promised me lettuces and all sorts of small vegetable plants to take to Aligarh so that we can have our own veges this winter!
Mary at the Pearl Mosque