P029 19370601
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PORTMANTEAU 029
In the filthy
Beastly Train.
1st June, 1937.
Darling Everybody,
Heather's birthday today, many happy returns old female and I hope you don't feel too long in the tooth to enjoy blowing at 20-2 candles. Are you having a party or anything?
Well, we managed to get up at FIVE o'clock this morning and Lassie and Mr Fitz drove us down to the station with the dressing case and the office and the knitting bag and all and there was a huge crowd at the station seeing all sorts of people off – Mrs Griffiths the Assistant Treasurer's wife and two children, who are going home for good as he retires in September; Mr Waugh is going down to Cape Town to get married; Miss Tugwell the old housekeeper at Government House who is going home; and several others, so we were quite in the fashion! We have just crossed the Kafue River, which goes quite near Mankoya, but we didn't see any hippos, there is a Leopard on the train travelling in the guard's van, I suppose it's going to some zoo or other, poor little beast.
I left off last Thursday, didn't I, after telling you about the x-ray, so I'd better do the few days I skipped. On Friday the 21st Nell came up from the Grand Hotel to stay with Mrs Kelly next door, and Lassie and I went for a long walk shooting cards at people. We went to sundowners at the Dutton's, he is Acting Chief Secretary and everybody says he will be made C.S. when The Honourable Charles Dundas leaves to go and be governor of the Bahamas this month. Mrs Dutton is the daughter of Gen Gough who I think you know, don't you, lad? And they've only been out a short time, they were married in London quite soon after us and she is very small and neat and attractive and SO nice and used to be a ballet dancer, rather a good one I believe. He is VERY disgruntled, and she can keep him, thank you.
Saturday the 22nd.
Lassie and I bagged the car from husband and went and did a spot of shopping. When we were here last April I only saw a few mouldy looking little shops and Indian tailors and oddments, straggling along the road opposite the station, but there are really some very good shops, much better than the ones in Livingstone, and two handsome hotels. I went to the bank and gave them daddies beautiful Pearl Pendant to keep safely, as I shan't be needing it till we come home and I feel happier now it's there rather than dashing about the countryside with me.
In the afternoon we had Sir Herbert Dowbiggin to tea. Do you remember him, Mum, you completely fell for him when
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he sat between you and me at dinner at G.H. Colombo when we called there in November, 1934. He was Inspector of Police there for years and years and years, and is absolutely wrapped up in his work, and now he's out here for a few months making a report on the N.R.P. and leaves next week and goes home via Australia and New Zealand and the Mounties in Canada, where he is going to stay with our friend Sir James MacBrien. Well, he knew I was married and in this country but he had forgotten my name and didn't know how to get hold of me and so when Lassie rang him up and said she'd got me staying with her he promptly said "can I come to tea, please" so he forthwith came.
He really is a MOST amusing creature, talks very very fast and shoots questions at you the whole time and you feel that if you don't answer very quickly you won't have time to say everything you've got to say before he asks you something else and you feel so breathless you hardly have time to think! But he was one of those people who make you feel your very important and that he is really interested in what you have to say and all about you. He wanted to know all about where I lived (he had got it into his head we were at Balovale and after tentatively suggesting once that we were at Sesheke I gave up trying to convince him as he was quite determined that we were at Balovale!) And all about the wedding and so on, and he said when he was going "give my love to your boy, I don't know him but giving my love all the same as you must be nice to be your lad" and he said to Mr Fitz "met her in Colombo you know, just the same, just the same, looking very well, very well, country suits, splendid, splendid, met her father in India you know, looking very well, wonderful old man, splendid, splendid, well I must be going now, so glad to have met her again, looking very well, splendid, splendid" and lept into his huge car and roared off, leaving us quite damp and limp and breathless! He was SO nice, and he said he was going to write to you and tell you he had met me and that I was looking very well, splendid, splendid, and he told me how he had quite unexpectedly bumped into you, Dad, at the Viceregal Ball in Delhi in February, and he had also got a glimpse of you up at the place where you were staying when you went to go up to Kashmir – is that Rawalpindi or somewhere? He is such a slave for work that they are trying to find two more secretaries for him as he has exhausted the others they gave him so he suggested that I should volunteer as you remembered how we spend our whole lives typing!
Well, the next day he rang Lassie up and asked if she thought I'd like to go to his sundowner party on Friday night, so Lassie said she was sure I would love to, and he said "I didn't like to ask her yesterday in case she would rather not come" so Lassie said "Yes, I should think she'd like to", so he said "Well, bring her along early and we'll put her in a big chair and she needn't get up at all or disturb herself in any way." Wasn't it sweet of him to think of it – a bachelor to!
Sunday, 23rd.
We got Lusaka whether at last, after having lovely days
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ever since we arrived. There was a howling wind whistling all round the house, and the sand was blowing in in clouds and settling on the veranda and creeping under the door into the rooms and getting through every tiny hole, and it was horribly cold and thoroughly beastly.
But we got a nice bunch of letters to make up for it, and I'll see if there's anything to answer in them.
Mummy.
May 17th - and not a word about the coronation! Did you go up to London for it or was it so crowded you couldn't get in? I'm SO glad Daddy's quite better now, it must be such a relief to you after all the bother of you both being ill when you are moving into Abbotswood.
Also May 20th - all about a Sinister Character Mr Roberts, it certainly sounded as if he was either after your silver or else on his way to a luny-bin, because I've never heard of him in my life and he can't be a friend of G.'s as he said he had never met him – and yet said that Daddy was exactly like him! Most odd. And his old mother who adored me when she met me in Salisbury – and I haven't been to Salisbury! You didn't gather what he does, I suppose? Because there is apparently a Mr Roberts in the Post Office Department, which might be the mysterious brother.
I have told several people to come and see you when they are at home – as investors, Martins, Tyndall-Biscoes, Dowbiggin, etc., but I think I usually tell you about them. It would have been rather fun if you could have caught him out by asking him something about us that was quite untrue – for instance if I'd still got lovely golden hair as you hope the sun hadn't darkened it, or something like that!
The coronation film must have been marvellous, I expect we'll beat having it out here very soon, and I hope it will come before we go up to Mankoya. Ralph very kindly sent us a bunch of coronation papers with lovely pictures of the king and queen in all the finery etc; I meant to send them on to G. but forgot and they are still at the Fitz-Henry's.
We don't want any more nighties, thank you Mummy, and you needn't bother to get us any tropical Viyella as if we need any we can get it from Mrs Upton quite easily. I LOVED the little blue matinee coat, and if only it was a size larger I would wear it myself, but I don't think I will change it because Robin will look far more beautiful in it than I would. The clothes ARE so lovely, we had another gloat over them all when we repack them yesterday for coming down here, and I'm SO thrilled with them all, you are a darling to have got them all for me and I'm so jealous of you having the fun of choosing them. I'm going to write to Greenmama [Gervas's father's step-mother] to thank her for those three beautiful soft shawls.
MUM.
May 16th - all about the coronation, oh you lucky people being able to go, and having such good seats right opposite the Abbey, and hot fun having lunch with all the Queens and
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Kings and Bishops and Knights and Castles and Prawns and things, I hope you behave nicely. We were sorry you didn't tell us more about the procession and everything, as you only said that we read all about it in the papers, which isn't half such fun and we would have liked to hear what YOU saw and what YOU thought of it. Lassie had a letter from a girl who had a seat between Hyde Park and the Marble Arch, and she read it out to us and I read out yours and we are all very excited.
(By Jove this train is awful, it's leaping about like anything and the trite writer is dancing about in front of my eyes and asking me to squint.)
Thanks awfully for fixing Mrs Copley Hewitt, it worried me rather as I thought something had happened to the book, but I still can't imagine why she's kind enough to give us TWO presents.
Yes, OF COURSE we'll send a wire when Robin arrives, and I think we'll send it to Abbotswood as your buzzing about the countryside such a lot in the next month or so and I think they are more likely to be at home. And don't you think we could bring you up?! Nell says I won't be allowed to do anything for 10 days or so, so perhaps you would only be able to talk to G., but that would be all right, and perhaps you could all be in one house so that you could all talk to him, when we know what time to ring up. I've got mums list of dates so we'll try and choose one when you're supposed to be at Pax, unless you've made other plans since then; I believe they arrange it all at the time don't they, we'll tell them to put a call through to you for 12 o'clock tomorrow morning, and then they find out if that's all right for you, and if it isn't I suppose we suggest another time.
Well, that's all there was to answer commissar go on with the news.
Monday the 24th May, Empire Day and a holiday.
Lassie IS a dear, she's being so sweet and kind and encouraging, and is SO amusing, and I feel really at home with them now, I felt rather new at first but now I'm quite happy and they are SUCH a nice couple. It's great fun being with people who were at your wedding, and she told me all about her last meeting with you, Mum, when you were rushing to catch a train and tried to have lunch at the station with her and hadn't time, it sounded such an amusing party and I can just imagine you both going to it hammer and tongs to get in all you had to say!
We went out to morning tea with a Mrs Kollenberg, who comes from Danzig and they always talk German to themselves although they can never go back to Germany because they are Jews.
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at this party there was a person called Mrs Middleton who is Pschyschich [sic] and told our fortunes by RT-cuts. It was very exciting and I do hope some of mine come true as she gave me a lovely one. An aeroplane arriving, and the letter G and much happiness, and the letter are coming into my life, that must be a G.flying down to see me and Robin! And she saw a cat, which means domestic peace and happiness, and within the year a great change in promotion and higher pay and we would be very pleased about it. I suppose that will mean we have to leave Mankoya, which will be an awful shame and a great nuisance, but she says will be pleased about it so that's all right. Well, I wonder how much of it will come true – she said one or two more dull things as well – and it will be rather fun to see if there IS anything in it. I don't know whether to believe in fortunes or not because that woman on the Dunnottar has proved wrong already and she said I was going home this year and wouldn't have Robin till I come back!
In the evening some people came to dinner and we all went to the buyer scope, has some people out here insist on calling it – a most objectionable name I think though I suppose it isn't done to criticise the Original Greek. We saw a thing called "Piccadilly Jim", which was really awfully funny and not a bit American although it had some American actors in it – there was Robert Montgomery, Eric Blore (who is terribly funny and so good at looking pained) Madge Evans and a lot of et ceteras and we enjoyed it a lot.
Thursday, 27th.
We went up to the hospital again to make final arrangements about me going, and she wired to Dr Black specialist in Johannesburg, to ask if he could see me and to fix up for me to stay somewhere, and he answered that that would be all right and I'm to stay at the Clarendon maternity home and I hope Nell will be able to stay somewhere quite close. Dr Thompson said she advised taking her with me for that beastly journey, and Lassie said that if Nell didn't go with me SHE would as she couldn't have me busing about the countryside alone, she wouldn't trust me! She's SO sweet.
In the afternoon Mr Fitz took me out to the Government Nursery – no, not THAT kind of nursery, fathead – which Maj Dutton looks after and is very proud of, and I picked out one or two plants to send up to Mankoya. It was rather difficult as I didn't know what there was there already
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except poinsettias, so I just had to pick out the things I thought I would like and hope for the best. I ordered some frangipani, jacaranda, flamboyant, tricoma, golden shower, etc, and I tried to get a beautiful bright red Bougainville your which the B.S.A. company has all round its office, they have got only a very little and aren't giving it away, as they want to breed from it.
That evening we went out to sundowners with the Fairleys and dinner with the Lockharts, who is the Treasurer and great fun, and after dinner we had Dumb Crambo, and also a lovely game: there were five people sitting on a sofa and they were each given a whole Daily Telegraph with the pages all muddled up, and they had to sort them out into the right order, and they couldn't do it on the floor because they were supposed to be in the Underground and there were strap hangers in front of them. It was the funniest sight, everybody getting in each other's way and odd bits of paper floating about and being snatched up by angry owners.
Friday, 28th May.
Lassie took me out to Lilander for the Ladies Lunch Club, which was rather fun – about 20 women there and we had lunch and then did an entertainment range by Mrs Lockhart, in the form of a questionnaire, with a marvellous variety of questions: what is the longest river, how many yards in a mile, what colour is malachite, who wrote little women, what is the capital of Czechoslovakia, who is the male star in cavalcade, do stalactites hang down or stick up? etc., etc., really a very clever one, 36 questions altogether and Emily Bradley one with 29, Mrs Tatham (a scream of a woman who was thrilled to discover that she was old enough to be my grandmother!) And I did it together because we were too stupid to do it separately, and we got 18 between us!
This evening we went to Sir Herbert Dowbiggin's sundowner party at the Regimental Mess, a very nice party and he was in SUCH good form, rushing around talking to everybody and he put me on a sofa with Mrs Lockhart and somebody else and said he had already written to you to tell you he had seen me and that I was looking very well, very well, splendid splendid, which I thought was marvellous of him when he must be so busy as he leaves next week.
The F.s were going to somebody's farewell parties so I went to dinner with the Bradleys and had an early bed and was fast asleep long before the others came in. Joy, the dear old Alsatian, and the vast marmalade cat came and kept me company.
29th, Saturday
Nell came and repacked all the Robin things in the handsome Nellie Burton suitcase, and we are taking everything
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with us in case we have to stay, or rather so that we won't have to stay, because if you take an umbrella out for a walk with you it never rains.
I went out to lunch with the Acting Governor, Mr Dundas, who has just been appointed Governor of the Bahamas, there was only him and the A.D.C. and a couple of other men and Me, as one of the other men's wife was meant to come but couldn't, so there I was marooned in a vast bevy of men. But it was great fun, and he was terribly thrilled at the idea of going home and Then going out to the Bahamas, he had been G.S. there and, so he knows it well. He leaves on the 8th, the Youngs arrived by air on the 4th.
In the evening we had a Mrs Cree to dinner and all went to see Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers in "Swing Time" which I didn't think was nearly up to the usual standard, in fact definitely below it, with a very pointless story and not enough dancing and the tunes weren't in the least catchy, and I DO wish they wouldn't try to sing as they've both got AWFUL voices, and it would be such an improvement if they just stuck to the dancing which is definitely good.
But there was a Lovely Silly Symphony in colour, Donald Duck and Pluto, which was really awfully clever and kept us in shrieks of laughter.
Sunday the 30th.
Lassie hadn't been at all well lately, so she stayed in bed all day to have a good rest as she is going to have rather a strenuous week this week, so it was very sensible of her. He ought to be in bed to as he's got an awful cold and a beastly throat and what's more he's given it to ME!
So he took Mrs Tatham and her daughter Dimps, who is the Governor's secretary, and me out to a farm for the day. It belongs to Mr and Mrs Brett, he is very tall and absolutely outrageously good-looking, but very shy, she is small and neat and one of the brightest, merriest little people I've met for a long time, and they've got a two-year-old son called Michael. We drove out about 25 miles to get there, between wide flat stretches of highbrow and coarse grass and scrubby little trees, and we passed a bushfire weren't close enough to see the flames.
When we were nearly there we suddenly came over a small rise in there before us was the most wonderful view – the great drop-down from where we were and then as far as we could see just nothing but plain – and Mr Fitz said "That's Mankoya over there" oh the beast, I wanted to just go on driving and driving straight ahead to try and get there, though it was too far off to see of course – only a matter of a mere 200 miles or so!
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the brats have built their house right on the top of a kopje, with lovely wooky rocks and aloes and cacti sticking up all over the place, an attractive white bungalow with a wide Veranda and very homey, and the most heavenly view; people at Mazabuka, 80 miles away, say they can see the house from the golf course there! Mankoya was out to the West, and I faced it all through lunch but luckily I couldn't see very far because there was a hill in the way. But I did wish I had got a telescope.
We had a very nice lunch, there was one other couple there and then all the afternoon was spent just lazing, and knitting, and talking, and Dimps went to sleep and I was taken off to lie down and rest till teatime. After tea we all went to look at the chickens – thousands and thousands of beautiful pure-bred white Leghorns; they tried to sell a lot of their eggs and their young Cox two people in Lusaka, but nobody would buy them as they preferred to have the skinny, mouldy little chickens port round by the natives, rather than pay2/6 for a lovely fat English Kok, but they get a very good market up at the mines – Ndola, Broken Hill, and Nkana, etc, – so they send them all up there and it pays them hands down.
But Mrs Brett said it was tragic just after incubating time, when they had to sort out all the young Cox and kill them; last year they had 3000, and because nobody would buy them they just had to BURN nearly the whole lot, just keeping enough for their own uses and some they gave to friends. Isn't it an awful waste.
They make all their own bricks for building new chicken houses, and just in the middle of building a little house for their assistant, and they live practically entirely on what they can grow except for the usual sugar, tea etc. they have a fine kitchen garden with literally banks of lettuce, carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, beans and peas, potatoes, radishes, beetroot, tomatoes, cucumber, and so on ad lib, infra dig etc.
Then we all walked up the hill again, and after some darning we had to tootle off as Lassie wanted to meet the evening train. On the way back we saw several Eyes in the headlights, and Mr Fitz said that several times on this road he had seen a leopard so we must look out for him, and of course we saw dozens but I think they were only rabbits really, though one looked much too big for a rabbit, so we'll call it a leopard anyway as nobody can prove it wasn't. We also saw several little buck, who lept away into the grass with a great bound as we came along, and thousands of tiny rats, who had evidently been turned out of their holes by the bushfires.
There were several little bits of bush fires we could see from the road, just patches of smouldering grass and here and there are trees still blazing away merrily, and then we came on the King of all Bush Fires, on the right-hand side of the road and the wind blowing towards the road. From a long way off we could see the flames in the clouds of red smoke and we thought
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for a time that we would be well clear of it, but then we came shooting round the corner to see it licking right up close to the road, and a bit of it spread across the other side. Luckily there wasn't a very violent wind, and the grass at the edge of the road was quite short, so Mr Fitz said "Hold tight will make a dash for it". So he banged the accelerator down and we Roared through the Flames at Forty Miles an Hour, with the Flames Roaring around us and the two in the back Roaring with Terror. But Nature was vanquished and we Got Through untouched.
It was awfully exciting, and the flames made such a thrilling crackly noise like bacon frying, and it was a fitting end to a day in the African Bush.
Monday, 31st May.
All the morning Nell stood on her head over suitcases, and we packed up several things in cardboard boxes to send up to Mankoya with Peter when he goes – all the thin frocks and the things I can't get into any more! – And we managed to get everything in somehow with a little room to spare, including a tin of Ovaltine, and in the afternoon a lorry came up from the Grand Hotel to fetch them down to the station so that we wouldn't have too much in the morning, and we just left the dressing case, the beautiful dressing case, and the knitting bag and the rug and a cushion Lassie has lent us.
Poor Lassie had an irritating morning. Last night Miss receipt Forbes, alias Mrs McGrath, arrived in Lusaka for two days, and she has consented to give a lecture on The Dictators of Today, and she is said to know them all very well indeed personally, and the proceeds to go to the Guide Hut Building Fund (which still wants for £30). Well, Lassie rang up the Dutton, where Rizzuto was staying, and asked them to bring her along to lunch, and Dutton answered and said he did not know as the lady was not up yet and she would bring up as soon as he knew and let Lassie know. And he never rang up,there was poor Lassie preparing a nice lunch, not knowing if they'd turn up or not – which of course they didn't!
Anyway she went along there for tea and had a long chat with resonator and came back bursting with enthusiasm and said she was MOST interesting and really knew what she was talking about, and a most fascinating personality and a Fine Figure of a Woman and very good-looking and distingay. The lecture was to be on Tuesday night, so we missed it, I'm sorry to say, as I should love to have gone.
That night Lassie and Fitz went to dinner and dance at Government House, sort of farewell party to the A.D.C. (though why he needs a farewell party when he isn't going, but is just being transferred into the Secretariat here I don't know!) So the Kelly's very kindly asked me to dinner with them and we had a good early bed ready to get up at Sparrow-squawk the
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next day. We listened to the news first and heard about the Hengist crashing, that was the big one we saw at Croydon just going off, wasn't it. We also heard a bit more about Spain, and those fools on the Deutschland throwing bombs about in the most careless manner, and it seemed very sinister and as if everybody was getting even more war-minded than ever, and we are wondering how long will be able to keep out of it as we are so stupidly chivalrous with probably but in whether we like it or not. Is the League of Nations dead, or merely a sleep, or just blind? Has the nonintervention packed being torn up, or merely lost? Surely nobody can really want war, it makes me so CROSS excavation mark
Tuesday, 1st June.
We somehow managed to get down to the station by 6.30 a.m. and I don't know how Lassie and Fitz managed it as they didn't get home till after one! Luckily we didn't have a guilty conscience at hauling them out of their beds so early as they wanted to come down anyhow to see Mrs Griffiths off, and Mr Brigham who is on his way to Livingstone to take over from the Onions, and also Mr Waugh (commonly known as Wuff) who is going down to Cape Town to get married. It's rather pathetic, he has received nothing but discouragement, everybody says "OH DON'T do that whatever you do, it's a most Dangerous thing to do, think of the Poor Girl" and Mr Griffiths showed him the two children and all the piles of luggage and toys and coats and things that belonged to his family, and said "now look what you're in for, and get out of it while there is Yet Time!"
So we started off, and I did this Portmanteau all the morning and we vaguely slept in the afternoon, and it was luckily not half so hot as it was going up to Lusaka from Livingstone as we had a carriage on the good side, that it was Horrible all the same. We had a very good lunch and some tea but suddenly had a fit of the economy so just had a lot of sandwiches and some Ovaltine for supper, we hadn't run for any more anyway. I had written to Mrs Jager to tell her we were passing through and would she come down to the train to see us, at Livingstone, but there was no sign of her at all so I expect she was away or out or something. But Mr Onions was there meeting Mr Brigham, and he saved our life, because we had suddenly remembered, in the train, that we hadn't got my passport!! I had sent it on up to Mankoya with G., never imagining that I'd be going out of the country, so Mr Onions gave me a letter certifying that I was Me and Bona Fide Wife of a District Officer, and he stuck his Magistrate's Seal on it and it looked very imposing, enough to strike awe into the hearts of all who beheld it, and that got us through all right. But they have taken it away from us so I don't know how we'll get back again!
Well, we had this morning in Bulawayo and breakfast at the Grand Hotel and now I must go to bed, good night
Lots of love everybody, and I'll write again soon I expect.
BET.
