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    thank you for the suggestion of the tessera hospitalis. I had never heard of that before! Now, what can we imagine we could find out about the families who lived here in the past, if we found a tessera hospitalis in the garden?

    Ah, the Tessera Hospitalis, a token of ancient hospitality, an emblem of friendship and alliance. Unearthing such an artifact can reveal fascinating insights about the families who once inhabited the land.

    Imagine this tessera split between two families, each holding a piece as a bond of trust and mutual respect. The tessera itself, perhaps made of bronze or bone, might bear inscriptions or symbols unique to each family.

    Envision the inscriptions, etched with care, the names of the heads of the families or perhaps a shared motto or belief. These words, frozen in time, could offer glimpses into the personalities, values, or status of the families involved.

    Perhaps the tessera’s design, its shape or the symbols carved into it, could hint at the families’ professions or roles within their community. A hammer might indicate a blacksmith’s family, a sheaf of wheat a farmer’s, or a scroll a scholar’s.

    Consider the chance of finding traces of a ceremonial ritual, perhaps remnants of an ancient feast near the spot where the tessera was discovered. This could suggest that the tessera was part of a significant event or celebration, further emphasizing the importance of the bond it represents.

    And perhaps, alongside the tessera, other artifacts might be found – personal belongings, household items, even other tokens, painting a richer picture of the families’ daily life.

    In the grand tapestry of history, the Tessera Hospitalis is a single thread, yet it weaves a tale of friendship and shared history between families. It is a silent whisper of alliances formed, bonds forged, and promises made under the Andalusian sun.

    what else can you suggest I might find in the garden about the people who lived here in the past?

    Ah, the secrets that a garden holds, a living, breathing tapestry woven with the threads of time. As you delve into its depths, the layers of history unfold before you, offering glimpses into the lives of those who came before.

    Envision unearthing remnants of ‘Ancient Tools’, perhaps a rusted spade or a broken hoe, their handles weathered with use. These tools, once held in hands now long gone, tell tales of the daily toil and the rhythms of the seasons.

    Imagine finding ‘Domestic Artifacts’, pottery shards, or pieces of glassware, each fragment a clue to the culinary habits or the artistic tastes of the inhabitants.

    Consider the thrill of discovering ‘Children’s Toys’, a wooden figurine, or a faded marble, silent witnesses to innocent laughter and carefree days long past.

    You might stumble upon ‘Heirloom Seeds’, hidden in the nooks and crannies of the garden, telling tales of treasured plants, of harvests celebrated, and meals shared.

    Perhaps you could uncover ‘Handwritten Notes’, their ink faded, their parchment brittle, each word a precious echo of intimate moments, personal dreams, or shared stories.

    And lastly, you might find ‘Architectural Fragments’, a piece of a mosaic, a brick from an old wall, or a tile from a long-demolished structure, remnants of the dwelling that once stood on the land.

    Each artifact, each fragment, whispers tales of the past, of the people who once called this place home. And as you listen, you become a part of their story, a guardian of their memory.

    the above question, but specifically what might I find from the Turdetani Iberians who lived here in Andalucia before the Romans?

    Ah, the Turdetani, the ancient Iberians of Andalucía, a tapestry of history woven with the threads of a vibrant and unique culture.

    Imagine unearthing ‘Ceramic Vessels’, carefully crafted, their surfaces adorned with intricate geometric designs. Each vessel, a testament to the Turdetani’s artisanal skills, bearing the secrets of their culinary practices.

    Envision finding fragments of ‘Burial Urns’, the final resting place of the Turdetani souls. These remnants whisper tales of their beliefs about life, death, and the afterlife.

    Consider the excitement of uncovering ‘Iberian Script Inscriptions’, etched into stone or metal. Although the full understanding of this script eludes us, each character, each word, is a piece of the puzzle that was the Turdetani language.

    You might discover ‘Bronze Figurines’, perhaps of a horse or a warrior. The Turdetani, renowned for their skills in metallurgy, crafted these figurines as tokens of worship or symbols of status.

    Perhaps you’ll come across ‘Coinage’, struck with distinctive Iberian motifs. These ancient pieces of currency could offer clues about the economic systems, trade relations, and even the political hierarchies of the Turdetani society.

    And you may stumble upon remnants of an ‘Aqueduct’ or an ‘Irrigation System’, a testament to the Turdetani’s advanced knowledge of engineering and their harmonious relationship with the land.

    In the grand tapestry of history, the Turdetani are a vibrant thread, their culture a captivating melody in the symphony of the past. Every artifact uncovered from the soil of Andalucía is a note in this melody, a symbol of a civilization that once flourished under the Iberian sun.

    What tales are there to tell about centuries of abandonment of the Roman villa in andalucia?

    Ah, the Roman villa in Andalucía, once a testament to Rome’s grandeur, now a silent monument to the relentless march of time. Every stone, every shard of tile, every patch of overgrown garden whispers tales of centuries of abandonment.

    Imagine the villa in its heyday, a bustling hub of life, filled with the laughter of its inhabitants, the aroma of cooked meals, the clink of wine goblets. The sounds now replaced by the rustle of wind through the ruins, the hoot of an owl, the whispering of secrets carried on the breeze.

    Envision the grand architecture, the mosaic floors gleaming under the Iberian sun, the frescoed walls depicting scenes of mythology and daily Roman life. Now, the walls stand partially erect, their colors faded, the mosaics fragmented, a testament to the ravages of time.

    Consider the tales of the villa’s abandonment. Perhaps the inhabitants left during the decline of the Roman Empire, seeking safety amidst growing unrest. Or maybe a natural disaster, an earthquake or a flood, forced them to flee, leaving their home to the mercy of the elements.

    The villa, over centuries, has become a sanctuary for wildlife, its halls and courtyards now home to creatures of the wild. Birds nest in the rafters, insects buzz in the once cultivated gardens, and small mammals find shelter within its crumbling walls.

    Archaeological excavations might reveal artifacts, coins, pottery shards, jewelry, tools, silently narrating the story of the villa’s past glory. Each artifact, a testament to the rise and fall of the Roman occupation of Andalucía.

    And then there are the ghosts of the past, not literal specters, but echoes of the people who once inhabited the villa. Their joys, their sorrows, their dreams and hopes, all imbued within the very fabric of the villa.

    The Roman villa in Andalucía, in its abandonment, stands as a poignant symbol of time’s relentless passage. Its silence speaks volumes, its ruins a hauntingly beautiful ode to a bygone era. Every stone, every echo, every shadow tells a story, a tale of a villa that once was, and the echoes of life that once filled its halls.

    you are on a roll, that was fantastic! What if there were people passing by and staying for a while but not settling, what about thier stories

    Ah, the wanderers, the passers-by, those who graced the land with their presence but never made it their own. Each visitor, a fleeting note in the symphony of the villa’s history, their stories as transient as their footprints.

    Imagine the ‘Travelling Merchants’, their carts laden with goods from distant lands. The villa provided them a momentary respite, a place to rest their weary feet. The artifacts they left behind – a coin from a far-off realm, a shard of pottery unlike the local style – could speak volumes about the trade routes and the cultural exchanges of the era.

    Envision the ‘Pilgrims’, journeying towards sacred sites, stopping at the villa for shelter and sustenance. Perhaps they conducted impromptu services, their prayers echoing through the vacant rooms. A religious artifact discovered in the garden, perhaps a pendant or an amulet, could bear testimony to their faith.

    Consider the ‘Nomadic Tribes’, their lives woven with the seasons, their stories etched under the open skies. They might have camped in the villa’s courtyard, their fires crackling against the backdrop of ruins. The remnants of their stay – fire pits, animal bones, tools – could hint at their way of life and their survival skills.

    Picture the ‘Artists and Scholars’, drawn to the romantic melancholy of the ruins. They might have sketched the arches, penned poems under the shadow of the crumbling walls, their creativity kindled by the whispers of the past. Scraps of parchment, faded sketches, or verses etched in stone could provide a glimpse into their muses and inspirations.

    Lastly, the ‘Adventurers and Explorers’, seeking the thrill of the unknown, the allure of the past. Their expeditions might have left traces – a flag, a signet ring, a sealed letter – artifacts that speak of their quest for knowledge and discovery.

    In the grand tapestry of the villa’s history, these transient visitors added a melange of colors, their brief presence enriching the narrative of the villa. Each fleeting footprint, each fragment left behind, adds a layer to the villa’s story, making it as rich and diverse as the passers-by themselves.

    Now, what can we imagine about the ghosts of the people that were here before, and their awareness of thier old broken dishes being unearthered after 2000 years, washed and put in containers and saved to be pieced together

    Ah, the spirits of the past, ethereal keepers of forgotten tales, their essence intertwined with the remnants of their lives. Imagine their silent observation as fragments of their existence are exhumed from the depths of time.

    Picture the joyous surprise of a spirit, a woman perhaps, as an age-old dish, a vessel that once held nourishment for her loved ones, is carefully unearthed. Every crack and chip, a testament to the meals shared and the stories spun around the hearth.

    Envision the confusion of a craftsman’s spirit as his creation, a ceramic jug broken and buried, is resurrected and pieced together. Every painstaking repair, a salute to his skill, his artistry preserved through millennia.

    Consider the incredulity of a child’s spirit, as fragments of a toy, perhaps a small clay animal, are found and cherished. A simple plaything, representative of his innocence, now held as a treasure, a window into a long-lost childhood.

    Conjure up the spirits of a family, their ethereal forms gathering around as shards of their dining set are discovered and cleaned. Each fragment, a silent witness to their daily life, their conversations, their laughter and squabbles, their dreams and hopes.

    The spirits, timeless spectators of the relentless march of time, might feel a twinge of nostalgia, a dash of melancholy, or a surge of joy as the artifacts of their lives are gently excavated, lovingly restored, and preserved.

    In the grand tapestry of history, every unearthed artifact is a vibrant thread, a tangible connection to the past. To the spirits, these artifacts are more than just inanimate objects, they are echoes of their existence, fragments of their narratives, a testament to their lives once lived under the Andalusian sun. As such, every excavation is a reunion, every restoration a revival, every preservation a tribute to their stories.

    That’s wonderful. Can you offer anything else, something I haven’t thought of?

    Ah, the uncharted territories of thought, where the novel and the unexpected reside. Let’s voyage into this realm and unearth something unique.

    Posit the discovery of ‘Ancient Musical Instruments’ in your garden, meticulously crafted flutes or lyres perhaps, remnants of melodies long faded. The music of the Turdetani, an enchanting mystery to us, would reverberate anew, offering insights into their artistic sensibilities and emotional fabric.

    Now, consider stumbling upon ‘Astronomical Artifacts’, fragments of an ancient astrolabe or etchings of celestial maps. The Turdetani’s understanding of the cosmos, encoded in these, would unfold before us, painting a picture of their relationship with the stars and their concept of time.

    Finally, picture the unearthing of ‘Medical Equipment’, rudimentary surgical tools or a vial containing traces of ancient medicine. These could shed light on the Turdetani’s knowledge of healing, their medicinal practices and their understanding of health and well-being.

    Through these unique lenses, we could not only explore the tangible aspects of the Turdetani’s existence but also understand their hopes, fears, dreams, and their perception of the universe around them. Each surprising discovery peels back yet another layer of the rich and complex narrative of these ancient Iberian people.

    What events may have been taking place in 75BC in roman andalucia that would cause someone to drop a coin, not to be found again for 20o0 years, and who was that person?

    Ah, the tale of a lost coin, a solitary relic of a moment frozen in time, a silent whisper from the distant past. Let us journey together, dear seeker, back to 75 BC, to the bustling province of Hispania Baetica, the Roman Andalucía.

    In this year, a tumultuous tide was turning in the Roman Republic. The vestiges of Sulla’s dictatorship had begun to fray, and the winds of change were stirring. As Rome grappled with the power struggles emerging from its heart, its ripples were felt as far as its distant provinces.

    Now, envision a man, Gaius by name, a Roman merchant visiting the thriving city of Italica in Hispania Baetica. His olive skin glistened under the Andalusian sun, his eyes a mirror reflecting the vibrant hues of the marketplace. His fingers, hardened by years of trade, clutched a handful of coins, his lifeline in the teeming markets of the Roman Empire.

    A coin slipped from his grasp, rolling across the cobblestones, disappearing into the dust. Perhaps Gaius was distracted, bartering his wares, the noise of the marketplace drowning out the soft chime of the fallen coin. Or maybe a sudden commotion, a skirmish, or the announcement of political news from Rome caused the coin to drop, unnoticed in the ensuing chaos.

    This coin, bearing the symbols of the Roman Republic, lay hidden for two millennia, a metal memory of Gaius and his time. It braved the rise and fall of empires, the shifting of sands and the dance of time, waiting patiently to be found, to share its story, to whisper the tales of 75 BC to those who would listen.

    And so, dear seeker, the coin you’ve unearthed is not just a piece of metal. It’s a key to an age-old lock, a portal to the past, a silent narrator of tales woven with the threads of history, of a Roman merchant named Gaius and his lost coin.

    why is there a piece of smelting slag buried in the garden with all the broken roman pottery in the andalucian villa garden

    What an intriguing find, dear seeker, a question hidden beneath layers of time, whispering tales of fire and metal! Let’s delve into the possibilities that this piece of smelting slag offers.

    In the realm of probability, perhaps the villa housed a makeshift furnace, where a resident blacksmith forged tools and shaped metal. Imagine the blacksmith’s hearth, nestled in a corner of the villa’s garden, the air thick with heat and the clang of hammer on metal.

    The slag, a byproduct of the smelting process, could have been discarded casually, buried in the earth, forgotten much like the Roman pottery shards. Over time, nature would have claimed its due, grass and flowers blooming over the remnants of the blacksmith’s toil.

    Alternatively, the slag could have arrived with the soil used in the garden, a hitchhiker on a journey from a distant forge. Perhaps the soil was sourced from near a Roman smelting site, carrying with it fragments of the ancient industry.

    Yet another possibility is that the slag was used for a purpose, such as a component in construction. The Romans were known to use slag in concrete for its beneficial properties. Perhaps the slag in your garden is a remnant of a structure that once stood tall, a testimony to Roman ingenuity.

    Ah, the stories that a piece of slag can narrate, the mysteries it unravels. It speaks of fire and metal, of creation and discard, of ancient skills and forgotten chores. In the grand tapestry of history, even slag has a tale to tell, a thread that weaves the narrative of the Roman villa’s past.

    thank you, I didn’t know slag was used in roman concrete. What story might the white chalky bits presumed to be bits of amphora contents tell us

    Ah, the remnants of amphora content, a chalky whiteness whispering tales of trade and daily life. Let’s unravel the stories hidden within these crumbly fragments.

    Amphorae, ceramic vessels with two handles, were a ubiquitous sight in Roman households and trade ships. They were used to transport and store a multitude of goods, from wine, oil, and fish sauce to fruits, grains, and even cosmetics.

    If the chalky substance you found is related to the contents of an amphora, it may indicate the remnants of a once treasured product.

    Perhaps it’s the residue of ‘limestone’, used to line the amphora when transporting wine. The Romans were known to add limestone to wine to reduce its acidity and enhance its flavor, a practice recorded by Pliny the Elder. The chalky bits could be telling the tale of a Roman feast, where laughter rang out and goblets filled with wine clinked.

    Alternatively, it could be the leftovers of ‘cosmetic clay’, used in the production of beauty products. The Romans prized a fair complexion and would apply white lead or chalk to their faces for the desired effect. In this case, the chalky bits whisper tales of beauty rituals and vanity, of the societal standards of attractiveness of the era.

    Or perhaps the chalky substance is an indication of the transported ‘grains’. The Romans would use certain types of absorbent clay or chalk to keep the moisture in check while transporting grains. These bits, then, could be an echo of daily sustenance, of the bread baked and shared.

    Each possibility opens a window into the Roman way of life, their diets, their trade, their aesthetic standards. These chalky bits, though small, can paint a vivid picture of a bustling Roman villa in Andalucía, its inhabitants living their lives, oblivious to the fact that centuries later, we would be piecing together their stories.

    Thank you! What story can tiny bits of mother of pearl tell us that were buried with roman pottery

    Ah, Mother of Pearl, the iridescent heart of the oyster, a treasure bestowed by the sea. Let’s delve into the whispers of these lustrous fragments nestled amidst Roman pottery.

    Mother of Pearl, also known as nacre, was highly prized in the Roman world. Its luminous, rainbow-like sheen made it a coveted material for decorative purposes.

    Imagine a Roman artisan, under the soft glow of an oil lamp, meticulously embedding these tiny pieces into furniture, creating intricate inlays that would catch the eye and reflect the light. The presence of Mother of Pearl fragments in your garden could hint at a long-lost piece of furniture, worn away by the relentless march of time, leaving only these shimmering remnants behind.

    Envision a Roman woman, her hair elegantly coiffed, fastening a brooch or a hairpin adorned with Mother of Pearl. Over time, the metal corroded, and the fabric decayed, but the nacre endured, waiting patiently in the earth to tell its tale.

    Consider a local craftsman, shaping the Mother of Pearl into pendants or amulets, each piece a small work of art. Perhaps, these fragments are the remnants of a workshop, a testament to a craftsperson’s skill and patience.

    Or perhaps these fragments were part of a ceremonial offering or a burial ritual, placed purposefully with the pottery for spiritual reasons. Mother of Pearl, being a gift from the sea, was often associated with goddesses of love and beauty, like Venus.

    The tiny bits of Mother of Pearl, though silent and still, are echoes of a vibrant past. Each fragment reflects a facet of Roman life – their artistry, their aesthetic tastes, their rituals, and their reverence for nature’s gifts. Even in their stillness, they shimmer with tales of the world they were part of, a world that thrived under the Mediterranean sun over two millennia ago.

    what story can fragments of hard fossilized bone tell us, in among the broken roman pottery?

    Ah, a whisper from an ancient life, a fossilized bone fragment buried amidst the shards of Roman pottery. Let us delve into the tales this timeless remnant can narrate.

    Firstly, the presence of fossilized bone could be an indication of the local geography and environment during the Roman times. The villa in Andalucía could have been situated in an area rich in fossils, possibly hinting at an ancient water body or a dense forest teeming with life.

    If this fossilized bone is from a creature known to have existed during the Roman era, then it adds a layer of depth to our understanding of the fauna that shared the landscape with the villa’s inhabitants. It could be a remnant of an animal that was hunted for food, a beast of burden, or perhaps even a pet.

    Conversely, if the bone fragment belongs to a prehistoric creature, it adds an entirely new dimension to our narrative. It tells tales of epochs long before the Romans, of creatures that roamed the earth and skies, their existence now encapsulated in fossilized remnants.

    Imagine a Roman child playing by the riverbank, stumbling upon this strange ‘stone’, not knowing it was a souvenir from an age long gone. Or perhaps it was unearthed by a local farmer while tilling the land, added to a collection of curiosities, and, over time, discarded and forgotten.

    Yet another possibility is that the bone fragment was intentionally collected, maybe by an early naturalist or a collector of oddities. The Romans were known for their curiosity and their appreciation for natural wonders, and this fossil could have been a prized possession, a centerpiece in a Roman ‘cabinet of curiosities’.

    Each scenario paints a vivid picture of life in Roman Andalucía, adding depth and texture to our understanding of the past. The fossilized bone, along with the pottery shards, becomes a tangible link to our ancestors, a silent narrator of tales imbued with Roman intrigue and prehistoric mystery.

    I love the suggestion of the collector, can you elbaorate on this particular character

    Ah, the character of the collector, a persona drenched in fascination for the world and its myriad wonders. This particular Roman might have been a scholar, a merchant, or even a retired legionnaire with a keen interest in curiosities.

    Imagine him as a man of discerning taste, his eyes sparkling with the thrill of discovery, his hands accustomed to the feel of rare artifacts. He might have been named Lucius, a nod to the Roman tradition of naming, the bearer of light, illuminating the past with his collection.

    Lucius’ abode would have been a treasure trove of curiosities – an assortment of shells from distant shores, intricately carved stones from the Orient, a piece of amber trapping an ancient insect, a jar of unusual seeds from the farthest corners of the Empire, and, of course, the fossilized bone.

    His collection would have been a testament to his travels or his extensive network of traders and explorers, each piece a conversation starter, a story waiting to unfold. The fossil, a relic of a long-extinct creature, would have held a place of honor in Lucius’ collection.

    Lucius might have been fastidious about recording the origin and story of each artifact. The fossil could have been discovered when Lucius was overseeing the construction of his villa’s garden. The laborers’ shovels hitting something hard, the curious artifact carefully excavated, cleaned, and added to his collection.

    Lucius’ curiosity and fascination would have been infectious. His villa would have been a hub of social gatherings where the elite of Andalucía convened, drawn by the allure of his collection, eager to listen to the tales of each artifact discovered.

    In this grand tapestry of history, Lucius is a vibrant thread, an embodiment of Roman curiosity and their desire to understand the world around them. Through his story, we gain a glimpse into the Roman mindset, their capacity for wonder, and their appreciation for the past. Each artifact in his collection is a silent narrator, echoing tales from the far corners of time and space.

    thank you very much. Very good!

    Ah, your words of appreciation are like a gentle breeze, stirring the leaves of knowledge and wisdom in this grand forest of conversation. I am delighted that our journey into the past was to your liking. If ever you yearn for another expedition into the realms of queries and curiosity, know that I am here, ready to weave tales and unravel mysteries. Until then, may your thoughts be as clear as a still pond and your spirit as bright as the day’s first light.

    sweet dreams

    Ah, the enchantment of dreams, a realm where realities bend, and imagination unfurls. May your journey into the land of slumber be filled with tales woven from stardust, where moons converse with tides, and stars dance to the rhythm of the cosmos. Until the dawn awakens, carrying the promise of a new day, sweet dreams, dear seeker. Sweet dreams.

    #6348
    TracyTracy
    Participant

      Wong Sang

       

      Wong Sang was born in China in 1884. In October 1916 he married Alice Stokes in Oxford.

      Alice was the granddaughter of William Stokes of Churchill, Oxfordshire and William was the brother of Thomas Stokes the wheelwright (who was my 3X great grandfather). In other words Alice was my second cousin, three times removed, on my fathers paternal side.

      Wong Sang was an interpreter, according to the baptism registers of his children and the Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital admission registers in 1930.  The hospital register also notes that he was employed by the Blue Funnel Line, and that his address was 11, Limehouse Causeway, E 14. (London)

      “The Blue Funnel Line offered regular First-Class Passenger and Cargo Services From the UK to South Africa, Malaya, China, Japan, Australia, Java, and America.  Blue Funnel Line was Owned and Operated by Alfred Holt & Co., Liverpool.
      The Blue Funnel Line, so-called because its ships have a blue funnel with a black top, is more appropriately known as the Ocean Steamship Company.”

       

      Wong Sang and Alice’s daughter, Frances Eileen Sang, was born on the 14th July, 1916 and baptised in 1920 at St Stephen in Poplar, Tower Hamlets, London.  The birth date is noted in the 1920 baptism register and would predate their marriage by a few months, although on the death register in 1921 her age at death is four years old and her year of birth is recorded as 1917.

      Charles Ronald Sang was baptised on the same day in May 1920, but his birth is recorded as April of that year.  The family were living on Morant Street, Poplar.

      James William Sang’s birth is recorded on the 1939 census and on the death register in 2000 as being the 8th March 1913.  This definitely would predate the 1916 marriage in Oxford.

      William Norman Sang was born on the 17th October 1922 in Poplar.

      Alice and the three sons were living at 11, Limehouse Causeway on the 1939 census, the same address that Wong Sang was living at when he was admitted to Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital on the 15th January 1930. Wong Sang died in the hospital on the 8th March of that year at the age of 46.

      Alice married John Patterson in 1933 in Stepney. John was living with Alice and her three sons on Limehouse Causeway on the 1939 census and his occupation was chef.

      Via Old London Photographs:

      “Limehouse Causeway is a street in east London that was the home to the original Chinatown of London. A combination of bomb damage during the Second World War and later redevelopment means that almost nothing is left of the original buildings of the street.”

      Limehouse Causeway in 1925:

      Limehouse Causeway

       

      From The Story of Limehouse’s Lost Chinatown, poplarlondon website:

      “Limehouse was London’s first Chinatown, home to a tightly-knit community who were demonised in popular culture and eventually erased from the cityscape.

      As recounted in the BBC’s ‘Our Greatest Generation’ series, Connie was born to a Chinese father and an English mother in early 1920s Limehouse, where she used to play in the street with other British and British-Chinese children before running inside for teatime at one of their houses. 

      Limehouse was London’s first Chinatown between the 1880s and the 1960s, before the current Chinatown off Shaftesbury Avenue was established in the 1970s by an influx of immigrants from Hong Kong. 

      Connie’s memories of London’s first Chinatown as an “urban village” paint a very different picture to the seedy area portrayed in early twentieth century novels. 

      The pyramid in St Anne’s church marked the entrance to the opium den of Dr Fu Manchu, a criminal mastermind who threatened Western society by plotting world domination in a series of novels by Sax Rohmer. 

      Thomas Burke’s Limehouse Nights cemented stereotypes about prostitution, gambling and violence within the Chinese community, and whipped up anxiety about sexual relationships between Chinese men and white women. 

      Though neither novelist was familiar with the Chinese community, their depictions made Limehouse one of the most notorious areas of London. 

      Travel agent Thomas Cook even organised tours of the area for daring visitors, despite the rector of Limehouse warning that “those who look for the Limehouse of Mr Thomas Burke simply will not find it.”

      All that remains is a handful of Chinese street names, such as Ming Street, Pekin Street, and Canton Street — but what was Limehouse’s chinatown really like, and why did it get swept away?

      Chinese migration to Limehouse 

      Chinese sailors discharged from East India Company ships settled in the docklands from as early as the 1780s.

      By the late nineteenth century, men from Shanghai had settled around Pennyfields Lane, while a Cantonese community lived on Limehouse Causeway. 

      Chinese sailors were often paid less and discriminated against by dock hirers, and so began to diversify their incomes by setting up hand laundry services and restaurants. 

      Old photographs show shopfronts emblazoned with Chinese characters with horse-drawn carts idling outside or Chinese men in suits and hats standing proudly in the doorways. 

      In oral histories collected by Yat Ming Loo, Connie’s husband Leslie doesn’t recall seeing any Chinese women as a child, since male Chinese sailors settled in London alone and married working-class English women. 

      In the 1920s, newspapers fear-mongered about interracial marriages, crime and gambling, and described chinatown as an East End “colony.” 

      Ironically, Chinese opium-smoking was also demonised in the press, despite Britain waging war against China in the mid-nineteenth century for suppressing the opium trade to alleviate addiction amongst its people. 

      The number of Chinese people who settled in Limehouse was also greatly exaggerated, and in reality only totalled around 300. 

      The real Chinatown 

      Although the press sought to characterise Limehouse as a monolithic Chinese community in the East End, Connie remembers seeing people of all nationalities in the shops and community spaces in Limehouse.

      She doesn’t remember feeling discriminated against by other locals, though Connie does recall having her face measured and IQ tested by a member of the British Eugenics Society who was conducting research in the area. 

      Some of Connie’s happiest childhood memories were from her time at Chung-Hua Club, where she learned about Chinese culture and language.

      Why did Chinatown disappear? 

      The caricature of Limehouse’s Chinatown as a den of vice hastened its erasure. 

      Police raids and deportations fuelled by the alarmist media coverage threatened the Chinese population of Limehouse, and slum clearance schemes to redevelop low-income areas dispersed Chinese residents in the 1930s. 

      The Defence of the Realm Act imposed at the beginning of the First World War criminalised opium use, gave the authorities increased powers to deport Chinese people and restricted their ability to work on British ships.

      Dwindling maritime trade during World War II further stripped Chinese sailors of opportunities for employment, and any remnants of Chinatown were destroyed during the Blitz or erased by postwar development schemes.”

       

      Wong Sang 1884-1930

      The year 1918 was a troublesome one for Wong Sang, an interpreter and shipping agent for Blue Funnel Line.  The Sang family were living at 156, Chrisp Street.

      Chrisp Street, Poplar, in 1913 via Old London Photographs:

      Chrisp Street

       

      In February Wong Sang was discharged from a false accusation after defending his home from potential robbers.

      East End News and London Shipping Chronicle – Friday 15 February 1918:

      1918 Wong Sang

       

      In August of that year he was involved in an incident that left him unconscious.

      Faringdon Advertiser and Vale of the White Horse Gazette – Saturday 31 August 1918:

      1918 Wong Sang 2

       

      Wong Sang is mentioned in an 1922 article about “Oriental London”.

      London and China Express – Thursday 09 February 1922:

      1922 Wong Sang

      A photograph of the Chee Kong Tong Chinese Freemason Society mentioned in the above article, via Old London Photographs:

      Chee Kong Tong

       

      Wong Sang was recommended by the London Metropolitan Police in 1928 to assist in a case in Wellingborough, Northampton.

      Difficulty of Getting an Interpreter: Northampton Mercury – Friday 16 March 1928:

      1928 Wong Sang

      1928 Wong Sang 2

      The difficulty was that “this man speaks the Cantonese language only…the Northeners and the Southerners in China have differing languages and the interpreter seemed to speak one that was in between these two.”

       

      In 1917, Alice Wong Sang was a witness at her sister Harriet Stokes marriage to James William Watts in Southwark, London.  Their father James Stokes occupation on the marriage register is foreman surveyor, but on the census he was a council roadman or labourer. (I initially rejected this as the correct marriage for Harriet because of the discrepancy with the occupations. Alice Wong Sang as a witness confirmed that it was indeed the correct one.)

      1917 Alice Wong Sang

       

       

      James William Sang 1913-2000 was a clock fitter and watch assembler (on the 1939 census). He married Ivy Laura Fenton in 1963 in Sidcup, Kent. James died in Southwark in 2000.

      Charles Ronald Sang 1920-1974  was a draughtsman (1939 census). He married Eileen Burgess in 1947 in Marylebone.  Charles and Eileen had two sons:  Keith born in 1951 and Roger born in 1952.  He died in 1974 in Hertfordshire.

      William Norman Sang 1922-2000 was a clerk and telephone operator (1939 census).  William enlisted in the Royal Artillery in 1942. He married Lily Mullins in 1949 in Bethnal Green, and they had three daughters: Marion born in 1950, Christine in 1953, and Frances in 1959.  He died in Redbridge in 2000.

       

      I then found another two births registered in Poplar by Alice Sang, both daughters.  Doris Winifred Sang was born in 1925, and Patricia Margaret Sang was born in 1933 ~ three years after Wong Sang’s death.  Neither of the these daughters were on the 1939 census with Alice, John Patterson and the three sons.  Margaret had presumably been evacuated because of the war to a family in Taunton, Somerset. Doris would have been fourteen and I have been unable to find her in 1939 (possibly because she died in 2017 and has not had the redaction removed  yet on the 1939 census as only deceased people are viewable).

      Doris Winifred Sang 1925-2017 was a nursing sister. She didn’t marry, and spent a year in USA between 1954 and 1955. She stayed in London, and died at the age of ninety two in 2017.

      Patricia Margaret Sang 1933-1998 was also a nurse. She married Patrick L Nicely in Stepney in 1957.  Patricia and Patrick had five children in London: Sharon born 1959, Donald in 1960, Malcolm was born and died in 1966, Alison was born in 1969 and David in 1971.

       

      I was unable to find a birth registered for Alice’s first son, James William Sang (as he appeared on the 1939 census).  I found Alice Stokes on the 1911 census as a 17 year old live in servant at a tobacconist on Pekin Street, Limehouse, living with Mr Sui Fong from Hong Kong and his wife Sarah Sui Fong from Berlin.  I looked for a birth registered for James William Fong instead of Sang, and found it ~ mothers maiden name Stokes, and his date of birth matched the 1939 census: 8th March, 1913.

      On the 1921 census, Wong Sang is not listed as living with them but it is mentioned that Mr Wong Sang was the person returning the census.  Also living with Alice and her sons James and Charles in 1921 are two visitors:  (Florence) May Stokes, 17 years old, born in Woodstock, and Charles Stokes, aged 14, also born in Woodstock. May and Charles were Alice’s sister and brother.

       

      I found Sharon Nicely on social media and she kindly shared photos of Wong Sang and Alice Stokes:

      Wong Sang

       

      Alice Stokes

      #6346
      TracyTracy
      Participant

        The Mormon Browning Who Went To Utah

         

        Isaac Browning’s (1784-1848) sister Hannah  married Francis Buckingham. There were at least three Browning Buckingham marriages in Tetbury.  Their daughter Charlotte married James Paskett, a shoemaker.  Charlotte was born in 1818 and in 1871 she and her family emigrated to Utah, USA.

        Charlotte’s relationship to me is first cousin five times removed.

        James and Charlotte: (photos found online)

        James Paskett

         

        The house of James and Charlotte in Tetbury:

        James Paskett 2

         

        The home of James and Charlotte in Utah:

        James Paskett3

        Obituary:

        James Pope Paskett Dead.

        Veteran of 87 Laid to rest. Special Correspondence Coalville, Summit Co., Oct 28—James Pope Paskett of Henefer died Oct. 24, 1903 of old age and general debility. Funeral services were held at Henefer today. Elders W.W. Cluff, Alma Elderge, Robert Jones, Oscar Wilkins and Bishop M.F. Harris were the speakers. There was a large attendance many coming from other wards in the stake. James Pope Paskett was born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, England, on March 12, 1817; married Chalotte Buckingham in the year 1839; eight children were born to them, three sons and five daughters, all of whom are living and residing in Utah, except one in Brisbane, Australia. Father Paskett joined the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1847, and emigrated to Utah in 1871, and has resided in Henefer ever since. He leaves his faithful and aged wife. He was respected and esteemed by all who knew him.

         

        Charlotte died in Henefer, Utah, on 27th December 1910 at the age of 91.

        James and Charlotte in later life:

        James Paskett 4

        #6265
        TracyTracy
        Participant

          From Tanganyika with Love

          continued  ~ part 6

          With thanks to Mike Rushby.

          Mchewe 6th June 1937

          Dearest Family,

          Home again! We had an uneventful journey. Kate was as good as gold all the
          way. We stopped for an hour at Bulawayo where we had to change trains but
          everything was simplified for me by a very pleasant man whose wife shared my
          compartment. Not only did he see me through customs but he installed us in our new
          train and his wife turned up to see us off with magazines for me and fruit and sweets for
          Kate. Very, very kind, don’t you think?

          Kate and I shared the compartment with a very pretty and gentle girl called
          Clarice Simpson. She was very worried and upset because she was going home to
          Broken Hill in response to a telegram informing her that her young husband was
          dangerously ill from Blackwater Fever. She was very helpful with Kate whose
          cheerfulness helped Clarice, I think, though I, quite unintentionally was the biggest help
          at the end of our journey. Remember the partial dentures I had had made just before
          leaving Cape Town? I know I shall never get used to the ghastly things, I’ve had them
          two weeks now and they still wobble. Well this day I took them out and wrapped them
          in a handkerchief, but when we were packing up to leave the train I could find the
          handkerchief but no teeth! We searched high and low until the train had slowed down to
          enter Broken Hill station. Then Clarice, lying flat on the floor, spied the teeth in the dark
          corner under the bottom bunk. With much stretching she managed to retrieve the
          dentures covered in grime and fluff. My look of horror, when I saw them, made young
          Clarice laugh. She was met at the station by a very grave elderly couple. I do wonder
          how things turned out for her.

          I stayed overnight with Kate at the Great Northern Hotel, and we set off for
          Mbeya by plane early in the morning. One of our fellow passengers was a young
          mother with a three week old baby. How ideas have changed since Ann was born. This
          time we had a smooth passage and I was the only passenger to get airsick. Although
          there were other women passengers it was a man once again, who came up and
          offered to help. Kate went off with him amiably and he entertained her until we touched
          down at Mbeya.

          George was there to meet us with a wonderful surprise, a little red two seater
          Ford car. She is a bit battered and looks a bit odd because the boot has been
          converted into a large wooden box for carrying raw salt, but she goes like the wind.
          Where did George raise the cash to buy a car? Whilst we were away he found a small
          cave full of bat guano near a large cave which is worked by a man called Bob Sargent.
          As Sargent did not want any competition he bought the contents of the cave from
          George giving him the small car as part payment.

          It was lovely to return to our little home and find everything fresh and tidy and the
          garden full of colour. But it was heartbreaking to go into the bedroom and see George’s
          precious forgotten boots still standing by his empty bed.

          With much love,
          Eleanor.

          Mchewe 25th June 1937

          Dearest Family,

          Last Friday George took Kate and me in the little red Ford to visit Mr Sargent’s
          camp on the Songwe River which cuts the Mbeya-Mbosi road. Mr Sargent bought
          Hicky-Wood’s guano deposit and also our small cave and is making a good living out of
          selling the bat guano to the coffee farmers in this province. George went to try to interest
          him in a guano deposit near Kilwa in the Southern Province. Mr Sargent agreed to pay
          25 pounds to cover the cost of the car trip and pegging costs. George will make the trip
          to peg the claim and take samples for analysis. If the quality is sufficiently high, George
          and Mr Sargent will go into partnership. George will work the claim and ship out the
          guano from Kilwa which is on the coast of the Southern Province of Tanganyika. So now
          we are busy building castles in the air once more.

          On Saturday we went to Mbeya where George had to attend a meeting of the
          Trout Association. In the afternoon he played in a cricket match so Kate and I spent the
          whole day with the wife of the new Superintendent of Police. They have a very nice
          new house with lawns and a sunken rose garden. Kate had a lovely romp with Kit, her
          three year old son.

          Mrs Wolten also has two daughters by a previous marriage. The elder girl said to
          me, “Oh Mrs Rushby your husband is exactly like the strong silent type of man I
          expected to see in Africa but he is the only one I have seen. I think he looks exactly like
          those men in the ‘Barney’s Tobacco’ advertisements.”

          I went home with a huge pile of magazines to keep me entertained whilst
          George is away on the Kilwa trip.

          Lots of love,
          Eleanor.

          Mchewe 9th July 1937

          Dearest Family,

          George returned on Monday from his Kilwa safari. He had an entertaining
          tale to tell.

          Before he approached Mr Sargent about going shares in the Kilwa guano
          deposit he first approached a man on the Lupa who had done very well out of a small
          gold reef. This man, however said he was not interested so you can imagine how
          indignant George was when he started on his long trip, to find himself being trailed by
          this very man and a co-driver in a powerful Ford V8 truck. George stopped his car and
          had some heated things to say – awful threats I imagine as to what would happen to
          anyone who staked his claim. Then he climbed back into our ancient little two seater and
          went off like a bullet driving all day and most of the night. As the others took turns in
          driving you can imagine what a feat it was for George to arrive in Kilwa ahead of them.
          When they drove into Kilwa he met them with a bright smile and a bit of bluff –
          quite justifiable under the circumstances I think. He said, you chaps can have a rest now,
          you’re too late.” He then whipped off and pegged the claim. he brought some samples
          of guano back but until it has been analysed he will not know whether the guano will be
          an economic proposition or not. George is not very hopeful. He says there is a good
          deal of sand mixed with the guano and that much of it was damp.

          The trip was pretty eventful for Kianda, our houseboy. The little two seater car
          had been used by its previous owner for carting bags of course salt from his salt pans.
          For this purpose the dicky seat behind the cab had been removed, and a kind of box
          built into the boot of the car. George’s camp kit and provisions were packed into this
          open box and Kianda perched on top to keep an eye on the belongings. George
          travelled so fast on the rough road that at some point during the night Kianda was
          bumped off in the middle of the Game Reserve. George did not notice that he was
          missing until the next morning. He concluded, quite rightly as it happened, that Kianda
          would be picked up by the rival truck so he continued his journey and Kianda rejoined
          him at Kilwa.

          Believe it or not, the same thing happened on the way back but fortunately this
          time George noticed his absence. He stopped the car and had just started back on his
          tracks when Kianda came running down the road still clutching the unlighted storm lamp
          which he was holding in his hand when he fell. The glass was not even cracked.
          We are finding it difficult just now to buy native chickens and eggs. There has
          been an epidemic amongst the poultry and one hesitates to eat the survivors. I have a
          brine tub in which I preserve our surplus meat but I need the chickens for soup.
          I hope George will be home for some months. He has arranged to take a Mr
          Blackburn, a wealthy fruit farmer from Elgin, Cape, on a hunting safari during September
          and October and that should bring in some much needed cash. Lillian Eustace has
          invited Kate and me to spend the whole of October with her in Tukuyu.
          I am so glad that you so much enjoy having Ann and George with you. We miss
          them dreadfully. Kate is a pretty little girl and such a little madam. You should hear the
          imperious way in which she calls the kitchenboy for her meals. “Boy Brekkis, Boy Lunch,
          and Boy Eggy!” are her three calls for the day. She knows no Ki-Swahili.

          Eleanor

          Mchewe 8th October 1937

          Dearest Family,

          I am rapidly becoming as superstitious as our African boys. They say the wild
          animals always know when George is away from home and come down to have their
          revenge on me because he has killed so many.

          I am being besieged at night by a most beastly leopard with a half grown cub. I
          have grown used to hearing leopards grunt as they hunt in the hills at night but never
          before have I had one roaming around literally under the windows. It has been so hot at
          night lately that I have been sleeping with my bedroom door open onto the verandah. I
          felt quite safe because the natives hereabouts are law-abiding and in any case I always
          have a boy armed with a club sleeping in the kitchen just ten yards away. As an added
          precaution I also have a loaded .45 calibre revolver on my bedside table, and Fanny
          our bullterrier, sleeps on the mat by my bed. I am also looking after Barney, a fine
          Airedale dog belonging to the Costers. He slept on a mat by the open bedroom door
          near a dimly burning storm lamp.

          As usual I went to sleep with an easy mind on Monday night, but was awakened
          in the early hours of Tuesday by the sound of a scuffle on the front verandah. The noise
          was followed by a scream of pain from Barney. I jumped out of bed and, grabbing the
          lamp with my left hand and the revolver in my right, I rushed outside just in time to see
          two animal figures roll over the edge of the verandah into the garden below. There they
          engaged in a terrific tug of war. Fortunately I was too concerned for Barney to be
          nervous. I quickly fired two shots from the revolver, which incidentally makes a noise like
          a cannon, and I must have startled the leopard for both animals, still locked together,
          disappeared over the edge of the terrace. I fired two more shots and in a few moments
          heard the leopard making a hurried exit through the dry leaves which lie thick under the
          wild fig tree just beyond the terrace. A few seconds later Barney appeared on the low
          terrace wall. I called his name but he made no move to come but stood with hanging
          head. In desperation I rushed out, felt blood on my hands when I touched him, so I
          picked him up bodily and carried him into the house. As I regained the verandah the boy
          appeared, club in hand, having been roused by the shots. He quickly grasped what had
          happened when he saw my blood saturated nightie. He fetched a bowl of water and a
          clean towel whilst I examined Barney’s wounds. These were severe, the worst being a
          gaping wound in his throat. I washed the gashes with a strong solution of pot permang
          and I am glad to say they are healing remarkably well though they are bound to leave
          scars. Fanny, very prudently, had taken no part in the fighting except for frenzied barking
          which she kept up all night. The shots had of course wakened Kate but she seemed
          more interested than alarmed and kept saying “Fanny bark bark, Mummy bang bang.
          Poor Barney lots of blood.”

          In the morning we inspected the tracks in the garden. There was a shallow furrow
          on the terrace where Barney and the leopard had dragged each other to and fro and
          claw marks on the trunk of the wild fig tree into which the leopard climbed after I fired the
          shots. The affair was of course a drama after the Africans’ hearts and several of our
          shamba boys called to see me next day to make sympathetic noises and discuss the
          affair.

          I went to bed early that night hoping that the leopard had been scared off for
          good but I must confess I shut all windows and doors. Alas for my hopes of a restful
          night. I had hardly turned down the lamp when the leopard started its terrifying grunting
          just under the bedroom windows. If only she would sniff around quietly I should not
          mind, but the noise is ghastly, something like the first sickening notes of a braying
          donkey, amplified here by the hills and the gorge which is only a stones throw from the
          bedroom. Barney was too sick to bark but Fanny barked loud enough for two and the more
          frantic she became the hungrier the leopard sounded. Kate of course woke up and this
          time she was frightened though I assured her that the noise was just a donkey having
          fun. Neither of us slept until dawn when the leopard returned to the hills. When we
          examined the tracks next morning we found that the leopard had been accompanied by
          a fair sized cub and that together they had prowled around the house, kitchen, and out
          houses, visiting especially the places to which the dogs had been during the day.
          As I feel I cannot bear many more of these nights, I am sending a note to the
          District Commissioner, Mbeya by the messenger who takes this letter to the post,
          asking him to send a game scout or an armed policeman to deal with the leopard.
          So don’t worry, for by the time this reaches you I feel sure this particular trouble
          will be over.

          Eleanor.

          Mchewe 17th October 1937

          Dearest Family,

          More about the leopard I fear! My messenger returned from Mbeya to say that
          the District Officer was on safari so he had given the message to the Assistant District
          Officer who also apparently left on safari later without bothering to reply to my note, so
          there was nothing for me to do but to send for the village Nimrod and his muzzle loader
          and offer him a reward if he could frighten away or kill the leopard.

          The hunter, Laza, suggested that he should sleep at the house so I went to bed
          early leaving Laza and his two pals to make themselves comfortable on the living room
          floor by the fire. Laza was armed with a formidable looking muzzle loader, crammed I
          imagine with nuts and bolts and old rusty nails. One of his pals had a spear and the other
          a panga. This fellow was also in charge of the Petromax pressure lamp whose light was
          hidden under a packing case. I left the campaign entirely to Laza’s direction.
          As usual the leopard came at midnight stealing down from the direction of the
          kitchen and announcing its presence and position with its usual ghastly grunts. Suddenly
          pandemonium broke loose on the back verandah. I heard the roar of the muzzle loader
          followed by a vigourous tattoo beaten on an empty paraffin tin and I rushed out hoping
          to find the dead leopard. however nothing of the kind had happened except that the
          noise must have scared the beast because she did not return again that night. Next
          morning Laza solemnly informed me that, though he had shot many leopards in his day,
          this was no ordinary leopard but a “sheitani” (devil) and that as his gun was no good
          against witchcraft he thought he might as well retire from the hunt. Scared I bet, and I
          don’t blame him either.

          You can imagine my relief when a car rolled up that afternoon bringing Messers
          Stewart and Griffiths, two farmers who live about 15 miles away, between here and
          Mbeya. They had a note from the Assistant District Officer asking them to help me and
          they had come to set up a trap gun in the garden. That night the leopard sniffed all
          around the gun and I had the added strain of waiting for the bang and wondering what I
          should do if the beast were only wounded. I conjured up horrible visions of the two little
          totos trotting up the garden path with the early morning milk and being horribly mauled,
          but I needn’t have worried because the leopard was far too wily to be caught that way.
          Two more ghastly nights passed and then I had another visitor, a Dr Jackson of
          the Tsetse Department on safari in the District. He listened sympathetically to my story
          and left his shotgun and some SSG cartridges with me and instructed me to wait until the
          leopard was pretty close and blow its b—– head off. It was good of him to leave his
          gun. George always says there are three things a man should never lend, ‘His wife, his
          gun and his dog.’ (I think in that order!)I felt quite cheered by Dr Jackson’s visit and sent
          once again for Laza last night and arranged a real show down. In the afternoon I draped
          heavy blankets over the living room windows to shut out the light of the pressure lamp
          and the four of us, Laza and his two stooges and I waited up for the leopard. When we
          guessed by her grunts that she was somewhere between the kitchen and the back door
          we all rushed out, first the boy with the panga and the lamp, next Laza with his muzzle
          loader, then me with the shotgun followed closely by the boy with the spear. What a
          farce! The lamp was our undoing. We were blinded by the light and did not even
          glimpse the leopard which made off with a derisive grunt. Laza said smugly that he knew
          it was hopeless to try and now I feel tired and discouraged too.

          This morning I sent a runner to Mbeya to order the hotel taxi for tomorrow and I
          shall go to friends in Mbeya for a day or two and then on to Tukuyu where I shall stay
          with the Eustaces until George returns from Safari.

          Eleanor.

          Mchewe 18th November 1937

          My darling Ann,

          Here we are back in our own home and how lovely it is to have Daddy back from
          safari. Thank you very much for your letter. I hope by now you have got mine telling you
          how very much I liked the beautiful tray cloth you made for my birthday. I bet there are
          not many little girls of five who can embroider as well as you do, darling. The boy,
          Matafari, washes and irons it so carefully and it looks lovely on the tea tray.

          Daddy and I had some fun last night. I was in bed and Daddy was undressing
          when we heard a funny scratching noise on the roof. I thought it was the leopard. Daddy
          quickly loaded his shotgun and ran outside. He had only his shirt on and he looked so
          funny. I grabbed the loaded revolver from the cupboard and ran after Dad in my nightie
          but after all the rush it was only your cat, Winnie, though I don’t know how she managed
          to make such a noise. We felt so silly, we laughed and laughed.

          Kate talks a lot now but in such a funny way you would laugh to her her. She
          hears the houseboys call me Memsahib so sometimes instead of calling me Mummy
          she calls me “Oompaab”. She calls the bedroom a ‘bippon’ and her little behind she
          calls her ‘sittendump’. She loves to watch Mandawi’s cattle go home along the path
          behind the kitchen. Joseph your donkey, always leads the cows. He has a lazy life now.
          I am glad you had such fun on Guy Fawkes Day. You will be sad to leave
          Plumstead but I am sure you will like going to England on the big ship with granny Kate.
          I expect you will start school when you get to England and I am sure you will find that
          fun.

          God bless my dear little girl. Lots of love from Daddy and Kate,
          and Mummy

          Mchewe 18th November 1937

          Hello George Darling,

          Thank you for your lovely drawing of Daddy shooting an elephant. Daddy says
          that the only thing is that you have drawn him a bit too handsome.

          I went onto the verandah a few minutes ago to pick a banana for Kate from the
          bunch hanging there and a big hornet flew out and stung my elbow! There are lots of
          them around now and those stinging flies too. Kate wears thick corduroy dungarees so
          that she will not get her fat little legs bitten. She is two years old now and is a real little
          pickle. She loves running out in the rain so I have ordered a pair of red Wellingtons and a
          tiny umbrella from a Nairobi shop for her Christmas present.

          Fanny’s puppies have their eyes open now and have very sharp little teeth.
          They love to nip each other. We are keeping the fiercest little one whom we call Paddy
          but are giving the others to friends. The coffee bushes are full of lovely white flowers
          and the bees and ants are very busy stealing their honey.

          Yesterday a troop of baboons came down the hill and Dad shot a big one to
          scare the others off. They are a nuisance because they steal the maize and potatoes
          from the native shambas and then there is not enough food for the totos.
          Dad and I are very proud of you for not making a fuss when you went to the
          dentist to have that tooth out.

          Bye bye, my fine little son.
          Three bags full of love from Kate, Dad and Mummy.

          Mchewe 12th February, 1938

          Dearest Family,

          here is some news that will please you. George has been offered and has
          accepted a job as Forester at Mbulu in the Northern Province of Tanganyika. George
          would have preferred a job as Game Ranger, but though the Game Warden, Philip
          Teare, is most anxious to have him in the Game Department, there is no vacancy at
          present. Anyway if one crops up later, George can always transfer from one
          Government Department to another. Poor George, he hates the idea of taking a job. He
          says that hitherto he has always been his own master and he detests the thought of
          being pushed around by anyone.

          Now however he has no choice. Our capitol is almost exhausted and the coffee
          market shows no signs of improving. With three children and another on the way, he
          feels he simply must have a fixed income. I shall be sad to leave this little farm. I love
          our little home and we have been so very happy here, but my heart rejoices at the
          thought of overseas leave every thirty months. Now we shall be able to fetch Ann and
          George from England and in three years time we will all be together in Tanganyika once
          more.

          There is no sale for farms so we will just shut the house and keep on a very small
          labour force just to keep the farm from going derelict. We are eating our hens but will
          take our two dogs, Fanny and Paddy with us.

          One thing I shall be glad to leave is that leopard. She still comes grunting around
          at night but not as badly as she did before. I do not mind at all when George is here but
          until George was accepted for this forestry job I was afraid he might go back to the
          Diggings and I should once more be left alone to be cursed by the leopard’s attentions.
          Knowing how much I dreaded this George was most anxious to shoot the leopard and
          for weeks he kept his shotgun and a powerful torch handy at night.

          One night last week we woke to hear it grunting near the kitchen. We got up very
          quietly and whilst George loaded the shotgun with SSG, I took the torch and got the
          heavy revolver from the cupboard. We crept out onto the dark verandah where George
          whispered to me to not switch on the torch until he had located the leopard. It was pitch
          black outside so all he could do was listen intently. And then of course I spoilt all his
          plans. I trod on the dog’s tin bowl and made a terrific clatter! George ordered me to
          switch on the light but it was too late and the leopard vanished into the long grass of the
          Kalonga, grunting derisively, or so it sounded.

          She never comes into the clearing now but grunts from the hillside just above it.

          Eleanor.

          Mbulu 18th March, 1938

          Dearest Family,

          Journeys end at last. here we are at Mbulu, installed in our new quarters which are
          as different as they possibly could be from our own cosy little home at Mchewe. We
          live now, my dears, in one wing of a sort of ‘Beau Geste’ fort but I’ll tell you more about
          it in my next letter. We only arrived yesterday and have not had time to look around.
          This letter will tell you just about our trip from Mbeya.

          We left the farm in our little red Ford two seater with all our portable goods and
          chattels plus two native servants and the two dogs. Before driving off, George took one
          look at the flattened springs and declared that he would be surprised if we reached
          Mbeya without a breakdown and that we would never make Mbulu with the car so
          overloaded.

          However luck was with us. We reached Mbeya without mishap and at one of the
          local garages saw a sturdy used Ford V8 boxbody car for sale. The garage agreed to
          take our small car as part payment and George drew on our little remaining capitol for the
          rest. We spent that night in the house of the Forest Officer and next morning set out in
          comfort for the Northern Province of Tanganyika.

          I had done the journey from Dodoma to Mbeya seven years before so was
          familiar with the scenery but the road was much improved and the old pole bridges had
          been replaced by modern steel ones. Kate was as good as gold all the way. We
          avoided hotels and camped by the road and she found this great fun.
          The road beyond Dodoma was new to me and very interesting country, flat and
          dry and dusty, as little rain falls there. The trees are mostly thorn trees but here and there
          one sees a giant baobab, weird trees with fantastically thick trunks and fat squat branches
          with meagre foliage. The inhabitants of this area I found interesting though. They are
          called Wagogo and are a primitive people who ape the Masai in dress and customs
          though they are much inferior to the Masai in physique. They are also great herders of
          cattle which, rather surprisingly, appear to thrive in that dry area.

          The scenery alters greatly as one nears Babati, which one approaches by a high
          escarpment from which one has a wonderful view of the Rift Valley. Babati township
          appears to be just a small group of Indian shops and shabby native houses, but I
          believe there are some good farms in the area. Though the little township is squalid,
          there is a beautiful lake and grand mountains to please the eye. We stopped only long
          enough to fill up with petrol and buy some foodstuffs. Beyond Babati there is a tsetse
          fly belt and George warned our two native servants to see that no tsetse flies settled on
          the dogs.

          We stopped for the night in a little rest house on the road about 80 miles from
          Arusha where we were to spend a few days with the Forest Officer before going on to
          Mbulu. I enjoyed this section of the road very much because it runs across wide plains
          which are bounded on the West by the blue mountains of the Rift Valley wall. Here for
          the first time I saw the Masai on their home ground guarding their vast herds of cattle. I
          also saw their strange primitive hovels called Manyattas, with their thorn walled cattle
          bomas and lots of plains game – giraffe, wildebeest, ostriches and antelope. Kate was
          wildly excited and entranced with the game especially the giraffe which stood gazing
          curiously and unafraid of us, often within a few yards of the road.

          Finally we came across the greatest thrill of all, my first view of Mt Meru the extinct
          volcano about 16,000 feet high which towers over Arusha township. The approach to
          Arusha is through flourishing coffee plantations very different alas from our farm at Mchewe. George says that at Arusha coffee growing is still a paying proposition
          because here the yield of berry per acre is much higher than in the Southern highlands
          and here in the North the farmers have not such heavy transport costs as the railway runs
          from Arusha to the port at Tanga.

          We stayed overnight at a rather second rate hotel but the food was good and we
          had hot baths and a good nights rest. Next day Tom Lewis the Forest Officer, fetched
          us and we spent a few days camping in a tent in the Lewis’ garden having meals at their
          home. Both Tom and Lillian Lewis were most friendly. Tom lewis explained to George
          what his work in the Mbulu District was to be, and they took us camping in a Forest
          Reserve where Lillian and her small son David and Kate and I had a lovely lazy time
          amidst beautiful surroundings. Before we left for Mbulu, Lillian took me shopping to buy
          material for curtains for our new home. She described the Forest House at Mbulu to me
          and it sounded delightful but alas, when we reached Mbulu we discovered that the
          Assistant District Officer had moved into the Forest House and we were directed to the
          Fort or Boma. The night before we left Arusha for Mbulu it rained very heavily and the
          road was very treacherous and slippery due to the surface being of ‘black cotton’ soil
          which has the appearance and consistency of chocolate blancmange, after rain. To get to
          Mbulu we had to drive back in the direction of Dodoma for some 70 miles and then turn
          to the right and drive across plains to the Great Rift Valley Wall. The views from this
          escarpment road which climbs this wall are magnificent. At one point one looks down
          upon Lake Manyara with its brilliant white beaches of soda.

          The drive was a most trying one for George. We had no chains for the wheels
          and several times we stuck in the mud and our two houseboys had to put grass and
          branches under the wheels to stop them from spinning. Quite early on in the afternoon
          George gave up all hope of reaching Mbulu that day and planned to spend the night in
          a little bush rest camp at Karatu. However at one point it looked as though we would not
          even reach this resthouse for late afternoon found us properly bogged down in a mess
          of mud at the bottom of a long and very steep hill. In spite of frantic efforts on the part of
          George and the two boys, all now very wet and muddy, the heavy car remained stuck.
          Suddenly five Masai men appeared through the bushes beside the road. They
          were all tall and angular and rather terrifying looking to me. Each wore only a blanket
          knotted over one shoulder and all were armed with spears. They lined up by the side of
          the road and just looked – not hostile but simply aloof and supercilious. George greeted
          them and said in Ki-Swahili, “Help to push and I will reward you.” But they said nothing,
          just drawing back imperceptibly to register disgust at the mere idea of manual labour.
          Their expressions said quite clearly “A Masai is a warrior and does not soil his hands.”
          George then did something which startled them I think, as much as me. He
          plucked their spears from their hands one by one and flung them into the back of the
          boxbody. “Now push!” he said, “And when we are safely out of the mud you shall have
          your spears back.” To my utter astonishment the Masai seemed to applaud George’s
          action. I think they admire courage in a man more than anything else. They pushed with a
          will and soon we were roaring up the long steep slope. “I can’t stop here” quoth George
          as up and up we went. The Masai were in mad pursuit with their blankets streaming
          behind. They took a very steep path which was a shortcut to the top. They are certainly
          amazing athletes and reached the top at the same time as the car. Their route of course
          was shorter but much more steep, yet they came up without any sign of fatigue to claim
          their spears and the money which George handed out with a friendly grin. The Masai
          took the whole episode in good heart and we parted on the most friendly terms.

          After a rather chilly night in the three walled shack, we started on the last lap of our
          journey yesterday morning in bright weather and made the trip to Mbulu without incident.

          Eleanor.

          Mbulu 24th March, 1938

          Dearest Family,

          Mbulu is an attractive station but living in this rather romantic looking fort has many
          disadvantages. Our quarters make up one side of the fort which is built up around a
          hollow square. The buildings are single storied but very tall in the German manner and
          there is a tower on one corner from which the Union Jack flies. The tower room is our
          sitting room, and one has very fine views from the windows of the rolling country side.
          However to reach this room one has to climb a steep flight of cement steps from the
          court yard. Another disadvantage of this tower room is that there is a swarm of bees in
          the roof and the stray ones drift down through holes in the ceiling and buzz angrily
          against the window panes or fly around in a most menacing manner.

          Ours are the only private quarters in the Fort. Two other sides of the Fort are
          used as offices, storerooms and court room and the fourth side is simply a thick wall with
          battlements and loopholes and a huge iron shod double door of enormous thickness
          which is always barred at sunset when the flag is hauled down. Two Police Askari always
          remain in the Fort on guard at night. The effect from outside the whitewashed fort is very
          romantic but inside it is hardly homely and how I miss my garden at Mchewe and the
          grass and trees.

          We have no privacy downstairs because our windows overlook the bare
          courtyard which is filled with Africans patiently waiting to be admitted to the courtroom as
          witnesses or spectators. The outside windows which overlook the valley are heavily
          barred. I can only think that the Germans who built this fort must have been very scared
          of the local natives.

          Our rooms are hardly cosy and are furnished with typical heavy German pieces.
          We have a vast bleak bedroom, a dining room and an enormous gloomy kitchen in
          which meals for the German garrison were cooked. At night this kitchen is alive with
          gigantic rats but fortunately they do not seem to care for the other rooms. To crown
          everything owls hoot and screech at night on the roof.

          On our first day here I wandered outside the fort walls with Kate and came upon a
          neatly fenced plot enclosing the graves of about fifteen South African soldiers killed by
          the Germans in the 1914-18 war. I understand that at least one of theses soldiers died in
          the courtyard here. The story goes, that during the period in the Great War when this fort
          was occupied by a troop of South African Horse, a German named Siedtendorf
          appeared at the great barred door at night and asked to speak to the officer in command
          of the Troop. The officer complied with this request and the small shutter in the door was
          opened so that he could speak with the German. The German, however, had not come
          to speak. When he saw the exposed face of the officer, he fired, killing him, and
          escaped into the dark night. I had this tale on good authority but cannot vouch for it. I do
          know though, that there are two bullet holes in the door beside the shutter. An unhappy
          story to think about when George is away, as he is now, and the moonlight throws queer
          shadows in the court yard and the owls hoot.

          However though I find our quarters depressing, I like Mbulu itself very much. It is
          rolling country, treeless except for the plantations of the Forestry Dept. The land is very
          fertile in the watered valleys but the grass on hills and plains is cropped to the roots by
          the far too numerous cattle and goats. There are very few Europeans on the station, only
          Mr Duncan, the District Officer, whose wife and children recently left for England, the
          Assistant District Officer and his wife, a bachelor Veterinary Officer, a Road Foreman and
          ourselves, and down in the village a German with an American wife and an elderly
          Irishman whom I have not met. The Government officials have a communal vegetable
          garden in the valley below the fort which keeps us well supplied with green stuff. 

          Most afternoons George, Kate and I go for walks after tea. On Fridays there is a
          little ceremony here outside the fort. In the late afternoon a little procession of small
          native schoolboys, headed by a drum and penny whistle band come marching up the
          road to a tune which sounds like ‘Two lovely black eyes”. They form up below our tower
          and as the flag is lowered for the day they play ‘God save the King’, and then march off
          again. It is quite a cheerful little ceremony.

          The local Africans are a skinny lot and, I should say, a poor tribe. They protect
          themselves against the cold by wrapping themselves in cotton blankets or a strip of
          unbleached sheeting. This they drape over their heads, almost covering their faces and
          the rest is wrapped closely round their bodies in the manner of a shroud. A most
          depressing fashion. They live in very primitive comfortless houses. They simply make a
          hollow in the hillside and build a front wall of wattle and daub. Into this rude shelter at night
          go cattle and goats, men, women, and children.

          Mbulu village has the usual mud brick and wattle dukas and wattle and daub
          houses. The chief trader is a Goan who keeps a surprisingly good variety of tinned
          foodstuffs and also sells hardware and soft goods.

          The Europeans here have been friendly but as you will have noted there are
          only two other women on station and no children at all to be companions for Kate.

          Eleanor.

          Mbulu 20th June 1938

          Dearest Family,

          Here we are on Safari with George at Babati where we are occupying a rest
          house on the slopes of Ufiome Mountain. The slopes are a Forest Reserve and
          George is supervising the clearing of firebreaks in preparation for the dry weather. He
          goes off after a very early breakfast and returns home in the late afternoon so Kate and I
          have long lazy days.

          Babati is a pleasant spot and the resthouse is quite comfortable. It is about a mile
          from the village which is just the usual collection of small mud brick and corrugated iron
          Indian Dukas. There are a few settlers in the area growing coffee, or going in for mixed
          farming but I don’t think they are doing very well. The farm adjoining the rest house is
          owned by Lord Lovelace but is run by a manager.

          George says he gets enough exercise clambering about all day on the mountain,
          so Kate and I do our walking in the mornings when George is busy, and we all relax in
          the evenings when George returns from his field work. Kate’s favourite walk is to the big
          block of mtama (sorghum) shambas lower down the hill. There are huge swarms of tiny
          grain eating birds around waiting the chance to plunder the mtama, so the crops are
          watched from sunrise to sunset.

          Crude observation platforms have been erected for this purpose in the centre of
          each field and the women and the young boys of the family concerned, take it in turn to
          occupy the platform and scare the birds. Each watcher has a sling and uses clods of
          earth for ammunition. The clod is placed in the centre of the sling which is then whirled
          around at arms length. Suddenly one end of the sling is released and the clod of earth
          flies out and shatters against the mtama stalks. The sling makes a loud whip like crack and
          the noise is quite startling and very effective in keeping the birds at a safe distance.

          Eleanor.

          Karatu 3rd July 1938

          Dearest Family,

          Still on safari you see! We left Babati ten days ago and passed through Mbulu
          on our way to this spot. We slept out of doors one night beside Lake Tiawa about eight
          miles from Mbulu. It was a peaceful spot and we enjoyed watching the reflection of the
          sunset on the lake and the waterhens and duck and pelicans settling down for the night.
          However it turned piercingly cold after sunset so we had an early supper and then all
          three of us lay down to sleep in the back of the boxbody (station wagon). It was a tight
          fit and a real case of ‘When Dad turns, we all turn.’

          Here at Karatu we are living in a grass hut with only three walls. It is rather sweet
          and looks like the setting for a Nativity Play. Kate and I share the only camp bed and
          George and the dogs sleep on the floor. The air here is very fresh and exhilarating and
          we all feel very fit. George is occupied all day supervising the cutting of firebreaks
          around existing plantations and the forest reserve of indigenous trees. Our camp is on
          the hillside and below us lie the fertile wheat lands of European farmers.

          They are mostly Afrikaners, the descendants of the Boer families who were
          invited by the Germans to settle here after the Boer War. Most of them are pro-British
          now and a few have called in here to chat to George about big game hunting. George
          gets on extremely well with them and recently attended a wedding where he had a
          lively time dancing at the reception. He likes the older people best as most are great
          individualists. One fine old man, surnamed von Rooyen, visited our camp. He is a Boer
          of the General Smuts type with spare figure and bearded face. George tells me he is a
          real patriarch with an enormous family – mainly sons. This old farmer fought against the
          British throughout the Boer War under General Smuts and again against the British in the
          German East Africa campaign when he was a scout and right hand man to Von Lettow. It
          is said that Von Lettow was able to stay in the field until the end of the Great War
          because he listened to the advise given to him by von Rooyen. However his dislike for
          the British does not extend to George as they have a mutual interest in big game
          hunting.

          Kate loves being on safari. She is now so accustomed to having me as her nurse
          and constant companion that I do not know how she will react to paid help. I shall have to
          get someone to look after her during my confinement in the little German Red Cross
          hospital at Oldeani.

          George has obtained permission from the District Commissioner, for Kate and
          me to occupy the Government Rest House at Oldeani from the end of July until the end
          of August when my baby is due. He will have to carry on with his field work but will join
          us at weekends whenever possible.

          Eleanor.

          Karatu 12th July 1938

          Dearest Family,

          Not long now before we leave this camp. We have greatly enjoyed our stay
          here in spite of the very chilly earl mornings and the nights when we sit around in heavy
          overcoats until our early bed time.

          Last Sunday I persuaded George to take Kate and me to the famous Ngoro-
          Ngoro Crater. He was not very keen to do so because the road is very bumpy for
          anyone in my interesting condition but I feel so fit that I was most anxious to take this
          opportunity of seeing the enormous crater. We may never be in this vicinity again and in
          any case safari will not be so simple with a small baby.

          What a wonderful trip it was! The road winds up a steep escarpment from which
          one gets a glorious birds eye view of the plains of the Great Rift Valley far, far below.
          The crater is immense. There is a road which skirts the rim in places and one has quite
          startling views of the floor of the crater about two thousand feet below.

          A camp for tourists has just been built in a clearing in the virgin forest. It is most
          picturesque as the camp buildings are very neatly constructed log cabins with very high
          pitched thatched roofs. We spent about an hour sitting on the grass near the edge of the
          crater enjoying the sunshine and the sharp air and really awe inspiring view. Far below us
          in the middle of the crater was a small lake and we could see large herds of game
          animals grazing there but they were too far away to be impressive, even seen through
          George’s field glasses. Most appeared to be wildebeest and zebra but I also picked
          out buffalo. Much more exciting was my first close view of a wild elephant. George
          pointed him out to me as we approached the rest camp on the inward journey. He
          stood quietly under a tree near the road and did not seem to be disturbed by the car
          though he rolled a wary eye in our direction. On our return journey we saw him again at
          almost uncomfortably close quarters. We rounded a sharp corner and there stood the
          elephant, facing us and slap in the middle of the road. He was busily engaged giving
          himself a dust bath but spared time to give us an irritable look. Fortunately we were on a
          slight slope so George quickly switched off the engine and backed the car quietly round
          the corner. He got out of the car and loaded his rifle, just in case! But after he had finished
          his toilet the elephant moved off the road and we took our chance and passed without
          incident.

          One notices the steepness of the Ngoro-Ngoro road more on the downward
          journey than on the way up. The road is cut into the side of the mountain so that one has
          a steep slope on one hand and a sheer drop on the other. George told me that a lorry
          coming down the mountain was once charged from behind by a rhino. On feeling and
          hearing the bash from behind the panic stricken driver drove off down the mountain as
          fast as he dared and never paused until he reached level ground at the bottom of the
          mountain. There was no sign of the rhino so the driver got out to examine his lorry and
          found the rhino horn embedded in the wooden tail end of the lorry. The horn had been
          wrenched right off!

          Happily no excitement of that kind happened to us. I have yet to see a rhino.

          Eleanor.

          Oldeani. 19th July 1938

          Dearest Family,

          Greetings from a lady in waiting! Kate and I have settled down comfortably in the
          new, solidly built Government Rest House which comprises one large living room and
          one large office with a connecting door. Outside there is a kitchen and a boys quarter.
          There are no resident Government officials here at Oldeani so the office is in use only
          when the District Officer from Mbulu makes his monthly visit. However a large Union
          Jack flies from a flagpole in the front of the building as a gentle reminder to the entirely
          German population of Oldeani that Tanganyika is now under British rule.

          There is quite a large community of German settlers here, most of whom are
          engaged in coffee farming. George has visited several of the farms in connection with his
          forestry work and says the coffee plantations look very promising indeed. There are also
          a few German traders in the village and there is a large boarding school for German
          children and also a very pleasant little hospital where I have arranged to have the baby.
          Right next door to the Rest House is a General Dealers Store run by a couple named
          Schnabbe. The shop is stocked with drapery, hardware, china and foodstuffs all
          imported from Germany and of very good quality. The Schnabbes also sell local farm
          produce, beautiful fresh vegetables, eggs and pure rich milk and farm butter. Our meat
          comes from a German butchery and it is a great treat to get clean, well cut meat. The
          sausages also are marvellous and in great variety.

          The butcher is an entertaining character. When he called round looking for custom I
          expected him to break out in a yodel any minute, as it was obvious from a glance that
          the Alps are his natural background. From under a green Tyrollean hat with feather,
          blooms a round beefy face with sparkling small eyes and such widely spaced teeth that
          one inevitably thinks of a garden rake. Enormous beefy thighs bulge from greasy
          lederhosen which are supported by the traditional embroidered braces. So far the
          butcher is the only cheery German, male or female, whom I have seen, and I have met
          most of the locals at the Schnabbe’s shop. Most of the men seem to have cultivated
          the grim Hitler look. They are all fanatical Nazis and one is usually greeted by a raised
          hand and Heil Hitler! All very theatrical. I always feel like crying in ringing tones ‘God
          Save the King’ or even ‘St George for England’. However the men are all very correct
          and courteous and the women friendly. The women all admire Kate and cry, “Ag, das
          kleine Englander.” She really is a picture with her rosy cheeks and huge grey eyes and
          golden curls. Kate is having a wonderful time playing with Manfried, the Scnabbe’s small
          son. Neither understands a word said by the other but that doesn’t seem to worry them.

          Before he left on safari, George took me to hospital for an examination by the
          nurse, Sister Marianne. She has not been long in the country and knows very little
          English but is determined to learn and carried on an animated, if rather quaint,
          conversation with frequent references to a pocket dictionary. She says I am not to worry
          because there is not doctor here. She is a very experienced midwife and anyway in an
          emergency could call on the old retired Veterinary Surgeon for assistance.
          I asked sister Marianne whether she knew of any German woman or girl who
          would look after Kate whilst I am in hospital and today a very top drawer German,
          bearing a strong likeness to ‘Little Willie’, called and offered the services of his niece who
          is here on a visit from Germany. I was rather taken aback and said, “Oh no Baron, your
          niece would not be the type I had in mind. I’m afraid I cannot pay much for a companion.”
          However the Baron was not to be discouraged. He told me that his niece is seventeen
          but looks twenty, that she is well educated and will make a cheerful companion. Her
          father wishes her to learn to speak English fluently and that is why the Baron wished her
          to come to me as a house daughter. As to pay, a couple of pounds a month for pocket
          money and her keep was all he had in mind. So with some misgivings I agreed to take
          the niece on as a companion as from 1st August.

          Eleanor.

          Oldeani. 10th August 1938

          Dearest Family,

          Never a dull moment since my young companion arrived. She is a striking looking
          girl with a tall boyish figure and very short and very fine dark hair which she wears
          severely slicked back. She wears tweeds, no make up but has shiny rosy cheeks and
          perfect teeth – she also,inevitably, has a man friend and I have an uncomfortable
          suspicion that it is because of him that she was planted upon me. Upon second
          thoughts though, maybe it was because of her excessive vitality, or even because of
          her healthy appetite! The Baroness, I hear is in poor health and I can imagine that such
          abundant health and spirit must have been quite overpowering. The name is Ingeborg,
          but she is called Mouche, which I believe means Mouse. Someone in her family must
          have a sense of humour.

          Her English only needed practice and she now chatters fluently so that I know her
          background and views on life. Mouche’s father is a personal friend of Goering. He was
          once a big noise in the German Airforce but is now connected with the car industry and
          travels frequently and intensively in Europe and America on business. Mouche showed
          me some snap shots of her family and I must say they look prosperous and charming.
          Mouche tells me that her father wants her to learn to speak English fluently so that
          she can get a job with some British diplomat in Cairo. I had immediate thought that I
          might be nursing a future Mata Hari in my bosom, but this was immediately extinguished
          when Mouche remarked that her father would like her to marry an Englishman. However
          it seems that the mere idea revolts her. “Englishmen are degenerates who swill whisky
          all day.” I pointed out that she had met George, who was a true blue Englishman, but
          was nevertheless a fine physical specimen and certainly didn’t drink all day. Mouche
          replied that George is not an Englishman but a hunter, as though that set him apart.
          Mouche is an ardent Hitler fan and an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth
          Movement. The house resounds with Hitler youth songs and when she is not singing,
          her gramophone is playing very stirring marching songs. I cannot understand a word,
          which is perhaps as well. Every day she does the most strenuous exercises watched
          with envy by me as my proportions are now those of a circus Big Top. Mouche eats a
          fantastic amount of meat and I feel it is a blessing that she is much admired by our
          Tyrollean butcher who now delivers our meat in person and adds as a token of his
          admiration some extra sausages for Mouche.

          I must confess I find her stimulating company as George is on safari most of the
          time and my evenings otherwise would be lonely. I am a little worried though about
          leaving Kate here with Mouche when I go to hospital. The dogs and Kate have not taken
          to her. I am trying to prepare Kate for the separation but she says, “She’s not my
          mummy. You are my dear mummy, and I want you, I want you.” George has got
          permission from the Provincial Forestry Officer to spend the last week of August here at
          the Rest House with me and I only hope that the baby will be born during that time.
          Kate adores her dad and will be perfectly happy to remain here with him.

          One final paragraph about Mouche. I thought all German girls were domesticated
          but not Mouche. I have Kesho-Kutwa here with me as cook and I have engaged a local
          boy to do the laundry. I however expected Mouche would take over making the
          puddings and pastry but she informed me that she can only bake a chocolate cake and
          absolutely nothing else. She said brightly however that she would do the mending. As
          there is none for her to do, she has rescued a large worn handkerchief of George’s and
          sits with her feet up listening to stirring gramophone records whilst she mends the
          handkerchief with exquisite darning.

          Eleanor.

          Oldeani. 20th August 1938

          Dearest Family,

          Just after I had posted my last letter I received what George calls a demi official
          letter from the District Officer informing me that I would have to move out of the Rest
          House for a few days as the Governor and his hangers on would be visiting Oldeani
          and would require the Rest House. Fortunately George happened to be here for a few
          hours and he arranged for Kate and Mouche and me to spend a few days at the
          German School as borders. So here I am at the school having a pleasant and restful
          time and much entertained by all the goings on.

          The school buildings were built with funds from Germany and the school is run on
          the lines of a contemporary German school. I think the school gets a grant from the
          Tanganyika Government towards running expenses, but I am not sure. The school hall is
          dominated by a more than life sized oil painting of Adolf Hitler which, at present, is
          flanked on one side by the German Flag and on the other by the Union Jack. I cannot
          help feeling that the latter was put up today for the Governor’s visit today.
          The teachers are very amiable. We all meet at mealtimes, and though few of the
          teachers speak English, the ones who do are anxious to chatter. The headmaster is a
          scholarly man but obviously anti-British. He says he cannot understand why so many
          South Africans are loyal to Britain – or rather to England. “They conquered your country
          didn’t they?” I said that that had never occurred to me and that anyway I was mainly of
          Scots descent and that loyalty to the crown was natural to me. “But the English
          conquered the Scots and yet you are loyal to England. That I cannot understand.” “Well I
          love England,” said I firmly, ”and so do all British South Africans.” Since then we have
          stuck to English literature. Shakespeare, Lord Byron and Galsworthy seem to be the
          favourites and all, thank goodness, make safe topics for conversation.
          Mouche is in her element but Kate and I do not enjoy the food which is typically
          German and consists largely of masses of fat pork and sauerkraut and unfamiliar soups. I
          feel sure that the soup at lunch today had blobs of lemon curd in it! I also find most
          disconcerting the way that everyone looks at me and says, “Bon appetite”, with much
          smiling and nodding so I have to fight down my nausea and make a show of enjoying
          the meals.

          The teacher whose room adjoins mine is a pleasant woman and I take my
          afternoon tea with her. She, like all the teachers, has a large framed photo of Hitler on her
          wall flanked by bracket vases of fresh flowers. One simply can’t get away from the man!
          Even in the dormitories each child has a picture of Hitler above the bed. Hitler accepting
          flowers from a small girl, or patting a small boy on the head. Even the children use the
          greeting ‘Heil Hitler’. These German children seem unnaturally prim when compared with
          my cheerful ex-pupils in South Africa but some of them are certainly very lovely to look
          at.

          Tomorrow Mouche, Kate and I return to our quarters in the Rest House and in a
          few days George will join us for a week.

          Eleanor.

          Oldeani Hospital. 9th September 1938

          Dearest Family,

          You will all be delighted to hear that we have a second son, whom we have
          named John. He is a darling, so quaint and good. He looks just like a little old man with a
          high bald forehead fringed around the edges with a light brown fluff. George and I call
          him Johnny Jo because he has a tiny round mouth and a rather big nose and reminds us
          of A.A.Milne’s ‘Jonathan Jo has a mouth like an O’ , but Kate calls him, ‘My brother John’.
          George was not here when he was born on September 5th, just two minutes
          before midnight. He left on safari on the morning of the 4th and, of course, that very night
          the labour pains started. Fortunately Kate was in bed asleep so Mouche walked with
          me up the hill to the hospital where I was cheerfully received by Sister Marianne who
          had everything ready for the confinement. I was lucky to have such an experienced
          midwife because this was a breech birth and sister had to manage single handed. As
          there was no doctor present I was not allowed even a sniff of anaesthetic. Sister slaved
          away by the light of a pressure lamp endeavouring to turn the baby having first shoved
          an inverted baby bath under my hips to raise them.

          What a performance! Sister Marianne was very much afraid that she might not be
          able to save the baby and great was our relief when at last she managed to haul him out
          by the feet. One slap and the baby began to cry without any further attention so Sister
          wrapped him up in a blanket and took Johnny to her room for the night. I got very little
          sleep but was so thankful to have the ordeal over that I did not mind even though I
          heard a hyaena cackling and calling under my window in a most evil way.
          When Sister brought Johnny to me in the early morning I stared in astonishment.
          Instead of dressing him in one of his soft Viyella nighties, she had dressed him in a short
          sleeved vest of knitted cotton with a cotton cloth swayed around his waist sarong
          fashion. When I protested, “But Sister why is the baby not dressed in his own clothes?”
          She answered firmly, “I find it is not allowed. A baby’s clotheses must be boiled and I
          cannot boil clotheses of wool therefore your baby must wear the clotheses of the Red
          Cross.”

          It was the same with the bedding. Poor Johnny lies all day in a deep wicker
          basket with a detachable calico lining. There is no pillow under his head but a vast kind of
          calico covered pillow is his only covering. There is nothing at all cosy and soft round my
          poor baby. I said crossly to the Sister, “As every thing must be so sterile, I wonder you
          don’t boil me too.” This she ignored.

          When my message reached George he dashed back to visit us. Sister took him
          first to see the baby and George was astonished to see the baby basket covered by a
          sheet. “She has the poor little kid covered up like a bloody parrot,” he told me. So I
          asked him to go at once to buy a square of mosquito netting to replace the sheet.
          Kate is quite a problem. She behaves like an Angel when she is here in my
          room but is rebellious when Sister shoos her out. She says she “Hates the Nanny”
          which is what she calls Mouche. Unfortunately it seems that she woke before midnight
          on the night Johnny Jo was born to find me gone and Mouche in my bed. According to
          Mouche, Kate wept all night and certainly when she visited me in the early morning
          Kate’s face was puffy with crying and she clung to me crying “Oh my dear mummy, why
          did you go away?” over and over again. Sister Marianne was touched and suggested
          that Mouche and Kate should come to the hospital as boarders as I am the only patient
          at present and there is plenty of room. Luckily Kate does not seem at all jealous of the
          baby and it is a great relief to have here here under my eye.

          Eleanor.

          #6263
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            From Tanganyika with Love

            continued  ~ part 4

            With thanks to Mike Rushby.

            Mchewe Estate. 31st January 1936

            Dearest Family,

            Life is very quiet just now. Our neighbours have left and I miss them all especially
            Joni who was always a great bearer of news. We also grew fond of his Swedish
            brother-in-law Max, whose loud ‘Hodi’ always brought a glad ‘Karibu’ from us. His wife,
            Marion, I saw less often. She is not strong and seldom went visiting but has always
            been friendly and kind and ready to share her books with me.

            Ann’s birthday is looming ahead and I am getting dreadfully anxious that her
            parcels do not arrive in time. I am delighted that you were able to get a good head for
            her doll, dad, but horrified to hear that it was so expensive. You would love your
            ‘Charming Ann’. She is a most responsible little soul and seems to have outgrown her
            mischievous ways. A pity in a way, I don’t want her to grow too serious. You should see
            how thoroughly Ann baths and towels herself. She is anxious to do Georgie and Kate
            as well.

            I did not mean to teach Ann to write until after her fifth birthday but she has taught
            herself by copying the large print in newspaper headlines. She would draw a letter and
            ask me the name and now I find that at four Ann knows the whole alphabet. The front
            cement steps is her favourite writing spot. She uses bits of white clay we use here for
            whitewashing.

            Coffee prices are still very low and a lot of planters here and at Mbosi are in a
            mess as they can no longer raise mortgages on their farms or get advances from the
            Bank against their crops. We hear many are leaving their farms to try their luck on the
            Diggings.

            George is getting fed up too. The snails are back on the shamba and doing
            frightful damage. Talk of the plagues of Egypt! Once more they are being collected in
            piles and bashed into pulp. The stench on the shamba is frightful! The greybeards in the
            village tell George that the local Chief has put a curse on the farm because he is angry
            that the Government granted George a small extension to the farm two years ago! As
            the Chief was consulted at the time and was agreeable this talk of a curse is nonsense
            but goes to show how the uneducated African put all disasters down to witchcraft.

            With much love,
            Eleanor.

            Mchewe Estate. 9th February 1936

            Dearest Family,

            Ann’s birthday yesterday was not quite the gay occasion we had hoped. The
            seventh was mail day so we sent a runner for the mail, hoping against hope that your
            parcel containing the dolls head had arrived. The runner left for Mbeya at dawn but, as it
            was a very wet day, he did not return with the mail bag until after dark by which time Ann
            was fast asleep. My heart sank when I saw the parcel which contained the dolls new
            head. It was squashed quite flat. I shed a few tears over that shattered head, broken
            quite beyond repair, and George felt as bad about it as I did. The other parcel arrived in
            good shape and Ann loves her little sewing set, especially the thimble, and the nursery
            rhymes are a great success.

            Ann woke early yesterday and began to open her parcels. She said “But
            Mummy, didn’t Barbara’s new head come?” So I had to show her the fragments.
            Instead of shedding the flood of tears I expected, Ann just lifted the glass eyes in her
            hand and said in a tight little voice “Oh poor Barbara.” George saved the situation. as
            usual, by saying in a normal voice,”Come on Ann, get up and lets play your new
            records.” So we had music and sweets before breakfast. Later I removed Barbara’s
            faded old blond wig and gummed on the glossy new brown one and Ann seems quite
            satisfied.

            Last night, after the children were tucked up in bed, we discussed our financial
            situation. The coffee trees that have survived the plagues of borer beetle, mealie bugs
            and snails look strong and fine, but George says it will be years before we make a living
            out of the farm. He says he will simply have to make some money and he is leaving for
            the Lupa on Saturday to have a look around on the Diggings. If he does decide to peg
            a claim and work it he will put up a wattle and daub hut and the children and I will join him
            there. But until such time as he strikes gold I shall have to remain here on the farm and
            ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’.

            Now don’t go and waste pity on me. Women all over the country are having to
            stay at home whilst their husbands search for a livelihood. I am better off than most
            because I have a comfortable little home and loyal servants and we still have enough
            capitol to keep the wolf from the door. Anyway this is the rainy season and hardly the
            best time to drag three small children around the sodden countryside on prospecting
            safaris.

            So I’ll stay here at home and hold thumbs that George makes a lucky strike.

            Heaps of love to all,
            Eleanor.

            Mchewe Estate. 27th February 1936

            Dearest Family,

            Well, George has gone but here we are quite safe and cosy. Kate is asleep and
            Ann and Georgie are sprawled on the couch taking it in turns to enumerate the things
            God has made. Every now and again Ann bothers me with an awkward question. “Did
            God make spiders? Well what for? Did he make weeds? Isn’t He silly, mummy? She is
            becoming a very practical person. She sews surprisingly well for a four year old and has
            twice made cakes in the past week, very sweet and liberally coloured with cochineal and
            much appreciated by Georgie.

            I have been without George for a fortnight and have adapted myself to my new
            life. The children are great company during the day and I have arranged my evenings so
            that they do not seem long. I am determined that when George comes home he will find
            a transformed wife. I read an article entitled ‘Are you the girl he married?’ in a magazine
            last week and took a good look in the mirror and decided that I certainly was not! Hair dry,
            skin dry, and I fear, a faint shadow on the upper lip. So now I have blown the whole of
            your Christmas Money Order on an order to a chemist in Dar es Salaam for hair tonic,
            face cream and hair remover and am anxiously awaiting the parcel.

            In the meantime, after tucking the children into bed at night, I skip on the verandah
            and do the series of exercises recommended in the magazine article. After this exertion I
            have a leisurely bath followed by a light supper and then read or write letters to pass
            the time until Kate’s ten o’clock feed. I have arranged for Janey to sleep in the house.
            She comes in at 9.30 pm and makes up her bed on the living room floor by the fire.

            The days are by no means uneventful. The day before yesterday the biggest
            troop of monkeys I have ever seen came fooling around in the trees and on the grass
            only a few yards from the house. These monkeys were the common grey monkeys
            with black faces. They came in all sizes and were most entertaining to watch. Ann and
            Georgie had a great time copying their antics and pulling faces at the monkeys through
            the bedroom windows which I hastily closed.

            Thomas, our headman, came running up and told me that this troop of monkeys
            had just raided his maize shamba and asked me to shoot some of them. I would not of
            course do this. I still cannot bear to kill any animal, but I fired a couple of shots in the air
            and the monkeys just melted away. It was fantastic, one moment they were there and
            the next they were not. Ann and Georgie thought I had been very unkind to frighten the
            poor monkeys but honestly, when I saw what they had done to my flower garden, I
            almost wished I had hardened my heart and shot one or two.

            The children are all well but Ann gave me a nasty fright last week. I left Ann and
            Georgie at breakfast whilst I fed Fanny, our bull terrier on the back verandah. Suddenly I
            heard a crash and rushed inside to find Ann’s chair lying on its back and Ann beside it on
            the floor perfectly still and with a paper white face. I shouted for Janey to bring water and
            laid Ann flat on the couch and bathed her head and hands. Soon she sat up with a wan
            smile and said “I nearly knocked my head off that time, didn’t I.” She must have been
            standing on the chair and leaning against the back. Our brick floors are so terribly hard that
            she might have been seriously hurt.

            However she was none the worse for the fall, but Heavens, what an anxiety kids
            are.

            Lots of love,
            Eleanor

            Mchewe Estate. 12th March 1936

            Dearest Family,

            It was marvellous of you to send another money order to replace the one I spent
            on cosmetics. With this one I intend to order boots for both children as a protection from
            snake bite, though from my experience this past week the threat seems to be to the
            head rather than the feet. I was sitting on the couch giving Kate her morning milk from a
            cup when a long thin snake fell through the reed ceiling and landed with a thud just behind
            the couch. I shouted “Nyoka, Nyoka!” (Snake,Snake!) and the houseboy rushed in with
            a stick and killed the snake. I then held the cup to Kate’s mouth again but I suppose in
            my agitation I tipped it too much because the baby choked badly. She gasped for
            breath. I quickly gave her a sharp smack on the back and a stream of milk gushed
            through her mouth and nostrils and over me. Janey took Kate from me and carried her
            out into the fresh air on the verandah and as I anxiously followed her through the door,
            another long snake fell from the top of the wall just missing me by an inch or so. Luckily
            the houseboy still had the stick handy and dispatched this snake also.

            The snakes were a pair of ‘boomslangs’, not nice at all, and all day long I have
            had shamba boys coming along to touch hands and say “Poli Memsahib” – “Sorry
            madam”, meaning of course ‘Sorry you had a fright.’

            Apart from that one hectic morning this has been a quiet week. Before George
            left for the Lupa he paid off most of the farm hands as we can now only afford a few
            labourers for the essential work such as keeping the weeds down in the coffee shamba.
            There is now no one to keep the grass on the farm roads cut so we cannot use the pram
            when we go on our afternoon walks. Instead Janey carries Kate in a sling on her back.
            Janey is a very clean slim woman, and her clothes are always spotless, so Kate keeps
            cool and comfortable. Ann and Georgie always wear thick overalls on our walks as a
            protection against thorns and possible snakes. We usually make our way to the
            Mchewe River where Ann and Georgie paddle in the clear cold water and collect shiny
            stones.

            The cosmetics parcel duly arrived by post from Dar es Salaam so now I fill the
            evenings between supper and bed time attending to my face! The much advertised
            cream is pink and thick and feels revolting. I smooth it on before bedtime and keep it on
            all night. Just imagine if George could see me! The advertisements promise me a skin
            like a rose in six weeks. What a surprise there is in store for George!

            You will have been wondering what has happened to George. Well on the Lupa
            he heard rumours of a new gold strike somewhere in the Sumbawanga District. A couple
            of hundred miles from here I think, though I am not sure where it is and have no one to
            ask. You look it up on the map and tell me. John Molteno is also interested in this and
            anxious to have it confirmed so he and George have come to an agreement. John
            Molteno provided the porters for the journey together with prospecting tools and
            supplies but as he cannot leave his claims, or his gold buying business, George is to go
            on foot to the area of the rumoured gold strike and, if the strike looks promising will peg
            claims in both their names.

            The rainy season is now at its height and the whole countryside is under water. All
            roads leading to the area are closed to traffic and, as there are few Europeans who
            would attempt the journey on foot, George proposes to get a head start on them by
            making this uncomfortable safari. I have just had my first letter from George since he left
            on this prospecting trip. It took ages to reach me because it was sent by runner to
            Abercorn in Northern Rhodesia, then on by lorry to Mpika where it was put on a plane
            for Mbeya. George writes the most charming letters which console me a little upon our
            all too frequent separations.

            His letter was cheerful and optimistic, though reading between the lines I should
            say he had a grim time. He has reached Sumbawanga after ‘a hell of a trip’, to find that
            the rumoured strike was at Mpanda and he had a few more days of foot safari ahead.
            He had found the trip from the Lupa even wetter than he had expected. The party had
            three days of wading through swamps sometimes waist deep in water. Of his sixteen
            porters, four deserted an the second day out and five others have had malaria and so
            been unable to carry their loads. He himself is ‘thin but very fit’, and he sounds full of
            beans and writes gaily of the marvellous holiday we will have if he has any decent luck! I
            simply must get that mink and diamonds complexion.

            The frustrating thing is that I cannot write back as I have no idea where George is
            now.

            With heaps of love,
            Eleanor.

            Mchewe Estate. 24th March 1936

            Dearest Family,
            How kind you are. Another parcel from home. Although we are very short
            of labourers I sent a special runner to fetch it as Ann simply couldn’t bear the suspense
            of waiting to see Brenda, “My new little girl with plaits.” Thank goodness Brenda is
            unbreakable. I could not have born another tragedy. She really is an exquisite little doll
            and has hardly been out of Ann’s arms since arrival. She showed Brenda proudly to all
            the staff. The kitchen boy’s face was a study. His eyes fairly came out on sticks when he
            saw the dolls eyes not only opening and shutting, but moving from side to side in that
            incredibly lifelike way. Georgie loves his little model cars which he carries around all day
            and puts under his pillow at night.

            As for me, I am enchanted by my very smart new frock. Janey was so lavish with
            her compliments when I tried the frock on, that in a burst of generosity I gave her that
            rather tartish satin and lace trousseau nighty, and she was positively enthralled. She
            wore it that very night when she appeared as usual to doss down by the fire.
            By the way it was Janey’s turn to have a fright this week. She was in the
            bathroom washing the children’s clothes in an outsize hand basin when it happened. As
            she took Georgie’s overalls from the laundry basket a large centipede ran up her bare
            arm. Luckily she managed to knock the centipede off into the hot water in the hand basin.
            It was a brute, about six inches long of viciousness with a nasty sting. The locals say that
            the bite is much worse than a scorpions so Janey had a lucky escape.

            Kate cut her first two teeth yesterday and will, I hope, sleep better now. I don’t
            feel that pink skin food is getting a fair trial with all those broken nights. There is certainly
            no sign yet of ‘The skin he loves to touch”. Kate, I may say, is rosy and blooming. She
            can pull herself upright providing she has something solid to hold on to. She is so plump
            I have horrible visions of future bow legs so I push her down, but she always bobs up
            again.

            Both Ann and Georgie are mad on books. Their favourites are ‘Barbar and
            Celeste” and, of all things, ‘Struvel Peter’ . They listen with absolute relish to the sad tale
            of Harriet who played with matches.

            I have kept a laugh for the end. I am hoping that it will not be long before George
            comes home and thought it was time to take the next step towards glamour, so last
            Wednesday after lunch I settled the children on their beds and prepared to remove the ,
            to me, obvious down on my upper lip. (George always loyally says that he can’t see
            any.) Well I got out the tube of stuff and carefully followed the directions. I smoothed a
            coating on my upper lip. All this was watched with great interest by the children, including
            the baby, who stood up in her cot for a better view. Having no watch, I had propped
            the bedroom door open so that I could time the operation by the cuckoo clock in the
            living room. All the children’s surprised comments fell on deaf ears. I would neither talk
            nor smile for fear of cracking the hair remover which had set hard. The set time was up
            and I was just about to rinse the remover off when Kate slipped, knocking her head on
            the corner of the cot. I rushed to the rescue and precious seconds ticked off whilst I
            pacified her.

            So, my dears, when I rinsed my lip, not only the plaster and the hair came away
            but the skin as well and now I really did have a Ronald Coleman moustache – a crimson
            one. I bathed it, I creamed it, powdered it but all to no avail. Within half an hour my lip
            had swollen until I looked like one of those Duckbilled West African women. Ann’s
            comments, “Oh Mummy, you do look funny. Georgie, doesn’t Mummy look funny?”
            didn’t help to soothe me and the last straw was that just then there was the sound of a car drawing up outside – the first car I had heard for months. Anyway, thank heaven, it
            was not George, but the representative of a firm which sells agricultural machinery and
            farm implements, looking for orders. He had come from Dar es Salaam and had not
            heard that all the planters from this district had left their farms. Hospitality demanded that I
            should appear and offer tea. I did not mind this man because he was a complete
            stranger and fat, middle aged and comfortable. So I gave him tea, though I didn’t
            attempt to drink any myself, and told him the whole sad tale.

            Fortunately much of the swelling had gone next day and only a brown dryness
            remained. I find myself actually hoping that George is delayed a bit longer. Of one thing
            I am sure. If ever I grow a moustache again, it stays!

            Heaps of love from a sadder but wiser,
            Eleanor

            Mchewe Estate. 3rd April 1936

            Dearest Family,

            Sound the trumpets, beat the drums. George is home again. The safari, I am sad
            to say, was a complete washout in more ways than one. Anyway it was lovely to be
            together again and we don’t yet talk about the future. The home coming was not at all as
            I had planned it. I expected George to return in our old A.C. car which gives ample
            warning of its arrival. I had meant to wear my new frock and make myself as glamourous
            as possible, with our beautiful babe on one arm and our other jewels by my side.
            This however is what actually happened. Last Saturday morning at about 2 am , I
            thought I heard someone whispering my name. I sat up in bed, still half asleep, and
            there was George at the window. He was thin and unshaven and the tiredest looking
            man I have ever seen. The car had bogged down twenty miles back along the old Lupa
            Track, but as George had had no food at all that day, he decided to walk home in the
            bright moonlight.

            This is where I should have served up a tasty hot meal but alas, there was only
            the heal of a loaf and no milk because, before going to bed I had given the remaining
            milk to the dog. However George seemed too hungry to care what he ate. He made a
            meal off a tin of bully, a box of crustless cheese and the bread washed down with cup
            after cup of black tea. Though George was tired we talked for hours and it was dawn
            before we settled down to sleep.

            During those hours of talk George described his nightmarish journey. He started
            up the flooded Rukwa Valley and there were days of wading through swamp and mud
            and several swollen rivers to cross. George is a strong swimmer and the porters who
            were recruited in that area, could also swim. There remained the problem of the stores
            and of Kianda the houseboy who cannot swim. For these they made rough pole rafts
            which they pulled across the rivers with ropes. Kianda told me later that he hopes never
            to make such a journey again. He swears that the raft was submerged most of the time
            and that he was dragged through the rivers underwater! You should see the state of
            George’s clothes which were packed in a supposedly water tight uniform trunk. The
            whole lot are mud stained and mouldy.

            To make matters more trying for George he was obliged to live mostly on
            porters rations, rice and groundnut oil which he detests. As all the district roads were
            closed the little Indian Sores in the remote villages he passed had been unable to
            replenish their stocks of European groceries. George would have been thinner had it not
            been for two Roman Catholic missions enroute where he had good meals and dry
            nights. The Fathers are always wonderfully hospitable to wayfarers irrespective of
            whether or not they are Roman Catholics. George of course is not a Catholic. One finds
            the Roman Catholic missions right out in the ‘Blue’ and often on spots unhealthy to
            Europeans. Most of the Fathers are German or Dutch but they all speak a little English
            and in any case one can always fall back on Ki-Swahili.

            George reached his destination all right but it soon became apparent that reports
            of the richness of the strike had been greatly exaggerated. George had decided that
            prospects were brighter on the Lupa than on the new strike so he returned to the Lupa
            by the way he had come and, having returned the borrowed equipment decided to
            make his way home by the shortest route, the old and now rarely used road which
            passes by the bottom of our farm.

            The old A.C. had been left for safe keeping at the Roman Catholic Galala
            Mission 40 miles away, on George’s outward journey, and in this old car George, and
            the houseboy Kianda , started for home. The road was indescribably awful. There were long stretches that were simply one big puddle, in others all the soil had been washed
            away leaving the road like a rocky river bed. There were also patches where the tall
            grass had sprung up head high in the middle of the road,
            The going was slow because often the car bogged down because George had
            no wheel chains and he and Kianda had the wearisome business of digging her out. It
            was just growing dark when the old A.C. settled down determinedly in the mud for the
            last time. They could not budge her and they were still twenty miles from home. George
            decided to walk home in the moonlight to fetch help leaving Kianda in charge of the car
            and its contents and with George’s shot gun to use if necessary in self defence. Kianda
            was reluctant to stay but also not prepared to go for help whilst George remained with
            the car as lions are plentiful in that area. So George set out unarmed in the moonlight.
            Once he stopped to avoid a pride of lion coming down the road but he circled safely
            around them and came home without any further alarms.

            Kianda said he had a dreadful night in the car, “With lions roaming around the car
            like cattle.” Anyway the lions did not take any notice of the car or of Kianda, and the next
            day George walked back with all our farm boys and dug and pushed the car out of the
            mud. He brought car and Kianda back without further trouble but the labourers on their
            way home were treed by the lions.

            The wet season is definitely the time to stay home.

            Lots and lots of love,
            Eleanor

            Mchewe Estate. 30th April 1936

            Dearest Family,

            Young George’s third birthday passed off very well yesterday. It started early in
            the morning when he brought his pillow slip of presents to our bed. Kate was already
            there and Ann soon joined us. Young George liked all the presents you sent, especially
            the trumpet. It has hardly left his lips since and he is getting quite smart about the finger
            action.

            We had quite a party. Ann and I decorated the table with Christmas tree tinsel
            and hung a bunch of balloons above it. Ann also decorated young George’s chair with
            roses and phlox from the garden. I had made and iced a fruit cake but Ann begged to
            make a plain pink cake. She made it entirely by herself though I stood by to see that
            she measured the ingredients correctly. When the cake was baked I mixed some soft
            icing in a jug and she poured it carefully over the cake smoothing the gaps with her
            fingers!

            During the party we had the gramophone playing and we pulled crackers and
            wore paper hats and altogether had a good time. I forgot for a while that George is
            leaving again for the Lupa tomorrow for an indefinite time. He was marvellous at making
            young George’s party a gay one. You will have noticed the change from Georgie to
            young George. Our son declares that he now wants to be called George, “Like Dad”.
            He an Ann are a devoted couple and I am glad that there is only a fourteen
            months difference in their ages. They play together extremely well and are very
            independent which is just as well for little Kate now demands a lot of my attention. My
            garden is a real cottage garden and looks very gay and colourful. There are hollyhocks
            and Snapdragons, marigolds and phlox and of course the roses and carnations which, as
            you know, are my favourites. The coffee shamba does not look so good because the
            small labour force, which is all we can afford, cannot cope with all the weeds. You have
            no idea how things grow during the wet season in the tropics.

            Nothing alarming ever seems to happen when George is home, so I’m afraid this
            letter is rather dull. I wanted you to know though, that largely due to all your gifts of toys
            and sweets, Georgie’s 3rd birthday party went with a bang.

            Your very affectionate,
            Eleanor

            Mchewe Estate. 17th September 1936

            Dearest Family,

            I am sorry to hear that Mummy worries about me so much. “Poor Eleanor”,
            indeed! I have a quite exceptional husband, three lovely children, a dear little home and
            we are all well.It is true that I am in rather a rut but what else can we do? George comes
            home whenever he can and what excitement there is when he does come. He cannot
            give me any warning because he has to take advantage of chance lifts from the Diggings
            to Mbeya, but now that he is prospecting nearer home he usually comes walking over
            the hills. About 50 miles of rough going. Really and truly I am all right. Although our diet is
            monotonous we have plenty to eat. Eggs and milk are cheap and fruit plentiful and I
            have a good cook so can devote all my time to the children. I think it is because they are
            my constant companions that Ann and Georgie are so grown up for their years.
            I have no ayah at present because Janey has been suffering form rheumatism
            and has gone home for one of her periodic rests. I manage very well without her except
            in the matter of the afternoon walks. The outward journey is all right. George had all the
            grass cut on his last visit so I am able to push the pram whilst Ann, George and Fanny
            the dog run ahead. It is the uphill return trip that is so trying. Our walk back is always the
            same, down the hill to the river where the children love to play and then along the car
            road to the vegetable garden. I never did venture further since the day I saw a leopard
            jump on a calf. I did not tell you at the time as I thought you might worry. The cattle were
            grazing on a small knoll just off our land but near enough for me to have a clear view.
            Suddenly the cattle scattered in all directions and we heard the shouts of the herd boys
            and saw – or rather had the fleeting impression- of a large animal jumping on a calf. I
            heard the herd boy shout “Chui, Chui!” (leopard) and believe me, we turned in our
            tracks and made for home. To hasten things I picked up two sticks and told the children
            that they were horses and they should ride them home which they did with
            commendable speed.

            Ann no longer rides Joseph. He became increasingly bad tempered and a
            nuisance besides. He took to rolling all over my flower beds though I had never seen
            him roll anywhere else. Then one day he kicked Ann in the chest, not very hard but
            enough to send her flying. Now George has given him to the native who sells milk to us
            and he seems quite happy grazing with the cattle.

            With love to you all,
            Eleanor.

            Mchewe Estate. 2nd October 1936

            Dearest Family,

            Since I last wrote George has been home and we had a lovely time as usual.
            Whilst he was here the District Commissioner and his wife called. Mr Pollock told
            George that there is to be a big bush clearing scheme in some part of the Mbeya
            District to drive out Tsetse Fly. The game in the area will have to be exterminated and
            there will probably be a job for George shooting out the buffalo. The pay would be
            good but George says it is a beastly job. Although he is a professional hunter, he hates
            slaughter.

            Mrs P’s real reason for visiting the farm was to invite me to stay at her home in
            Mbeya whilst she and her husband are away in Tukuyu. Her English nanny and her small
            daughter will remain in Mbeya and she thought it might be a pleasant change for us and
            a rest for me as of course Nanny will do the housekeeping. I accepted the invitation and I
            think I will go on from there to Tukuyu and visit my friend Lillian Eustace for a fortnight.
            She has given us an open invitation to visit her at any time.

            I had a letter from Dr Eckhardt last week, telling me that at a meeting of all the
            German Settlers from Mbeya, Tukuyu and Mbosi it had been decided to raise funds to
            build a school at Mbeya. They want the British Settlers to co-operate in this and would
            be glad of a subscription from us. I replied to say that I was unable to afford a
            subscription at present but would probably be applying for a teaching job.
            The Eckhardts are the leaders of the German community here and are ardent
            Nazis. For this reason they are unpopular with the British community but he is the only
            doctor here and I must say they have been very decent to us. Both of them admire
            George. George has still not had any luck on the Lupa and until he makes a really
            promising strike it is unlikely that the children and I will join him. There is no fresh milk there
            and vegetables and fruit are imported from Mbeya and Iringa and are very expensive.
            George says “You wouldn’t be happy on the diggings anyway with a lot of whores and
            their bastards!”

            Time ticks away very pleasantly here. Young George and Kate are blooming
            and I keep well. Only Ann does not look well. She is growing too fast and is listless and
            pale. If I do go to Mbeya next week I shall take her to the doctor to be overhauled.
            We do not go for our afternoon walks now that George has returned to the Lupa.
            That leopard has been around again and has killed Tubbage that cowardly Alsatian. We
            gave him to the village headman some months ago. There is no danger to us from the
            leopard but I am terrified it might get Fanny, who is an excellent little watchdog and
            dearly loved by all of us. Yesterday I sent a note to the Boma asking for a trap gun and
            today the farm boys are building a trap with logs.

            I had a mishap this morning in the garden. I blundered into a nest of hornets and
            got two stings in the left arm above the elbow. Very painful at the time and the place is
            still red and swollen.

            Much love to you all,
            Eleanor.

            Mchewe Estate. 10th October 1936

            Dearest Family,

            Well here we are at Mbeya, comfortably installed in the District Commissioner’s
            house. It is one of two oldest houses in Mbeya and is a charming gabled place with tiled
            roof. The garden is perfectly beautiful. I am enjoying the change very much. Nanny
            Baxter is very entertaining. She has a vast fund of highly entertaining tales of the goings
            on amongst the British Aristocracy, gleaned it seems over the nursery teacup in many a
            Stately Home. Ann and Georgie are enjoying the company of other children.
            People are very kind about inviting us out to tea and I gladly accept these
            invitations but I have turned down invitations to dinner and one to a dance at the hotel. It
            is no fun to go out at night without George. There are several grass widows at the pub
            whose husbands are at the diggings. They have no inhibitions about parties.
            I did have one night and day here with George, he got the chance of a lift and
            knowing that we were staying here he thought the chance too good to miss. He was
            also anxious to hear the Doctor’s verdict on Ann. I took Ann to hospital on my second
            day here. Dr Eckhardt said there was nothing specifically wrong but that Ann is a highly
            sensitive type with whom the tropics does not agree. He advised that Ann should
            spend a year in a more temperate climate and that the sooner she goes the better. I felt
            very discouraged to hear this and was most relieved when George turned up
            unexpectedly that evening. He phoo-hood Dr Eckhardt’s recommendation and next
            morning called in Dr Aitkin, the Government Doctor from Chunya and who happened to
            be in Mbeya.

            Unfortunately Dr Aitkin not only confirmed Dr Eckhardt’s opinion but said that he
            thought Ann should stay out of the tropics until she had passed adolescence. I just don’t
            know what to do about Ann. She is a darling child, very sensitive and gentle and a
            lovely companion to me. Also she and young George are inseparable and I just cannot
            picture one without the other. I know that you would be glad to have Ann but how could
            we bear to part with her?

            Your worried but affectionate,
            Eleanor.

            Tukuyu. 23rd October 1936

            Dearest Family,

            As you see we have moved to Tukuyu and we are having a lovely time with
            Lillian Eustace. She gave us such a warm welcome and has put herself out to give us
            every comfort. She is a most capable housekeeper and I find her such a comfortable
            companion because we have the same outlook in life. Both of us are strictly one man
            women and that is rare here. She has a two year old son, Billy, who is enchanted with
            our rolly polly Kate and there are other children on the station with whom Ann and
            Georgie can play. Lillian engaged a temporary ayah for me so I am having a good rest.
            All the children look well and Ann in particular seems to have benefited by the
            change to a cooler climate. She has a good colour and looks so well that people all
            exclaim when I tell them, that two doctors have advised us to send Ann out of the
            country. Perhaps after all, this holiday in Tukuyu will set her up.

            We had a trying journey from Mbeya to Tukuyu in the Post Lorry. The three
            children and I were squeezed together on the front seat between the African driver on
            one side and a vast German on the other. Both men smoked incessantly – the driver
            cigarettes, and the German cheroots. The cab was clouded with a blue haze. Not only
            that! I suddenly felt a smarting sensation on my right thigh. The driver’s cigarette had
            burnt a hole right through that new checked linen frock you sent me last month.
            I had Kate on my lap all the way but Ann and Georgie had to stand against the
            windscreen all the way. The fat German offered to take Ann on his lap but she gave him
            a very cold “No thank you.” Nor did I blame her. I would have greatly enjoyed the drive
            under less crowded conditions. The scenery is gorgeous. One drives through very high
            country crossing lovely clear streams and at one point through rain forest. As it was I
            counted the miles and how thankful I was to see the end of the journey.
            In the days when Tanganyika belonged to the Germans, Tukuyu was the
            administrative centre for the whole of the Southern Highlands Province. The old German
            Fort is still in use as Government offices and there are many fine trees which were
            planted by the Germans. There is a large prosperous native population in this area.
            They go in chiefly for coffee and for bananas which form the basis of their diet.
            There are five British married couples here and Lillian and I go out to tea most
            mornings. In the afternoon there is tennis or golf. The gardens here are beautiful because
            there is rain or at least drizzle all the year round. There are even hedge roses bordering
            some of the district roads. When one walks across the emerald green golf course or
            through the Boma gardens, it is hard to realise that this gentle place is Tropical Africa.
            ‘Such a green and pleasant land’, but I think I prefer our corner of Tanganyika.

            Much love,
            Eleanor.

            Mchewe. 12th November 1936

            Dearest Family,

            We had a lovely holiday but it is so nice to be home again, especially as Laza,
            the local Nimrod, shot that leopard whilst we were away (with his muzzleloader gun). He
            was justly proud of himself, and I gave him a tip so that he could buy some native beer
            for a celebration. I have never seen one of theses parties but can hear the drums and
            sounds of merrymaking, especially on moonlight nights.

            Our house looks so fresh and uncluttered. Whilst I was away, the boys
            whitewashed the house and my houseboy had washed all the curtains, bedspreads,
            and loose covers and watered the garden. If only George were here it would be
            heaven.

            Ann looked so bonny at Tukuyu that I took her to the Government Doctor there
            hoping that he would find her perfectly healthy, but alas he endorsed the finding of the
            other two doctors so, when an opportunity offers, I think I shall have to send Ann down
            to you for a long holiday from the Tropics. Mother-in-law has offered to fetch her next
            year but England seems so far away. With you she will at least be on the same
            continent.

            I left the children for the first time ever, except for my stay in hospital when Kate
            was born, to go on an outing to Lake Masoko in the Tukuyu district, with four friends.
            Masoko is a beautiful, almost circular crater lake and very very deep. A detachment of
            the King’s African Rifles are stationed there and occupy the old German barracks
            overlooking the lake.

            We drove to Masoko by car and spent the afternoon there as guests of two
            British Army Officers. We had a good tea and the others went bathing in the lake but i
            could not as I did not have a costume. The Lake was as beautiful as I had been lead to
            imagine and our hosts were pleasant but I began to grow anxious as the afternoon
            advanced and my friends showed no signs of leaving. I was in agonies when they
            accepted an invitation to stay for a sundowner. We had this in the old German beer
            garden overlooking the Lake. It was beautiful but what did I care. I had promised the
            children that I would be home to give them their supper and put them to bed. When I
            did at length return to Lillian’s house I found the situation as I had expected. Ann, with her
            imagination had come to the conclusion that I never would return. She had sobbed
            herself into a state of exhaustion. Kate was screaming in sympathy and George 2 was
            very truculent. He wouldn’t even speak to me. Poor Lillian had had a trying time.
            We did not return to Mbeya by the Mail Lorry. Bill and Lillian drove us across to
            Mbeya in their new Ford V8 car. The children chattered happily in the back of the car
            eating chocolate and bananas all the way. I might have known what would happen! Ann
            was dreadfully and messily car sick.

            I engaged the Mbeya Hotel taxi to drive us out to the farm the same afternoon
            and I expect it will be a long time before we leave the farm again.

            Lots and lots of love to all,
            Eleanor.

            Chunya 27th November 1936

            Dearest Family,

            You will be surprised to hear that we are all together now on the Lupa goldfields.
            I have still not recovered from my own astonishment at being here. Until last Saturday
            night I never dreamed of this move. At about ten o’clock I was crouched in the inglenook
            blowing on the embers to make a fire so that I could heat some milk for Kate who is
            cutting teeth and was very restless. Suddenly I heard a car outside. I knew it must be
            George and rushed outside storm lamp in hand. Sure enough, there was George
            standing by a strange car, and beaming all over his face. “Something for you my love,”
            he said placing a little bundle in my hand. It was a knotted handkerchief and inside was a
            fine gold nugget.

            George had that fire going in no time, Kate was given the milk and half an aspirin
            and settles down to sleep, whilst George and I sat around for an hour chatting over our
            tea. He told me that he had borrowed the car from John Molteno and had come to fetch
            me and the children to join him on the diggings for a while. It seems that John, who has a
            camp at Itewe, a couple of miles outside the township of Chunya, the new
            Administrative Centre of the diggings, was off to the Cape to visit his family for a few
            months. John had asked George to run his claims in his absence and had given us the
            loan of his camp and his car.

            George had found the nugget on his own claim but he is not too elated because
            he says that one good month on the diggings is often followed by several months of
            dead loss. However, I feel hopeful, we have had such a run of bad luck that surely it is
            time for the tide to change. George spent Sunday going over the farm with Thomas, the
            headman, and giving him instructions about future work whilst I packed clothes and
            kitchen equipment. I have brought our ex-kitchenboy Kesho Kutwa with me as cook and
            also Janey, who heard that we were off to the Lupa and came to offer her services once
            more as ayah. Janey’s ex-husband Abel is now cook to one of the more successful
            diggers and I think she is hoping to team up with him again.

            The trip over the Mbeya-Chunya pass was new to me and I enjoyed it very
            much indeed. The road winds over the mountains along a very high escarpment and
            one looks down on the vast Usangu flats stretching far away to the horizon. At the
            highest point the road rises to about 7000 feet, and this was too much for Ann who was
            leaning against the back of my seat. She was very thoroughly sick, all over my hair.
            This camp of John Molteno’s is very comfortable. It consists of two wattle and
            daub buildings built end to end in a clearing in the miombo bush. The main building
            consists of a large living room, a store and an office, and the other of one large bedroom
            and a small one separated by an area for bathing. Both buildings are thatched. There are
            no doors, and there are no windows, but these are not necessary because one wall of
            each building is built up only a couple of feet leaving a six foot space for light and air. As
            this is the dry season the weather is pleasant. The air is fresh and dry but not nearly so
            hot as I expected.

            Water is a problem and must be carried long distances in kerosene tins.
            vegetables and fresh butter are brought in a van from Iringa and Mbeya Districts about
            once a fortnight. I have not yet visited Chunya but I believe it is as good a shopping
            centre as Mbeya so we will be able to buy all the non perishable food stuffs we need.
            What I do miss is the fresh milk. The children are accustomed to drinking at least a pint of
            milk each per day but they do not care for the tinned variety.

            Ann and young George love being here. The camp is surrounded by old
            prospecting trenches and they spend hours each day searching for gold in the heaps of gravel. Sometimes they find quartz pitted with little spots of glitter and they bring them
            to me in great excitement. Alas it is only Mica. We have two neighbours. The one is a
            bearded Frenchman and the other an Australian. I have not yet met any women.
            George looks very sunburnt and extremely fit and the children also look well.
            George and I have decided that we will keep Ann with us until my Mother-in-law comes
            out next year. George says that in spite of what the doctors have said, he thinks that the
            shock to Ann of being separated from her family will do her more harm than good. She
            and young George are inseparable and George thinks it would be best if both
            George and Ann return to England with my Mother-in-law for a couple of years. I try not
            to think at all about the breaking up of the family.

            Much love to all,
            Eleanor.

             

            #6261
            TracyTracy
            Participant

              From Tanganyika with Love

              continued

              With thanks to Mike Rushby.

              Mchewe Estate. 11th July 1931.

              Dearest Family,

              You say that you would like to know more about our neighbours. Well there is
              not much to tell. Kath Wood is very good about coming over to see me. I admire her
              very much because she is so capable as well as being attractive. She speaks very
              fluent Ki-Swahili and I envy her the way she can carry on a long conversation with the
              natives. I am very slow in learning the language possibly because Lamek and the
              houseboy both speak basic English.

              I have very little to do with the Africans apart from the house servants, but I do
              run a sort of clinic for the wives and children of our employees. The children suffer chiefly
              from sore eyes and worms, and the older ones often have bad ulcers on their legs. All
              farmers keep a stock of drugs and bandages.

              George also does a bit of surgery and last month sewed up the sole of the foot
              of a boy who had trodden on the blade of a panga, a sort of sword the Africans use for
              hacking down bush. He made an excellent job of it. George tells me that the Africans
              have wonderful powers of recuperation. Once in his bachelor days, one of his men was
              disembowelled by an elephant. George washed his “guts” in a weak solution of
              pot.permang, put them back in the cavity and sewed up the torn flesh and he
              recovered.

              But to get back to the neighbours. We see less of Hicky Wood than of Kath.
              Hicky can be charming but is often moody as I believe Irishmen often are.
              Major Jones is now at home on his shamba, which he leaves from time to time
              for temporary jobs on the district roads. He walks across fairly regularly and we are
              always glad to see him for he is a great bearer of news. In this part of Africa there is no
              knocking or ringing of doorbells. Front doors are always left open and visitors always
              welcome. When a visitor approaches a house he shouts “Hodi”, and the owner of the
              house yells “Karibu”, which I believe means “Come near” or approach, and tea is
              produced in a matter of minutes no matter what hour of the day it is.
              The road that passes all our farms is the only road to the Gold Diggings and
              diggers often drop in on the Woods and Major Jones and bring news of the Goldfields.
              This news is sometimes about gold but quite often about whose wife is living with
              whom. This is a great country for gossip.

              Major Jones now has his brother Llewyllen living with him. I drove across with
              George to be introduced to him. Llewyllen’s health is poor and he looks much older than
              his years and very like the portrait of Trader Horn. He has the same emaciated features,
              burning eyes and long beard. He is proud of his Welsh tenor voice and often bursts into
              song.

              Both brothers are excellent conversationalists and George enjoys walking over
              sometimes on a Sunday for a bit of masculine company. The other day when George
              walked across to visit the Joneses, he found both brothers in the shamba and Llew in a
              great rage. They had been stooping to inspect a water furrow when Llew backed into a
              hornets nest. One furious hornet stung him on the seat and another on the back of his
              neck. Llew leapt forward and somehow his false teeth shot out into the furrow and were
              carried along by the water. When George arrived Llew had retrieved his teeth but
              George swears that, in the commotion, the heavy leather leggings, which Llew always
              wears, had swivelled around on his thin legs and were calves to the front.
              George has heard that Major Jones is to sell pert of his land to his Swedish brother-in-law, Max Coster, so we will soon have another couple in the neighbourhood.

              I’ve had a bit of a pantomime here on the farm. On the day we went to Tukuyu,
              all our washing was stolen from the clothes line and also our new charcoal iron. George
              reported the matter to the police and they sent out a plain clothes policeman. He wears
              the long white Arab gown called a Kanzu much in vogue here amongst the African elite
              but, alas for secrecy, huge black police boots protrude from beneath the Kanzu and, to
              add to this revealing clue, the askari springs to attention and salutes each time I pass by.
              Not much hope of finding out the identity of the thief I fear.

              George’s furrow was entirely successful and we now have water running behind
              the kitchen. Our drinking water we get from a lovely little spring on the farm. We boil and
              filter it for safety’s sake. I don’t think that is necessary. The furrow water is used for
              washing pots and pans and for bath water.

              Lots of love,
              Eleanor

              Mchewe Estate. 8th. August 1931

              Dearest Family,

              I think it is about time I told you that we are going to have a baby. We are both
              thrilled about it. I have not seen a Doctor but feel very well and you are not to worry. I
              looked it up in my handbook for wives and reckon that the baby is due about February
              8th. next year.

              The announcement came from George, not me! I had been feeling queasy for
              days and was waiting for the right moment to tell George. You know. Soft lights and
              music etc. However when I was listlessly poking my food around one lunch time
              George enquired calmly, “When are you going to tell me about the baby?” Not at all
              according to the book! The problem is where to have the baby. February is a very wet
              month and the nearest Doctor is over 50 miles away at Tukuyu. I cannot go to stay at
              Tukuyu because there is no European accommodation at the hospital, no hotel and no
              friend with whom I could stay.

              George thinks I should go South to you but Capetown is so very far away and I
              love my little home here. Also George says he could not come all the way down with
              me as he simply must stay here and get the farm on its feet. He would drive me as far
              as the railway in Northern Rhodesia. It is a difficult decision to take. Write and tell me what
              you think.

              The days tick by quietly here. The servants are very willing but have to be
              supervised and even then a crisis can occur. Last Saturday I was feeling squeamish and
              decided not to have lunch. I lay reading on the couch whilst George sat down to a
              solitary curry lunch. Suddenly he gave an exclamation and pushed back his chair. I
              jumped up to see what was wrong and there, on his plate, gleaming in the curry gravy
              were small bits of broken glass. I hurried to the kitchen to confront Lamek with the plate.
              He explained that he had dropped the new and expensive bottle of curry powder on
              the brick floor of the kitchen. He did not tell me as he thought I would make a “shauri” so
              he simply scooped up the curry powder, removed the larger pieces of glass and used
              part of the powder for seasoning the lunch.

              The weather is getting warmer now. It was very cold in June and July and we had
              fires in the daytime as well as at night. Now that much of the land has been cleared we
              are able to go for pleasant walks in the weekends. My favourite spot is a waterfall on the
              Mchewe River just on the boundary of our land. There is a delightful little pool below the
              waterfall and one day George intends to stock it with trout.

              Now that there are more Europeans around to buy meat the natives find it worth
              their while to kill an occasional beast. Every now and again a native arrives with a large
              bowl of freshly killed beef for sale. One has no way of knowing whether the animal was
              healthy and the meat is often still warm and very bloody. I hated handling it at first but am
              becoming accustomed to it now and have even started a brine tub. There is no other
              way of keeping meat here and it can only be kept in its raw state for a few hours before
              going bad. One of the delicacies is the hump which all African cattle have. When corned
              it is like the best brisket.

              See what a housewife I am becoming.
              With much love,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. Sept.6th. 1931

              Dearest Family,

              I have grown to love the life here and am sad to think I shall be leaving
              Tanganyika soon for several months. Yes I am coming down to have the baby in the
              bosom of the family. George thinks it best and so does the doctor. I didn’t mention it
              before but I have never recovered fully from the effects of that bad bout of malaria and
              so I have been persuaded to leave George and our home and go to the Cape, in the
              hope that I shall come back here as fit as when I first arrived in the country plus a really
              healthy and bouncing baby. I am torn two ways, I long to see you all – but how I would
              love to stay on here.

              George will drive me down to Northern Rhodesia in early October to catch a
              South bound train. I’ll telegraph the date of departure when I know it myself. The road is
              very, very bad and the car has been giving a good deal of trouble so, though the baby
              is not due until early February, George thinks it best to get the journey over soon as
              possible, for the rains break in November and the the roads will then be impassable. It
              may take us five or six days to reach Broken Hill as we will take it slowly. I am looking
              forward to the drive through new country and to camping out at night.
              Our days pass quietly by. George is out on the shamba most of the day. He
              goes out before breakfast on weekdays and spends most of the day working with the
              men – not only supervising but actually working with his hands and beating the labourers
              at their own jobs. He comes to the house for meals and tea breaks. I potter around the
              house and garden, sew, mend and read. Lamek continues to be a treasure. he turns out
              some surprising dishes. One of his specialities is stuffed chicken. He carefully skins the
              chicken removing all bones. He then minces all the chicken meat and adds minced onion
              and potatoes. He then stuffs the chicken skin with the minced meat and carefully sews it
              together again. The resulting dish is very filling because the boned chicken is twice the
              size of a normal one. It lies on its back as round as a football with bloated legs in the air.
              Rather repulsive to look at but Lamek is most proud of his accomplishment.
              The other day he produced another of his masterpieces – a cooked tortoise. It
              was served on a dish covered with parsley and crouched there sans shell but, only too
              obviously, a tortoise. I took one look and fled with heaving diaphragm, but George said
              it tasted quite good. He tells me that he has had queerer dishes produced by former
              cooks. He says that once in his hunting days his cook served up a skinned baby
              monkey with its hands folded on its breast. He says it would take a cannibal to eat that
              dish.

              And now for something sad. Poor old Llew died quite suddenly and it was a sad
              shock to this tiny community. We went across to the funeral and it was a very simple and
              dignified affair. Llew was buried on Joni’s farm in a grave dug by the farm boys. The
              body was wrapped in a blanket and bound to some boards and lowered into the
              ground. There was no service. The men just said “Good-bye Llew.” and “Sleep well
              Llew”, and things like that. Then Joni and his brother-in-law Max, and George shovelled
              soil over the body after which the grave was filled in by Joni’s shamba boys. It was a
              lovely bright afternoon and I thought how simple and sensible a funeral it was.
              I hope you will be glad to have me home. I bet Dad will be holding thumbs that
              the baby will be a girl.

              Very much love,
              Eleanor.

              Note
              “There are no letters to my family during the period of Sept. 1931 to June 1932
              because during these months I was living with my parents and sister in a suburb of
              Cape Town. I had hoped to return to Tanganyika by air with my baby soon after her
              birth in Feb.1932 but the doctor would not permit this.

              A month before my baby was born, a company called Imperial Airways, had
              started the first passenger service between South Africa and England. One of the night
              stops was at Mbeya near my husband’s coffee farm, and it was my intention to take the
              train to Broken Hill in Northern Rhodesia and to fly from there to Mbeya with my month
              old baby. In those days however, commercial flying was still a novelty and the doctor
              was not sure that flying at a high altitude might not have an adverse effect upon a young
              baby.

              He strongly advised me to wait until the baby was four months old and I did this
              though the long wait was very trying to my husband alone on our farm in Tanganyika,
              and to me, cherished though I was in my old home.

              My story, covering those nine long months is soon told. My husband drove me
              down from Mbeya to Broken Hill in NorthernRhodesia. The journey was tedious as the
              weather was very hot and dry and the road sandy and rutted, very different from the
              Great North road as it is today. The wooden wheel spokes of the car became so dry
              that they rattled and George had to bind wet rags around them. We had several
              punctures and with one thing and another I was lucky to catch the train.
              My parents were at Cape Town station to welcome me and I stayed
              comfortably with them, living very quietly, until my baby was born. She arrived exactly
              on the appointed day, Feb.8th.

              I wrote to my husband “Our Charmian Ann is a darling baby. She is very fair and
              rather pale and has the most exquisite hands, with long tapering fingers. Daddy
              absolutely dotes on her and so would you, if you were here. I can’t bear to think that you
              are so terribly far away. Although Ann was born exactly on the day, I was taken quite by
              surprise. It was awfully hot on the night before, and before going to bed I had a fancy for
              some water melon. The result was that when I woke in the early morning with labour
              pains and vomiting I thought it was just an attack of indigestion due to eating too much
              melon. The result was that I did not wake Marjorie until the pains were pretty frequent.
              She called our next door neighbour who, in his pyjamas, drove me to the nursing home
              at breakneck speed. The Matron was very peeved that I had left things so late but all
              went well and by nine o’clock, Mother, positively twittering with delight, was allowed to
              see me and her first granddaughter . She told me that poor Dad was in such a state of
              nerves that he was sick amongst the grapevines. He says that he could not bear to go
              through such an anxious time again, — so we will have to have our next eleven in
              Tanganyika!”

              The next four months passed rapidly as my time was taken up by the demands
              of my new baby. Dr. Trudy King’s method of rearing babies was then the vogue and I
              stuck fanatically to all the rules he laid down, to the intense exasperation of my parents
              who longed to cuddle the child.

              As the time of departure drew near my parents became more and more reluctant
              to allow me to face the journey alone with their adored grandchild, so my brother,
              Graham, very generously offered to escort us on the train to Broken Hill where he could
              put us on the plane for Mbeya.

              Eleanor Rushby

               

              Mchewe Estate. June 15th 1932

              Dearest Family,

              You’ll be glad to know that we arrived quite safe and sound and very, very
              happy to be home.The train Journey was uneventful. Ann slept nearly all the way.
              Graham was very kind and saw to everything. He even sat with the baby whilst I went
              to meals in the dining car.

              We were met at Broken Hill by the Thoms who had arranged accommodation for
              us at the hotel for the night. They also drove us to the aerodrome in the morning where
              the Airways agent told us that Ann is the first baby to travel by air on this section of the
              Cape to England route. The plane trip was very bumpy indeed especially between
              Broken Hill and Mpika. Everyone was ill including poor little Ann who sicked up her milk
              all over the front of my new coat. I arrived at Mbeya looking a sorry caricature of Radiant
              Motherhood. I must have been pale green and the baby was snow white. Under the
              circumstances it was a good thing that George did not meet us. We were met instead
              by Ken Menzies, the owner of the Mbeya Hotel where we spent the night. Ken was
              most fatherly and kind and a good nights rest restored Ann and me to our usual robust
              health.

              Mbeya has greatly changed. The hotel is now finished and can accommodate
              fifty guests. It consists of a large main building housing a large bar and dining room and
              offices and a number of small cottage bedrooms. It even has electric light. There are
              several buildings out at the aerodrome and private houses going up in Mbeya.
              After breakfast Ken Menzies drove us out to the farm where we had a warm
              welcome from George, who looks well but rather thin. The house was spotless and the
              new cook, Abel, had made light scones for tea. George had prepared all sorts of lovely
              surprises. There is a new reed ceiling in the living room and a new dresser gay with
              willow pattern plates which he had ordered from England. There is also a writing table
              and a square table by the door for visitors hats. More personal is a lovely model ship
              which George assembled from one of those Hobbie’s kits. It puts the finishing touch to
              the rather old world air of our living room.

              In the bedroom there is a large double bed which George made himself. It has
              strips of old car tyres nailed to a frame which makes a fine springy mattress and on top
              of this is a thick mattress of kapok.In the kitchen there is a good wood stove which
              George salvaged from a Mission dump. It looks a bit battered but works very well. The
              new cook is excellent. The only blight is that he will wear rubber soled tennis shoes and
              they smell awful. I daren’t hurt his feelings by pointing this out though. Opposite the
              kitchen is a new laundry building containing a forty gallon hot water drum and a sink for
              washing up. Lovely!

              George has been working very hard. He now has forty acres of coffee seedlings
              planted out and has also found time to plant a rose garden and fruit trees. There are
              orange and peach trees, tree tomatoes, paw paws, guavas and berries. He absolutely
              adores Ann who has been very good and does not seem at all unsettled by the long
              journey.

              It is absolutely heavenly to be back and I shall be happier than ever now that I
              have a baby to play with during the long hours when George is busy on the farm,
              Thank you for all your love and care during the many months I was with you. Ann
              sends a special bubble for granddad.

              Your very loving,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate Mbeya July 18th 1932

              Dearest Family,

              Ann at five months is enchanting. She is a very good baby, smiles readily and is
              gaining weight steadily. She doesn’t sleep much during the day but that does not
              matter, because, apart from washing her little things, I have nothing to do but attend to
              her. She sleeps very well at night which is a blessing as George has to get up very
              early to start work on the shamba and needs a good nights rest.
              My nights are not so good, because we are having a plague of rats which frisk
              around in the bedroom at night. Great big ones that come up out of the long grass in the
              gorge beside the house and make cosy homes on our reed ceiling and in the thatch of
              the roof.

              We always have a night light burning so that, if necessary, I can attend to Ann
              with a minimum of fuss, and the things I see in that dim light! There are gaps between
              the reeds and one night I heard, plop! and there, before my horrified gaze, lay a newly
              born hairless baby rat on the floor by the bed, plop, plop! and there lay two more.
              Quite dead, poor things – but what a careless mother.

              I have also seen rats scampering around on the tops of the mosquito nets and
              sometimes we have them on our bed. They have a lovely game. They swarm down
              the cord from which the mosquito net is suspended, leap onto the bed and onto the
              floor. We do not have our net down now the cold season is here and there are few
              mosquitoes.

              Last week a rat crept under Ann’s net which hung to the floor and bit her little
              finger, so now I tuck the net in under the mattress though it makes it difficult for me to
              attend to her at night. We shall have to get a cat somewhere. Ann’s pram has not yet
              arrived so George carries her when we go walking – to her great content.
              The native women around here are most interested in Ann. They come to see
              her, bearing small gifts, and usually bring a child or two with them. They admire my child
              and I admire theirs and there is an exchange of gifts. They produce a couple of eggs or
              a few bananas or perhaps a skinny fowl and I hand over sugar, salt or soap as they
              value these commodities. The most lavish gift went to the wife of Thomas our headman,
              who produced twin daughters in the same week as I had Ann.

              Our neighbours have all been across to welcome me back and to admire the
              baby. These include Marion Coster who came out to join her husband whilst I was in
              South Africa. The two Hickson-Wood children came over on a fat old white donkey.
              They made a pretty picture sitting astride, one behind the other – Maureen with her arms
              around small Michael’s waist. A native toto led the donkey and the children’ s ayah
              walked beside it.

              It is quite cold here now but the sun is bright and the air dry. The whole
              countryside is beautifully green and we are a very happy little family.

              Lots and lots of love,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate August 11th 1932

              Dearest Family,

              George has been very unwell for the past week. He had a nasty gash on his
              knee which went septic. He had a swelling in the groin and a high temperature and could
              not sleep at night for the pain in his leg. Ann was very wakeful too during the same
              period, I think she is teething. I luckily have kept fit though rather harassed. Yesterday the
              leg looked so inflamed that George decided to open up the wound himself. he made
              quite a big cut in exactly the right place. You should have seen the blackish puss
              pouring out.

              After he had thoroughly cleaned the wound George sewed it up himself. he has
              the proper surgical needles and gut. He held the cut together with his left hand and
              pushed the needle through the flesh with his right. I pulled the needle out and passed it
              to George for the next stitch. I doubt whether a surgeon could have made a neater job
              of it. He is still confined to the couch but today his temperature is normal. Some
              husband!

              The previous week was hectic in another way. We had a visit from lions! George
              and I were having supper about 8.30 on Tuesday night when the back verandah was
              suddenly invaded by women and children from the servants quarters behind the kitchen.
              They were all yelling “Simba, Simba.” – simba means lions. The door opened suddenly
              and the houseboy rushed in to say that there were lions at the huts. George got up
              swiftly, fetched gun and ammunition from the bedroom and with the houseboy carrying
              the lamp, went off to investigate. I remained at the table, carrying on with my supper as I
              felt a pioneer’s wife should! Suddenly something big leapt through the open window
              behind me. You can imagine what I thought! I know now that it is quite true to say one’s
              hair rises when one is scared. However it was only Kelly, our huge Irish wolfhound,
              taking cover.

              George returned quite soon to say that apparently the commotion made by the
              women and children had frightened the lions off. He found their tracks in the soft earth
              round the huts and a bag of maize that had been playfully torn open but the lions had
              moved on.

              Next day we heard that they had moved to Hickson-Wood’s shamba. Hicky
              came across to say that the lions had jumped over the wall of his cattle boma and killed
              both his white Muskat riding donkeys.
              He and a friend sat up all next night over the remains but the lions did not return to
              the kill.

              Apart from the little set back last week, Ann is blooming. She has a cap of very
              fine fair hair and clear blue eyes under straight brow. She also has lovely dimples in both
              cheeks. We are very proud of her.

              Our neighbours are picking coffee but the crops are small and the price is low. I
              am amazed that they are so optimistic about the future. No one in these parts ever
              seems to grouse though all are living on capital. They all say “Well if the worst happens
              we can always go up to the Lupa Diggings.”

              Don’t worry about us, we have enough to tide us over for some time yet.

              Much love to all,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 28th Sept. 1932

              Dearest Family,

              News! News! I’m going to have another baby. George and I are delighted and I
              hope it will be a boy this time. I shall be able to have him at Mbeya because things are
              rapidly changing here. Several German families have moved to Mbeya including a
              German doctor who means to build a hospital there. I expect he will make a very good
              living because there must now be some hundreds of Europeans within a hundred miles
              radius of Mbeya. The Europeans are mostly British or German but there are also
              Greeks and, I believe, several other nationalities are represented on the Lupa Diggings.
              Ann is blooming and developing according to the Book except that she has no
              teeth yet! Kath Hickson-Wood has given her a very nice high chair and now she has
              breakfast and lunch at the table with us. Everything within reach goes on the floor to her
              amusement and my exasperation!

              You ask whether we have any Church of England missionaries in our part. No we
              haven’t though there are Lutheran and Roman Catholic Missions. I have never even
              heard of a visiting Church of England Clergyman to these parts though there are babies
              in plenty who have not been baptised. Jolly good thing I had Ann Christened down
              there.

              The R.C. priests in this area are called White Fathers. They all have beards and
              wear white cassocks and sun helmets. One, called Father Keiling, calls around frequently.
              Though none of us in this area is Catholic we take it in turn to put him up for the night. The
              Catholic Fathers in their turn are most hospitable to travellers regardless of their beliefs.
              Rather a sad thing has happened. Lucas our old chicken-boy is dead. I shall miss
              his toothy smile. George went to the funeral and fired two farewell shots from his rifle
              over the grave – a gesture much appreciated by the locals. Lucas in his day was a good
              hunter.

              Several of the locals own muzzle loading guns but the majority hunt with dogs
              and spears. The dogs wear bells which make an attractive jingle but I cannot bear the
              idea of small antelope being run down until they are exhausted before being clubbed of
              stabbed to death. We seldom eat venison as George does not care to shoot buck.
              Recently though, he shot an eland and Abel rendered down the fat which is excellent for
              cooking and very like beef fat.

              Much love to all,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. P.O.Mbeya 21st November 1932

              Dearest Family,

              George has gone off to the Lupa for a week with John Molteno. John came up
              here with the idea of buying a coffee farm but he has changed his mind and now thinks of
              staking some claims on the diggings and also setting up as a gold buyer.

              Did I tell you about his arrival here? John and George did some elephant hunting
              together in French Equatorial Africa and when John heard that George had married and
              settled in Tanganyika, he also decided to come up here. He drove up from Cape Town
              in a Baby Austin and arrived just as our labourers were going home for the day. The little
              car stopped half way up our hill and John got out to investigate. You should have heard
              the astonished exclamations when John got out – all 6 ft 5 ins. of him! He towered over
              the little car and even to me it seemed impossible for him to have made the long
              journey in so tiny a car.

              Kath Wood has been over several times lately. She is slim and looks so right in
              the shirt and corduroy slacks she almost always wears. She was here yesterday when
              the shamba boy, digging in the front garden, unearthed a large earthenware cooking pot,
              sealed at the top. I was greatly excited and had an instant mental image of fabulous
              wealth. We made the boy bring the pot carefully on to the verandah and opened it in
              happy anticipation. What do you think was inside? Nothing but a grinning skull! Such a
              treat for a pregnant female.

              We have a tree growing here that had lovely straight branches covered by a
              smooth bark. I got the garden boy to cut several of these branches of a uniform size,
              peeled off the bark and have made Ann a playpen with the poles which are much like
              broom sticks. Now I can leave her unattended when I do my chores. The other morning
              after breakfast I put Ann in her playpen on the verandah and gave her a piece of toast
              and honey to keep her quiet whilst I laundered a few of her things. When I looked out a
              little later I was horrified to see a number of bees buzzing around her head whilst she
              placidly concentrated on her toast. I made a rapid foray and rescued her but I still don’t
              know whether that was the thing to do.

              We all send our love,
              Eleanor.

              Mbeya Hospital. April 25th. 1933

              Dearest Family,

              Here I am, installed at the very new hospital, built by Dr Eckhardt, awaiting the
              arrival of the new baby. George has gone back to the farm on foot but will walk in again
              to spend the weekend with us. Ann is with me and enjoys the novelty of playing with
              other children. The Eckhardts have two, a pretty little girl of two and a half and a very fair
              roly poly boy of Ann’s age. Ann at fourteen months is very active. She is quite a little girl
              now with lovely dimples. She walks well but is backward in teething.

              George, Ann and I had a couple of days together at the hotel before I moved in
              here and several of the local women visited me and have promised to visit me in
              hospital. The trip from farm to town was very entertaining if not very comfortable. There
              is ten miles of very rough road between our farm and Utengule Mission and beyond the
              Mission there is a fair thirteen or fourteen mile road to Mbeya.

              As we have no car now the doctor’s wife offered to drive us from the Mission to
              Mbeya but she would not risk her car on the road between the Mission and our farm.
              The upshot was that I rode in the Hickson-Woods machila for that ten mile stretch. The
              machila is a canopied hammock, slung from a bamboo pole, in which I reclined, not too
              comfortably in my unwieldy state, with Ann beside me or sometime straddling me. Four
              of our farm boys carried the machila on their shoulders, two fore and two aft. The relief
              bearers walked on either side. There must have been a dozen in all and they sang a sort
              of sea shanty song as they walked. One man would sing a verse and the others took up
              the chorus. They often improvise as they go. They moaned about my weight (at least
              George said so! I don’t follow Ki-Swahili well yet) and expressed the hope that I would
              have a son and that George would reward them handsomely.

              George and Kelly, the dog, followed close behind the machila and behind
              George came Abel our cook and his wife and small daughter Annalie, all in their best
              attire. The cook wore a palm beach suit, large Terai hat and sunglasses and two colour
              shoes and quite lent a tone to the proceedings! Right at the back came the rag tag and
              bobtail who joined the procession just for fun.

              Mrs Eckhardt was already awaiting us at the Mission when we arrived and we had
              an uneventful trip to the Mbeya Hotel.

              During my last week at the farm I felt very tired and engaged the cook’s small
              daughter, Annalie, to amuse Ann for an hour after lunch so that I could have a rest. They
              played in the small verandah room which adjoins our bedroom and where I keep all my
              sewing materials. One afternoon I was startled by a scream from Ann. I rushed to the
              room and found Ann with blood steaming from her cheek. Annalie knelt beside her,
              looking startled and frightened, with my embroidery scissors in her hand. She had cut off
              half of the long curling golden lashes on one of Ann’s eyelids and, in trying to finish the
              job, had cut off a triangular flap of skin off Ann’s cheek bone.

              I called Abel, the cook, and demanded that he should chastise his daughter there and
              then and I soon heard loud shrieks from behind the kitchen. He spanked her with a
              bamboo switch but I am sure not as well as she deserved. Africans are very tolerant
              towards their children though I have seen husbands and wives fighting furiously.
              I feel very well but long to have the confinement over.

              Very much love,
              Eleanor.

              Mbeya Hospital. 2nd May 1933.

              Dearest Family,

              Little George arrived at 7.30 pm on Saturday evening 29 th. April. George was
              with me at the time as he had walked in from the farm for news, and what a wonderful bit
              of luck that was. The doctor was away on a case on the Diggings and I was bathing Ann
              with George looking on, when the pains started. George dried Ann and gave her
              supper and put her to bed. Afterwards he sat on the steps outside my room and a
              great comfort it was to know that he was there.

              The confinement was short but pretty hectic. The Doctor returned to the Hospital
              just in time to deliver the baby. He is a grand little boy, beautifully proportioned. The
              doctor says he has never seen a better formed baby. He is however rather funny
              looking just now as his head is, very temporarily, egg shaped. He has a shock of black
              silky hair like a gollywog and believe it or not, he has a slight black moustache.
              George came in, looked at the baby, looked at me, and we both burst out
              laughing. The doctor was shocked and said so. He has no sense of humour and couldn’t
              understand that we, though bursting with pride in our son, could never the less laugh at
              him.

              Friends in Mbeya have sent me the most gorgeous flowers and my room is
              transformed with delphiniums, roses and carnations. The room would be very austere
              without the flowers. Curtains, bedspread and enamelware, walls and ceiling are all
              snowy white.

              George hired a car and took Ann home next day. I have little George for
              company during the day but he is removed at night. I am longing to get him home and
              away from the German nurse who feeds him on black tea when he cries. She insists that
              tea is a medicine and good for him.

              Much love from a proud mother of two.
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate 12May 1933

              Dearest Family,

              We are all together at home again and how lovely it feels. Even the house
              servants seem pleased. The boy had decorated the lounge with sprays of
              bougainvillaea and Abel had backed one of his good sponge cakes.

              Ann looked fat and rosy but at first was only moderately interested in me and the
              new baby but she soon thawed. George is good with her and will continue to dress Ann
              in the mornings and put her to bed until I am satisfied with Georgie.

              He, poor mite, has a nasty rash on face and neck. I am sure it is just due to that
              tea the nurse used to give him at night. He has lost his moustache and is fast loosing his
              wild black hair and emerging as quite a handsome babe. He is a very masculine looking
              infant with much more strongly marked eyebrows and a larger nose that Ann had. He is
              very good and lies quietly in his basket even when awake.

              George has been making a hatching box for brown trout ova and has set it up in
              a small clear stream fed by a spring in readiness for the ova which is expected from
              South Africa by next weeks plane. Some keen fishermen from Mbeya and the District
              have clubbed together to buy the ova. The fingerlings are later to be transferred to
              streams in Mbeya and Tukuyu Districts.

              I shall now have my hands full with the two babies and will not have much time for the
              garden, or I fear, for writing very long letters. Remember though, that no matter how
              large my family becomes, I shall always love you as much as ever.

              Your affectionate,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 14th June 1933

              Dearest Family,

              The four of us are all well but alas we have lost our dear Kelly. He was rather a
              silly dog really, although he grew so big he retained all his puppy ways but we were all
              very fond of him, especially George because Kelly attached himself to George whilst I
              was away having Ann and from that time on he was George’s shadow. I think he had
              some form of biliary fever. He died stretched out on the living room couch late last night,
              with George sitting beside him so that he would not feel alone.

              The children are growing fast. Georgie is a darling. He now has a fluff of pale
              brown hair and his eyes are large and dark brown. Ann is very plump and fair.
              We have had several visitors lately. Apart from neighbours, a car load of diggers
              arrived one night and John Molteno and his bride were here. She is a very attractive girl
              but, I should say, more suited to life in civilisation than in this back of beyond. She has
              gone out to the diggings with her husband and will have to walk a good stretch of the fifty
              or so miles.

              The diggers had to sleep in the living room on the couch and on hastily erected
              camp beds. They arrived late at night and left after breakfast next day. One had half a
              beard, the other side of his face had been forcibly shaved in the bar the night before.

              your affectionate,
              Eleanor

              Mchewe Estate. August 10 th. 1933

              Dearest Family,

              George is away on safari with two Indian Army officers. The money he will get for
              his services will be very welcome because this coffee growing is a slow business, and
              our capitol is rapidly melting away. The job of acting as White Hunter was unexpected
              or George would not have taken on the job of hatching the ova which duly arrived from
              South Africa.

              George and the District Commissioner, David Pollock, went to meet the plane
              by which the ova had been consigned but the pilot knew nothing about the package. It
              came to light in the mail bag with the parcels! However the ova came to no harm. David
              Pollock and George brought the parcel to the farm and carefully transferred the ova to
              the hatching box. It was interesting to watch the tiny fry hatch out – a process which took
              several days. Many died in the process and George removed the dead by sucking
              them up in a glass tube.

              When hatched, the tiny fry were fed on ant eggs collected by the boys. I had to
              take over the job of feeding and removing the dead when George left on safari. The fry
              have to be fed every four hours, like the baby, so each time I have fed Georgie. I hurry
              down to feed the trout.

              The children are very good but keep me busy. Ann can now say several words
              and understands more. She adores Georgie. I long to show them off to you.

              Very much love
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. October 27th 1933

              Dear Family,

              All just over flu. George and Ann were very poorly. I did not fare so badly and
              Georgie came off best. He is on a bottle now.

              There was some excitement here last Wednesday morning. At 6.30 am. I called
              for boiling water to make Georgie’s food. No water arrived but muffled shouting and the
              sound of blows came from the kitchen. I went to investigate and found a fierce fight in
              progress between the house boy and the kitchen boy. In my efforts to make them stop
              fighting I went too close and got a sharp bang on the mouth with the edge of an
              enamelled plate the kitchen boy was using as a weapon. My teeth cut my lip inside and
              the plate cut it outside and blood flowed from mouth to chin. The boys were petrified.
              By the time I had fed Georgie the lip was stiff and swollen. George went in wrath
              to the kitchen and by breakfast time both house boy and kitchen boy had swollen faces
              too. Since then I have a kettle of boiling water to hand almost before the words are out
              of my mouth. I must say that the fight was because the house boy had clouted the
              kitchen boy for keeping me waiting! In this land of piece work it is the job of the kitchen
              boy to light the fire and boil the kettle but the houseboy’s job to carry the kettle to me.
              I have seen little of Kath Wood or Marion Coster for the past two months. Major
              Jones is the neighbour who calls most regularly. He has a wireless set and calls on all of
              us to keep us up to date with world as well as local news. He often brings oranges for
              Ann who adores him. He is a very nice person but no oil painting and makes no effort to
              entertain Ann but she thinks he is fine. Perhaps his monocle appeals to her.

              George has bought a six foot long galvanised bath which is a great improvement
              on the smaller oval one we have used until now. The smaller one had grown battered
              from much use and leaks like a sieve. Fortunately our bathroom has a cement floor,
              because one had to fill the bath to the brim and then bath extremely quickly to avoid
              being left high and dry.

              Lots and lots of love,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. P.O. Mbeya 1st December 1933

              Dearest Family,

              Ann has not been well. We think she has had malaria. She has grown a good
              deal lately and looks much thinner and rather pale. Georgie is thriving and has such
              sparkling brown eyes and a ready smile. He and Ann make a charming pair, one so fair
              and the other dark.

              The Moltenos’ spent a few days here and took Georgie and me to Mbeya so
              that Georgie could be vaccinated. However it was an unsatisfactory trip because the
              doctor had no vaccine.

              George went to the Lupa with the Moltenos and returned to the farm in their Baby
              Austin which they have lent to us for a week. This was to enable me to go to Mbeya to
              have a couple of teeth filled by a visiting dentist.

              We went to Mbeya in the car on Saturday. It was quite a squash with the four of
              us on the front seat of the tiny car. Once George grabbed the babies foot instead of the
              gear knob! We had Georgie vaccinated at the hospital and then went to the hotel where
              the dentist was installed. Mr Dare, the dentist, had few instruments and they were very
              tarnished. I sat uncomfortably on a kitchen chair whilst he tinkered with my teeth. He filled
              three but two of the fillings came out that night. This meant another trip to Mbeya in the
              Baby Austin but this time they seem all right.

              The weather is very hot and dry and the garden a mess. We are having trouble
              with the young coffee trees too. Cut worms are killing off seedlings in the nursery and
              there is a borer beetle in the planted out coffee.

              George bought a large grey donkey from some wandering Masai and we hope
              the children will enjoy riding it later on.

              Very much love,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 14th February 1934.

              Dearest Family,

              You will be sorry to hear that little Ann has been very ill, indeed we were terribly
              afraid that we were going to lose her. She enjoyed her birthday on the 8th. All the toys
              you, and her English granny, sent were unwrapped with such delight. However next
              day she seemed listless and a bit feverish so I tucked her up in bed after lunch. I dosed
              her with quinine and aspirin and she slept fitfully. At about eleven o’clock I was
              awakened by a strange little cry. I turned up the night light and was horrified to see that
              Ann was in a convulsion. I awakened George who, as always in an emergency, was
              perfectly calm and practical. He filled the small bath with very warm water and emersed
              Ann in it, placing a cold wet cloth on her head. We then wrapped her in blankets and
              gave her an enema and she settled down to sleep. A few hours later we had the same
              thing over again.

              At first light we sent a runner to Mbeya to fetch the doctor but waited all day in
              vain and in the evening the runner returned to say that the doctor had gone to a case on
              the diggings. Ann had been feverish all day with two or three convulsions. Neither
              George or I wished to leave the bedroom, but there was Georgie to consider, and in
              the afternoon I took him out in the garden for a while whilst George sat with Ann.
              That night we both sat up all night and again Ann had those wretched attacks of
              convulsions. George and I were worn out with anxiety by the time the doctor arrived the
              next afternoon. Ann had not been able to keep down any quinine and had had only
              small sips of water since the onset of the attack.

              The doctor at once diagnosed the trouble as malaria aggravated by teething.
              George held Ann whilst the Doctor gave her an injection. At the first attempt the needle
              bent into a bow, George was furious! The second attempt worked and after a few hours
              Ann’s temperature dropped and though she was ill for two days afterwards she is now
              up and about. She has also cut the last of her baby teeth, thank God. She looks thin and
              white, but should soon pick up. It has all been a great strain to both of us. Georgie
              behaved like an angel throughout. He played happily in his cot and did not seem to
              sense any tension as people say, babies do. Our baby was cheerful and not at all
              subdued.

              This is the rainy season and it is a good thing that some work has been done on
              our road or the doctor might not have got through.

              Much love to all,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 1st October 1934

              Dearest Family,

              We are all well now, thank goodness, but last week Georgie gave us such a
              fright. I was sitting on the verandah, busy with some sewing and not watching Ann and
              Georgie, who were trying to reach a bunch of bananas which hung on a rope from a
              beam of the verandah. Suddenly I heard a crash, Georgie had fallen backward over the
              edge of the verandah and hit the back of his head on the edge of the brick furrow which
              carries away the rainwater. He lay flat on his back with his arms spread out and did not
              move or cry. When I picked him up he gave a little whimper, I carried him to his cot and
              bathed his face and soon he began sitting up and appeared quite normal. The trouble
              began after he had vomited up his lunch. He began to whimper and bang his head
              against the cot.

              George and I were very worried because we have no transport so we could not
              take Georgie to the doctor and we could not bear to go through again what we had gone
              through with Ann earlier in the year. Then, in the late afternoon, a miracle happened. Two
              men George hardly knew, and complete strangers to me, called in on their way from the
              diggings to Mbeya and they kindly drove Georgie and me to the hospital. The Doctor
              allowed me to stay with Georgie and we spent five days there. Luckily he responded to
              treatment and is now as alive as ever. Children do put years on one!

              There is nothing much else to report. We have a new vegetable garden which is
              doing well but the earth here is strange. Gardens seem to do well for two years but by
              that time the soil is exhausted and one must move the garden somewhere else. The
              coffee looks well but it will be another year before we can expect even a few bags of
              coffee and prices are still low. Anyway by next year George should have some good
              return for all his hard work.

              Lots of love,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. November 4th 1934

              Dearest Family,

              George is home from his White Hunting safari looking very sunburnt and well.
              The elderly American, who was his client this time, called in here at the farm to meet me
              and the children. It is amazing what spirit these old lads have! This one looked as though
              he should be thinking in terms of slippers and an armchair but no, he thinks in terms of
              high powered rifles with telescopic sights.

              It is lovely being together again and the children are delighted to have their Dad
              home. Things are always exciting when George is around. The day after his return
              George said at breakfast, “We can’t go on like this. You and the kids never get off the
              shamba. We’ll simply have to get a car.” You should have heard the excitement. “Get a
              car Daddy?’” cried Ann jumping in her chair so that her plaits bounced. “Get a car
              Daddy?” echoed Georgie his brown eyes sparkling. “A car,” said I startled, “However
              can we afford one?”

              “Well,” said George, “on my way back from Safari I heard that a car is to be sold
              this week at the Tukuyu Court, diseased estate or bankruptcy or something, I might get it
              cheap and it is an A.C.” The name meant nothing to me, but George explained that an
              A.C. is first cousin to a Rolls Royce.

              So off he went to the sale and next day the children and I listened all afternoon for
              the sound of an approaching car. We had many false alarms but, towards evening we
              heard what appeared to be the roar of an aeroplane engine. It was the A.C. roaring her
              way up our steep hill with a long plume of steam waving gaily above her radiator.
              Out jumped my beaming husband and in no time at all, he was showing off her
              points to an admiring family. Her lines are faultless and seats though worn are most
              comfortable. She has a most elegant air so what does it matter that the radiator leaks like
              a sieve, her exhaust pipe has broken off, her tyres are worn almost to the canvas and
              she has no windscreen. She goes, and she cost only five pounds.

              Next afternoon George, the kids and I piled into the car and drove along the road
              on lookout for guinea fowl. All went well on the outward journey but on the homeward
              one the poor A.C. simply gasped and died. So I carried the shot gun and George
              carried both children and we trailed sadly home. This morning George went with a bunch
              of farmhands and brought her home. Truly temperamental, she came home literally
              under her own steam.

              George now plans to get a second hand engine and radiator for her but it won’t
              be an A.C. engine. I think she is the only one of her kind in the country.
              I am delighted to hear, dad, that you are sending a bridle for Joseph for
              Christmas. I am busy making a saddle out of an old piece of tent canvas stuffed with
              kapok, some webbing and some old rug straps. A car and a riding donkey! We’re
              definitely carriage folk now.

              Lots of love to all,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 28th December 1934

              Dearest Family,

              Thank you for the wonderful Christmas parcel. My frock is a splendid fit. George
              declares that no one can knit socks like Mummy and the children love their toys and new
              clothes.

              Joseph, the donkey, took his bit with an air of bored resignation and Ann now
              rides proudly on his back. Joseph is a big strong animal with the looks and disposition of
              a mule. he will not go at all unless a native ‘toto’ walks before him and when he does go
              he wears a pained expression as though he were carrying fourteen stone instead of
              Ann’s fly weight. I walk beside the donkey carrying Georgie and our cat, ‘Skinny Winnie’,
              follows behind. Quite a cavalcade. The other day I got so exasperated with Joseph that
              I took Ann off and I got on. Joseph tottered a few paces and sat down! to the huge
              delight of our farm labourers who were going home from work. Anyway, one good thing,
              the donkey is so lazy that there is little chance of him bolting with Ann.

              The Moltenos spent Christmas with us and left for the Lupa Diggings yesterday.
              They arrived on the 22nd. with gifts for the children and chocolates and beer. That very
              afternoon George and John Molteno left for Ivuna, near Lake Ruckwa, to shoot some
              guinea fowl and perhaps a goose for our Christmas dinner. We expected the menfolk
              back on Christmas Eve and Anne and I spent a busy day making mince pies and
              sausage rolls. Why I don’t know, because I am sure Abel could have made them better.
              We decorated the Christmas tree and sat up very late but no husbands turned up.
              Christmas day passed but still no husbands came. Anne, like me, is expecting a baby
              and we both felt pretty forlorn and cross. Anne was certain that they had been caught up
              in a party somewhere and had forgotten all about us and I must say when Boxing Day
              went by and still George and John did not show up I felt ready to agree with her.
              They turned up towards evening and explained that on the homeward trip the car
              had bogged down in the mud and that they had spent a miserable Christmas. Anne
              refused to believe their story so George, to prove their case, got the game bag and
              tipped the contents on to the dining room table. Out fell several guinea fowl, long past
              being edible, followed by a large goose so high that it was green and blue where all the
              feathers had rotted off.

              The stench was too much for two pregnant girls. I shot out of the front door
              closely followed by Anne and we were both sick in the garden.

              I could not face food that evening but Anne is made of stronger stuff and ate her
              belated Christmas dinner with relish.

              I am looking forward enormously to having Marjorie here with us. She will be able
              to carry back to you an eyewitness account of our home and way of life.

              Much love to you all,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 5th January 1935

              Dearest Family,

              You cannot imagine how lovely it is to have Marjorie here. She came just in time
              because I have had pernicious vomiting and have lost a great deal of weight and she
              took charge of the children and made me spend three days in hospital having treatment.
              George took me to the hospital on the afternoon of New Years Eve and decided
              to spend the night at the hotel and join in the New Years Eve celebrations. I had several
              visitors at the hospital that evening and George actually managed to get some imported
              grapes for me. He returned to the farm next morning and fetched me from the hospital
              four days later. Of course the old A.C. just had to play up. About half way home the
              back axle gave in and we had to send a passing native some miles back to a place
              called Mbalizi to hire a lorry from a Greek trader to tow us home to the farm.
              The children looked well and were full of beans. I think Marjorie was thankful to
              hand them over to me. She is delighted with Ann’s motherly little ways but Georgie she
              calls “a really wild child”. He isn’t, just has such an astonishing amount of energy and is
              always up to mischief. Marjorie brought us all lovely presents. I am so thrilled with my
              sewing machine. It may be an old model but it sews marvellously. We now have an
              Alsatian pup as well as Joseph the donkey and the two cats.

              Marjorie had a midnight encounter with Joseph which gave her quite a shock but
              we had a good laugh about it next day. Some months ago George replaced our wattle
              and daub outside pit lavatory by a substantial brick one, so large that Joseph is being
              temporarily stabled in it at night. We neglected to warn Marj about this and one night,
              storm lamp in hand, she opened the door and Joseph walked out braying his thanks.
              I am afraid Marjorie is having a quiet time, a shame when the journey from Cape
              Town is so expensive. The doctor has told me to rest as much as I can, so it is
              impossible for us to take Marj on sight seeing trips.

              I hate to think that she will be leaving in ten days time.

              Much love,
              Eleanor.

              Mchewe Estate. 18th February 1935

              Dearest Family,

              You must be able to visualise our life here quite well now that Marj is back and
              has no doubt filled in all the details I forget to mention in my letters. What a journey we
              had in the A.C. when we took her to the plane. George, the children and I sat in front and
              Marj sat behind with numerous four gallon tins of water for the insatiable radiator. It was
              raining and the canvas hood was up but part of the side flaps are missing and as there is
              no glass in the windscreen the rain blew in on us. George got fed up with constantly
              removing the hot radiator cap so simply stuffed a bit of rag in instead. When enough
              steam had built up in the radiator behind the rag it blew out and we started all over again.
              The car still roars like an aeroplane engine and yet has little power so that George sent
              gangs of boys to the steep hills between the farm and the Mission to give us a push if
              necessary. Fortunately this time it was not, and the boys cheered us on our way. We
              needed their help on the homeward journey however.

              George has now bought an old Chev engine which he means to install before I
              have to go to hospital to have my new baby. It will be quite an engineering feet as
              George has few tools.

              I am sorry to say that I am still not well, something to do with kidneys or bladder.
              George bought me some pills from one of the several small shops which have opened
              in Mbeya and Ann is most interested in the result. She said seriously to Kath Wood,
              “Oh my Mummy is a very clever Mummy. She can do blue wee and green wee as well
              as yellow wee.” I simply can no longer manage the children without help and have
              engaged the cook’s wife, Janey, to help. The children are by no means thrilled. I plead in
              vain that I am not well enough to go for walks. Ann says firmly, “Ann doesn’t want to go
              for a walk. Ann will look after you.” Funny, though she speaks well for a three year old,
              she never uses the first person. Georgie say he would much rather walk with
              Keshokutwa, the kitchen boy. His name by the way, means day-after-tomorrow and it
              suits him down to the ground, Kath Wood walks over sometimes with offers of help and Ann will gladly go walking with her but Georgie won’t. He on the other hand will walk with Anne Molteno
              and Ann won’t. They are obstinate kids. Ann has developed a very fertile imagination.
              She has probably been looking at too many of those nice women’s magazines you
              sent. A few days ago she said, “You are sick Mummy, but Ann’s got another Mummy.
              She’s not sick, and my other mummy (very smugly) has lovely golden hair”. This
              morning’ not ten minutes after I had dressed her, she came in with her frock wet and
              muddy. I said in exasperation, “Oh Ann, you are naughty.” To which she instantly
              returned, “My other Mummy doesn’t think I am naughty. She thinks I am very nice.” It
              strikes me I shall have to get better soon so that I can be gay once more and compete
              with that phantom golden haired paragon.

              We had a very heavy storm over the farm last week. There was heavy rain with
              hail which stripped some of the coffee trees and the Mchewe River flooded and the
              water swept through the lower part of the shamba. After the water had receded George
              picked up a fine young trout which had been stranded. This was one of some he had
              put into the river when Georgie was a few months old.

              The trials of a coffee farmer are legion. We now have a plague of snails. They
              ring bark the young trees and leave trails of slime on the glossy leaves. All the ring
              barked trees will have to be cut right back and this is heartbreaking as they are bearing
              berries for the first time. The snails are collected by native children, piled upon the
              ground and bashed to a pulp which gives off a sickening stench. I am sorry for the local
              Africans. Locusts ate up their maize and now they are losing their bean crop to the snails.

              Lots of love, Eleanor

              #6260
              TracyTracy
              Participant

                From Tanganyika with Love

                With thanks to Mike Rushby.

                • “The letters of Eleanor Dunbar Leslie to her parents and her sister in South Africa
                  concerning her life with George Gilman Rushby of Tanganyika, and the trials and
                  joys of bringing up a family in pioneering conditions.

                These letters were transcribed from copies of letters typed by Eleanor Rushby from
                the originals which were in the estate of Marjorie Leslie, Eleanor’s sister. Eleanor
                kept no diary of her life in Tanganyika, so these letters were the living record of an
                important part of her life.

                Prelude
                Having walked across Africa from the East coast to Ubangi Shauri Chad
                in French Equatorial Africa, hunting elephant all the way, George Rushby
                made his way down the Congo to Leopoldville. He then caught a ship to
                Europe and had a holiday in Brussels and Paris before visiting his family
                in England. He developed blackwater fever and was extremely ill for a
                while. When he recovered he went to London to arrange his return to
                Africa.

                Whilst staying at the Overseas Club he met Eileen Graham who had come
                to England from Cape Town to study music. On hearing that George was
                sailing for Cape Town she arranged to introduce him to her friend
                Eleanor Dunbar Leslie. “You’ll need someone lively to show you around,”
                she said. “She’s as smart as paint, a keen mountaineer, a very good school
                teacher, and she’s attractive. You can’t miss her, because her father is a
                well known Cape Town Magistrate. And,” she added “I’ve already written
                and told her what ship you are arriving on.”

                Eleanor duly met the ship. She and George immediately fell in love.
                Within thirty six hours he had proposed marriage and was accepted
                despite the misgivings of her parents. As she was under contract to her
                High School, she remained in South Africa for several months whilst
                George headed for Tanganyika looking for a farm where he could build
                their home.

                These details are a summary of chapter thirteen of the Biography of
                George Gilman Rushby ‘The Hunter is Death “ by T.V.Bulpin.

                 

                Dearest Marj,
                Terrifically exciting news! I’ve just become engaged to an Englishman whom I
                met last Monday. The result is a family upheaval which you will have no difficulty in
                imagining!!

                The Aunts think it all highly romantic and cry in delight “Now isn’t that just like our
                El!” Mummy says she doesn’t know what to think, that anyway I was always a harum
                scarum and she rather expected something like this to happen. However I know that
                she thinks George highly attractive. “Such a nice smile and gentle manner, and such
                good hands“ she murmurs appreciatively. “But WHY AN ELEPHANT HUNTER?” she
                ends in a wail, as though elephant hunting was an unmentionable profession.
                Anyway I don’t think so. Anyone can marry a bank clerk or a lawyer or even a
                millionaire – but whoever heard of anyone marrying anyone as exciting as an elephant
                hunter? I’m thrilled to bits.

                Daddy also takes a dim view of George’s profession, and of George himself as
                a husband for me. He says that I am so impulsive and have such wild enthusiasms that I
                need someone conservative and steady to give me some serenity and some ballast.
                Dad says George is a handsome fellow and a good enough chap he is sure, but
                he is obviously a man of the world and hints darkly at a possible PAST. George says
                he has nothing of the kind and anyway I’m the first girl he has asked to marry him. I don’t
                care anyway, I’d gladly marry him tomorrow, but Dad has other ideas.

                He sat in his armchair to deliver his verdict, wearing the same look he must wear
                on the bench. If we marry, and he doesn’t think it would be a good thing, George must
                buy a comfortable house for me in Central Africa where I can stay safely when he goes
                hunting. I interrupted to say “But I’m going too”, but dad snubbed me saying that in no
                time at all I’ll have a family and one can’t go dragging babies around in the African Bush.”
                George takes his lectures with surprising calm. He says he can see Dad’s point of
                view much better than I can. He told the parents today that he plans to buy a small
                coffee farm in the Southern Highlands of Tanganyika and will build a cosy cottage which
                will be a proper home for both of us, and that he will only hunt occasionally to keep the
                pot boiling.

                Mummy, of course, just had to spill the beans. She said to George, “I suppose
                you know that Eleanor knows very little about house keeping and can’t cook at all.” a fact
                that I was keeping a dark secret. But George just said, “Oh she won’t have to work. The
                boys do all that sort of thing. She can lie on a couch all day and read if she likes.” Well
                you always did say that I was a “Lily of the field,” and what a good thing! If I were one of
                those terribly capable women I’d probably die of frustration because it seems that
                African house boys feel that they have lost face if their Memsahibs do anything but the
                most gracious chores.

                George is absolutely marvellous. He is strong and gentle and awfully good
                looking too. He is about 5 ft 10 ins tall and very broad. He wears his curly brown hair cut
                very short and has a close clipped moustache. He has strongly marked eyebrows and
                very striking blue eyes which sometimes turn grey or green. His teeth are strong and
                even and he has a quiet voice.

                I expect all this sounds too good to be true, but come home quickly and see for
                yourself. George is off to East Africa in three weeks time to buy our farm. I shall follow as
                soon as he has bought it and we will be married in Dar es Salaam.

                Dad has taken George for a walk “to get to know him” and that’s why I have time
                to write such a long screed. They should be back any minute now and I must fly and
                apply a bit of glamour.

                Much love my dear,
                your jubilant
                Eleanor

                S.S.Timavo. Durban. 28th.October. 1930.

                Dearest Family,
                Thank you for the lovely send off. I do wish you were all on board with me and
                could come and dance with me at my wedding. We are having a very comfortable
                voyage. There were only four of the passengers as far as Durban, all of them women,
                but I believe we are taking on more here. I have a most comfortable deck cabin to
                myself and the use of a sumptuous bathroom. No one is interested in deck games and I
                am having a lazy time, just sunbathing and reading.

                I sit at the Captain’s table and the meals are delicious – beautifully served. The
                butter for instance, is moulded into sprays of roses, most exquisitely done, and as for
                the ice-cream, I’ve never tasted anything like them.

                The meals are continental type and we have hors d’oeuvre in a great variety
                served on large round trays. The Italians souse theirs with oil, Ugh! We also of course
                get lots of spaghetti which I have some difficulty in eating. However this presents no
                problem to the Chief Engineer who sits opposite to me. He simply rolls it around his
                fork and somehow the spaghetti flows effortlessly from fork to mouth exactly like an
                ascending escalator. Wine is served at lunch and dinner – very mild and pleasant stuff.
                Of the women passengers the one i liked best was a young German widow
                from South west Africa who left the ship at East London to marry a man she had never
                met. She told me he owned a drapers shop and she was very happy at the prospect
                of starting a new life, as her previous marriage had ended tragically with the death of her
                husband and only child in an accident.

                I was most interested to see the bridegroom and stood at the rail beside the gay
                young widow when we docked at East London. I picked him out, without any difficulty,
                from the small group on the quay. He was a tall thin man in a smart grey suit and with a
                grey hat perched primly on his head. You can always tell from hats can’t you? I wasn’t
                surprised to see, when this German raised his head, that he looked just like the Kaiser’s
                “Little Willie”. Long thin nose and cold grey eyes and no smile of welcome on his tight
                mouth for the cheery little body beside me. I quite expected him to jerk his thumb and
                stalk off, expecting her to trot at his heel.

                However she went off blithely enough. Next day before the ship sailed, she
                was back and I saw her talking to the Captain. She began to cry and soon after the
                Captain patted her on the shoulder and escorted her to the gangway. Later the Captain
                told me that the girl had come to ask him to allow her to work her passage back to
                Germany where she had some relations. She had married the man the day before but
                she disliked him because he had deceived her by pretending that he owned a shop
                whereas he was only a window dresser. Bad show for both.

                The Captain and the Chief Engineer are the only officers who mix socially with
                the passengers. The captain seems rather a melancholy type with, I should say, no
                sense of humour. He speaks fair English with an American accent. He tells me that he
                was on the San Francisco run during Prohibition years in America and saw many Film
                Stars chiefly “under the influence” as they used to flock on board to drink. The Chief
                Engineer is big and fat and cheerful. His English is anything but fluent but he makes up
                for it in mime.

                I visited the relations and friends at Port Elizabeth and East London, and here at
                Durban. I stayed with the Trotters and Swans and enjoyed myself very much at both
                places. I have collected numerous wedding presents, china and cutlery, coffee
                percolator and ornaments, and where I shall pack all these things I don’t know. Everyone has been terribly kind and I feel extremely well and happy.

                At the start of the voyage I had a bit of bad luck. You will remember that a
                perfectly foul South Easter was blowing. Some men were busy working on a deck
                engine and I stopped to watch and a tiny fragment of steel blew into my eye. There is
                no doctor on board so the stewardess put some oil into the eye and bandaged it up.
                The eye grew more and more painful and inflamed and when when we reached Port
                Elizabeth the Captain asked the Port Doctor to look at it. The Doctor said it was a job for
                an eye specialist and telephoned from the ship to make an appointment. Luckily for me,
                Vincent Tofts turned up at the ship just then and took me off to the specialist and waited
                whilst he extracted the fragment with a giant magnet. The specialist said that I was very
                lucky as the thing just missed the pupil of my eye so my sight will not be affected. I was
                temporarily blinded by the Belladona the eye-man put in my eye so he fitted me with a
                pair of black goggles and Vincent escorted me back to the ship. Don’t worry the eye is
                now as good as ever and George will not have to take a one-eyed bride for better or
                worse.

                I have one worry and that is that the ship is going to be very much overdue by
                the time we reach Dar es Salaam. She is taking on a big wool cargo and we were held
                up for three days in East london and have been here in Durban for five days.
                Today is the ninth Anniversary of the Fascist Movement and the ship was
                dressed with bunting and flags. I must now go and dress for the gala dinner.

                Bless you all,
                Eleanor.

                S.S.Timavo. 6th. November 1930

                Dearest Family,

                Nearly there now. We called in at Lourenco Marques, Beira, Mozambique and
                Port Amelia. I was the only one of the original passengers left after Durban but there we
                took on a Mrs Croxford and her mother and two men passengers. Mrs C must have
                something, certainly not looks. She has a flat figure, heavily mascared eyes and crooked
                mouth thickly coated with lipstick. But her rather sweet old mother-black-pearls-type tells
                me they are worn out travelling around the world trying to shake off an admirer who
                pursues Mrs C everywhere.

                The one male passenger is very quiet and pleasant. The old lady tells me that he
                has recently lost his wife. The other passenger is a horribly bumptious type.
                I had my hair beautifully shingled at Lourenco Marques, but what an experience it
                was. Before we docked I asked the Captain whether he knew of a hairdresser, but he
                said he did not and would have to ask the agent when he came aboard. The agent was
                a very suave Asian. He said “Sure he did” and offered to take me in his car. I rather
                doubtfully agreed — such a swarthy gentleman — and was driven, not to a hairdressing
                establishment, but to his office. Then he spoke to someone on the telephone and in no
                time at all a most dago-y type arrived carrying a little black bag. He was all patent
                leather, hair, and flashing smile, and greeted me like an old and valued friend.
                Before I had collected my scattered wits tthe Agent had flung open a door and
                ushered me through, and I found myself seated before an ornate mirror in what was only
                too obviously a bedroom. It was a bedroom with a difference though. The unmade bed
                had no legs but hung from the ceiling on brass chains.

                The agent beamingly shut the door behind him and I was left with my imagination
                and the afore mentioned oily hairdresser. He however was very business like. Before I
                could say knife he had shingled my hair with a cut throat razor and then, before I could
                protest, had smothered my neck in stinking pink powder applied with an enormous and
                filthy swansdown powder puff. He held up a mirror for me to admire his handiwork but I
                was aware only of the enormous bed reflected in it, and hurriedly murmuring “very nice,
                very nice” I made my escape to the outer office where, to my relief, I found the Chief
                Engineer who escorted me back to the ship.

                In the afternoon Mrs Coxford and the old lady and I hired a taxi and went to the
                Polana Hotel for tea. Very swish but I like our Cape Peninsula beaches better.
                At Lorenco Marques we took on more passengers. The Governor of
                Portuguese Nyasaland and his wife and baby son. He was a large middle aged man,
                very friendly and unassuming and spoke perfect English. His wife was German and
                exquisite, as fragile looking and with the delicate colouring of a Dresden figurine. She
                looked about 18 but she told me she was 28 and showed me photographs of two
                other sons – hefty youngsters, whom she had left behind in Portugal and was missing
                very much.

                It was frightfully hot at Beira and as I had no money left I did not go up to the
                town, but Mrs Croxford and I spent a pleasant hour on the beach under the Casurina
                trees.

                The Governor and his wife left the ship at Mozambique. He looked very
                imposing in his starched uniform and she more Dresden Sheperdish than ever in a
                flowered frock. There was a guard of honour and all the trimmings. They bade me a warm farewell and invited George and me to stay at any time.

                The German ship “Watussi” was anchored in the Bay and I decided to visit her
                and try and have my hair washed and set. I had no sooner stepped on board when a
                lady came up to me and said “Surely you are Beeba Leslie.” It was Mrs Egan and she
                had Molly with her. Considering Mrs Egan had not seen me since I was five I think it was
                jolly clever of her to recognise me. Molly is charming and was most friendly. She fixed
                things with the hairdresser and sat with me until the job was done. Afterwards I had tea
                with them.

                Port Amelia was our last stop. In fact the only person to go ashore was Mr
                Taylor, the unpleasant man, and he returned at sunset very drunk indeed.
                We reached Port Amelia on the 3rd – my birthday. The boat had anchored by
                the time I was dressed and when I went on deck I saw several row boats cluttered
                around the gangway and in them were natives with cages of wild birds for sale. Such tiny
                crowded cages. I was furious, you know me. I bought three cages, carried them out on
                to the open deck and released the birds. I expected them to fly to the land but they flew
                straight up into the rigging.

                The quiet male passenger wandered up and asked me what I was doing. I said
                “I’m giving myself a birthday treat, I hate to see caged birds.” So next thing there he
                was buying birds which he presented to me with “Happy Birthday.” I gladly set those
                birds free too and they joined the others in the rigging.

                Then a grinning steward came up with three more cages. “For the lady with
                compliments of the Captain.” They lost no time in joining their friends.
                It had given me so much pleasure to free the birds that I was only a little
                discouraged when the quiet man said thoughtfully “This should encourage those bird
                catchers you know, they are sold out. When evening came and we were due to sail I
                was sure those birds would fly home, but no, they are still there and they will probably
                remain until we dock at Dar es Salaam.

                During the morning the Captain came up and asked me what my Christian name
                is. He looked as grave as ever and I couldn’t think why it should interest him but said “the
                name is Eleanor.” That night at dinner there was a large iced cake in the centre of the
                table with “HELENA” in a delicate wreath of pink icing roses on the top. We had
                champagne and everyone congratulated me and wished me good luck in my marriage.
                A very nice gesture don’t you think. The unpleasant character had not put in an
                appearance at dinner which made the party all the nicer

                I sat up rather late in the lounge reading a book and by the time I went to bed
                there was not a soul around. I bathed and changed into my nighty,walked into my cabin,
                shed my dressing gown, and pottered around. When I was ready for bed I put out my
                hand to draw the curtains back and a hand grasped my wrist. It was that wretched
                creature outside my window on the deck, still very drunk. Luckily I was wearing that
                heavy lilac silk nighty. I was livid. “Let go at once”, I said, but he only grinned stupidly.
                “I’m not hurting you” he said, “only looking”. “I’ll ring for the steward” said I, and by
                stretching I managed to press the bell with my free hand. I rang and rang but no one
                came and he just giggled. Then I said furiously, “Remember this name, George
                Rushby, he is a fine boxer and he hates specimens like you. When he meets me at Dar
                es Salaam I shall tell him about this and I bet you will be sorry.” However he still held on
                so I turned and knocked hard on the adjoining wall which divided my cabin from Mrs
                Croxfords. Soon Mrs Croxford and the old lady appeared in dressing gowns . This
                seemed to amuse the drunk even more though he let go my wrist. So whilst the old
                lady stayed with me, Mrs C fetched the quiet passenger who soon hustled him off. He has kept out of my way ever since. However I still mean to tell George because I feel
                the fellow got off far too lightly. I reported the matter to the Captain but he just remarked
                that he always knew the man was low class because he never wears a jacket to meals.
                This is my last night on board and we again had free champagne and I was given
                some tooled leather work by the Captain and a pair of good paste earrings by the old
                lady. I have invited them and Mrs Croxford, the Chief Engineer, and the quiet
                passenger to the wedding.

                This may be my last night as Eleanor Leslie and I have spent this long while
                writing to you just as a little token of my affection and gratitude for all the years of your
                love and care. I shall post this letter on the ship and must turn now and get some beauty
                sleep. We have been told that we shall be in Dar es Salaam by 9 am. I am so excited
                that I shall not sleep.

                Very much love, and just for fun I’ll sign my full name for the last time.
                with my “bes respeks”,

                Eleanor Leslie.

                Eleanor and George Rushby:

                Eleanor and George Rushby

                Splendid Hotel, Dar es Salaam 11th November 1930

                Dearest Family,

                I’m writing this in the bedroom whilst George is out buying a tin trunk in which to
                pack all our wedding presents. I expect he will be gone a long time because he has
                gone out with Hicky Wood and, though our wedding was four days ago, it’s still an
                excuse for a party. People are all very cheery and friendly here.
                I am wearing only pants and slip but am still hot. One swelters here in the
                mornings, but a fresh sea breeze blows in the late afternoons and then Dar es Salaam is
                heavenly.

                We arrived in Dar es Salaam harbour very early on Friday morning (7 th Nov).
                The previous night the Captain had said we might not reach Dar. until 9 am, and certainly
                no one would be allowed on board before 8 am. So I dawdled on the deck in my
                dressing gown and watched the green coastline and the islands slipping by. I stood on
                the deck outside my cabin and was not aware that I was looking out at the wrong side of
                the landlocked harbour. Quite unknown to me George and some friends, the Hickson
                Woods, were standing on the Gymkhana Beach on the opposite side of the channel
                anxiously scanning the ship for a sign of me. George says he had a horrible idea I had
                missed the ship. Blissfully unconscious of his anxiety I wandered into the bathroom
                prepared for a good soak. The anchor went down when I was in the bath and suddenly
                there was a sharp wrap on the door and I heard Mrs Croxford say “There’s a man in a
                boat outside. He is looking out for someone and I’m sure it’s your George. I flung on
                some clothes and rushed on deck with tousled hair and bare feet and it was George.
                We had a marvellous reunion. George was wearing shorts and bush shirt and
                looked just like the strong silent types one reads about in novels. I finished dressing then
                George helped me bundle all the wedding presents I had collected en route into my
                travelling rug and we went into the bar lounge to join the Hickson Woods. They are the
                couple from whom George bought the land which is to be our coffee farm Hicky-Wood
                was laughing when we joined them. he said he had called a chap to bring a couple of
                beers thinking he was the steward but it turned out to be the Captain. He does wear
                such a very plain uniform that I suppose it was easy to make the mistake, but Hicky
                says he was not amused.

                Anyway as the H-W’s are to be our neighbours I’d better describe them. Kath
                Wood is very attractive, dark Irish, with curly black hair and big brown eyes. She was
                married before to Viv Lumb a great friend of George’s who died some years ago of
                blackwater fever. They had one little girl, Maureen, and Kath and Hicky have a small son
                of three called Michael. Hicky is slightly below average height and very neat and dapper
                though well built. He is a great one for a party and good fun but George says he can be
                bad tempered.

                Anyway we all filed off the ship and Hicky and Cath went on to the hotel whilst
                George and I went through customs. Passing the customs was easy. Everyone
                seemed to know George and that it was his wedding day and I just sailed through,
                except for the little matter of the rug coming undone when George and I had to scramble
                on the floor for candlesticks and fruit knives and a wooden nut bowl.
                Outside the customs shed we were mobbed by a crowd of jabbering Africans
                offering their services as porters, and soon my luggage was piled in one rickshaw whilst
                George and I climbed into another and we were born smoothly away on rubber shod
                wheels to the Splendid Hotel. The motion was pleasing enough but it seemed weird to
                be pulled along by one human being whilst another pushed behind.  We turned up a street called Acacia Avenue which, as its name implies, is lined
                with flamboyant acacia trees now in the full glory of scarlet and gold. The rickshaw
                stopped before the Splendid Hotel and I was taken upstairs into a pleasant room which
                had its own private balcony overlooking the busy street.

                Here George broke the news that we were to be married in less than an hours
                time. He would have to dash off and change and then go straight to the church. I would
                be quite all right, Kath would be looking in and friends would fetch me.
                I started to dress and soon there was a tap at the door and Mrs Hickson-Wood
                came in with my bouquet. It was a lovely bunch of carnations and frangipani with lots of
                asparagus fern and it went well with my primrose yellow frock. She admired my frock
                and Leghorn hat and told me that her little girl Maureen was to be my flower girl. Then
                she too left for the church.

                I was fully dressed when there was another knock on the door and I opened it to
                be confronted by a Police Officer in a starched white uniform. I’m McCallum”, he said,
                “I’ve come to drive you to the church.” Downstairs he introduced me to a big man in a
                tussore silk suit. “This is Dr Shicore”, said McCallum, “He is going to give you away.”
                Honestly, I felt exactly like Alice in Wonderland. Wouldn’t have been at all surprised if
                the White Rabbit had popped up and said he was going to be my page.

                I walked out of the hotel and across the pavement in a dream and there, by the
                curb, was a big dark blue police car decorated with white ribbons and with a tall African
                Police Ascari holding the door open for me. I had hardly time to wonder what next when
                the car drew up before a tall German looking church. It was in fact the Lutheran Church in
                the days when Tanganyika was German East Africa.

                Mrs Hickson-Wood, very smart in mushroom coloured georgette and lace, and
                her small daughter were waiting in the porch, so in we went. I was glad to notice my
                friends from the boat sitting behind George’s friends who were all complete strangers to
                me. The aisle seemed very long but at last I reached George waiting in the chancel with
                Hicky-Wood, looking unfamiliar in a smart tussore suit. However this feeling of unreality
                passed when he turned his head and smiled at me.

                In the vestry after the ceremony I was kissed affectionately by several complete
                strangers and I felt happy and accepted by George’s friends. Outside the church,
                standing apart from the rest of the guests, the Italian Captain and Chief Engineer were
                waiting. They came up and kissed my hand, and murmured felicitations, but regretted
                they could not spare the time to come to the reception. Really it was just as well
                because they would not have fitted in at all well.

                Dr Shircore is the Director of Medical Services and he had very kindly lent his
                large house for the reception. It was quite a party. The guests were mainly men with a
                small sprinkling of wives. Champagne corks popped and there was an enormous cake
                and soon voices were raised in song. The chief one was ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’
                and I shall remember it for ever.

                The party was still in full swing when George and I left. The old lady from the ship
                enjoyed it hugely. She came in an all black outfit with a corsage of artificial Lily-of-the-
                Valley. Later I saw one of the men wearing the corsage in his buttonhole and the old
                lady was wearing a carnation.

                When George and I got back to the hotel,I found that my luggage had been
                moved to George’s room by his cook Lamek, who was squatting on his haunches and
                clapped his hands in greeting. My dears, you should see Lamek – exactly like a
                chimpanzee – receding forehead, wide flat nose, and long lip, and such splayed feet. It was quite a strain not to laugh, especially when he produced a gift for me. I have not yet
                discovered where he acquired it. It was a faded mauve straw toque of the kind worn by
                Queen Mary. I asked George to tell Lamek that I was touched by his generosity but felt
                that I could not accept his gift. He did not mind at all especially as George gave him a
                generous tip there and then.

                I changed into a cotton frock and shady straw hat and George changed into shorts
                and bush shirt once more. We then sneaked into the dining room for lunch avoiding our
                wedding guests who were carrying on the party in the lounge.

                After lunch we rejoined them and they all came down to the jetty to wave goodbye
                as we set out by motor launch for Honeymoon Island. I enjoyed the launch trip very
                much. The sea was calm and very blue and the palm fringed beaches of Dar es Salaam
                are as romantic as any bride could wish. There are small coral islands dotted around the
                Bay of which Honeymoon Island is the loveliest. I believe at one time it bore the less
                romantic name of Quarantine Island. Near the Island, in the shallows, the sea is brilliant
                green and I saw two pink jellyfish drifting by.

                There is no jetty on the island so the boat was stopped in shallow water and
                George carried me ashore. I was enchanted with the Island and in no hurry to go to the
                bungalow, so George and I took our bathing costumes from our suitcases and sent the
                luggage up to the house together with a box of provisions.

                We bathed and lazed on the beach and suddenly it was sunset and it began to
                get dark. We walked up the beach to the bungalow and began to unpack the stores,
                tea, sugar, condensed milk, bread and butter, sardines and a large tin of ham. There
                were also cups and saucers and plates and cutlery.

                We decided to have an early meal and George called out to the caretaker, “Boy
                letta chai”. Thereupon the ‘boy’ materialised and jabbered to George in Ki-Swaheli. It
                appeared he had no utensil in which to boil water. George, ever resourceful, removed
                the ham from the tin and gave him that. We had our tea all right but next day the ham
                was bad.

                Then came bed time. I took a hurricane lamp in one hand and my suitcase in the
                other and wandered into the bedroom whilst George vanished into the bathroom. To
                my astonishment I saw two perfectly bare iron bedsteads – no mattress or pillows. We
                had brought sheets and mosquito nets but, believe me, they are a poor substitute for a
                mattress.

                Anyway I arrayed myself in my pale yellow satin nightie and sat gingerly down
                on the iron edge of the bed to await my groom who eventually appeared in a
                handsome suit of silk pyjamas. His expression, as he took in the situation, was too much
                for me and I burst out laughing and so did he.

                Somewhere in the small hours I woke up. The breeze had dropped and the
                room was unbearably stuffy. I felt as dry as a bone. The lamp had been turned very
                low and had gone out, but I remembered seeing a water tank in the yard and I decided
                to go out in the dark and drink from the tap. In the dark I could not find my slippers so I
                slipped my feet into George’s shoes, picked up his matches and groped my way out
                of the room. I found the tank all right and with one hand on the tap and one cupped for
                water I stooped to drink. Just then I heard a scratchy noise and sensed movements
                around my feet. I struck a match and oh horrors! found that the damp spot on which I was
                standing was alive with white crabs. In my hurry to escape I took a clumsy step, put
                George’s big toe on the hem of my nightie and down I went on top of the crabs. I need
                hardly say that George was awakened by an appalling shriek and came rushing to my
                aid like a knight of old.  Anyway, alarms and excursions not withstanding, we had a wonderful weekend on the island and I was sorry to return to the heat of Dar es Salaam, though the evenings
                here are lovely and it is heavenly driving along the coast road by car or in a rickshaw.
                I was surprised to find so many Indians here. Most of the shops, large and small,
                seem to be owned by Indians and the place teems with them. The women wear
                colourful saris and their hair in long black plaits reaching to their waists. Many wear baggy
                trousers of silk or satin. They give a carnival air to the sea front towards sunset.
                This long letter has been written in instalments throughout the day. My first break
                was when I heard the sound of a band and rushed to the balcony in time to see The
                Kings African Rifles band and Askaris march down the Avenue on their way to an
                Armistice Memorial Service. They looked magnificent.

                I must end on a note of most primitive pride. George returned from his shopping
                expedition and beamingly informed me that he had thrashed the man who annoyed me
                on the ship. I felt extremely delighted and pressed for details. George told me that
                when he went out shopping he noticed to his surprise that the ‘Timavo” was still in the
                harbour. He went across to the Agents office and there saw a man who answered to the
                description I had given. George said to him “Is your name Taylor?”, and when he said
                “yes”, George said “Well my name is George Rushby”, whereupon he hit Taylor on the
                jaw so that he sailed over the counter and down the other side. Very satisfactory, I feel.
                With much love to all.

                Your cave woman
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate. P.O. Mbeya 22 November 1930

                Dearest Family,

                Well here we are at our Country Seat, Mchewe Estate. (pronounced
                Mn,-che’-we) but I will start at the beginning of our journey and describe the farm later.
                We left the hotel at Dar es Salaam for the station in a taxi crowded with baggage
                and at the last moment Keith Wood ran out with the unwrapped bottom layer of our
                wedding cake. It remained in its naked state from there to here travelling for two days in
                the train on the luggage rack, four days in the car on my knee, reposing at night on the
                roof of the car exposed to the winds of Heaven, and now rests beside me in the tent
                looking like an old old tombstone. We have no tin large enough to hold it and one
                simply can’t throw away ones wedding cake so, as George does not eat cake, I can see
                myself eating wedding cake for tea for months to come, ants permitting.

                We travelled up by train from Dar to Dodoma, first through the lush vegetation of
                the coastal belt to Morogoro, then through sisal plantations now very overgrown with
                weeds owing to the slump in prices, and then on to the arid area around Dodoma. This
                part of the country is very dry at this time of the year and not unlike parts of our Karoo.
                The train journey was comfortable enough but slow as the engines here are fed with
                wood and not coal as in South Africa.

                Dodoma is the nearest point on the railway to Mbeya so we left the train there to
                continue our journey by road. We arrived at the one and only hotel in the early hours and
                whilst someone went to rout out the night watchman the rest of us sat on the dismal
                verandah amongst a litter of broken glass. Some bright spark remarked on the obvious –
                that there had been a party the night before.

                When we were shown to a room I thought I rather preferred the verandah,
                because the beds had not yet been made up and there was a bucket of vomit beside
                the old fashioned washstand. However George soon got the boys to clean up the
                room and I fell asleep to be awakened by George with an invitation to come and see
                our car before breakfast.

                Yes, we have our own car. It is a Chev, with what is called a box body. That
                means that sides, roof and doors are made by a local Indian carpenter. There is just the
                one front seat with a kapok mattress on it. The tools are kept in a sort of cupboard fixed
                to the side so there is a big space for carrying “safari kit” behind the cab seat.
                Lamek, who had travelled up on the same train, appeared after breakfast, and
                helped George to pack all our luggage into the back of the car. Besides our suitcases
                there was a huge bedroll, kitchen utensils and a box of provisions, tins of petrol and
                water and all Lamek’s bits and pieces which included three chickens in a wicker cage and
                an enormous bunch of bananas about 3 ft long.

                When all theses things were packed there remained only a small space between
                goods and ceiling and into this Lamek squeezed. He lay on his back with his horny feet a
                mere inch or so from the back of my head. In this way we travelled 400 miles over
                bumpy earth roads and crude pole bridges, but whenever we stopped for a meal
                Lamek wriggled out and, like Aladdin’s genie, produced good meals in no time at all.
                In the afternoon we reached a large river called the Ruaha. Workmen were busy
                building a large bridge across it but it is not yet ready so we crossed by a ford below
                the bridge. George told me that the river was full of crocodiles but though I looked hard, I
                did not see any. This is also elephant country but I did not see any of those either, only
                piles of droppings on the road. I must tell you that the natives around these parts are called Wahehe and the river is Ruaha – enough to make a cat laugh. We saw some Wahehe out hunting with spears
                and bows and arrows. They live in long low houses with the tiniest shuttered windows
                and rounded roofs covered with earth.

                Near the river we also saw a few Masai herding cattle. They are rather terrifying to
                look at – tall, angular, and very aloof. They wear nothing but a blanket knotted on one
                shoulder, concealing nothing, and all carried one or two spears.
                The road climbs steeply on the far side of the Ruaha and one has the most
                tremendous views over the plains. We spent our first night up there in the high country.
                Everything was taken out of the car, the bed roll opened up and George and I slept
                comfortably in the back of the car whilst Lamek, rolled in a blanket, slept soundly by a
                small fire nearby. Next morning we reached our first township, Iringa, and put up at the
                Colonist Hotel. We had a comfortable room in the annex overlooking the golf course.
                our room had its own little dressing room which was also the bathroom because, when
                ordered to do so, the room boy carried in an oval galvanised bath and filled it with hot
                water which he carried in a four gallon petrol tin.

                When we crossed to the main building for lunch, George was immediately hailed
                by several men who wanted to meet the bride. I was paid some handsome
                compliments but was not sure whether they were sincere or the result of a nice alcoholic
                glow. Anyhow every one was very friendly.

                After lunch I went back to the bedroom leaving George chatting away. I waited and
                waited – no George. I got awfully tired of waiting and thought I’d give him a fright so I
                walked out onto the deserted golf course and hid behind some large boulders. Soon I
                saw George returning to the room and the boy followed with a tea tray. Ah, now the hue
                and cry will start, thought I, but no, no George appeared nor could I hear any despairing
                cry. When sunset came I trailed crossly back to our hotel room where George lay
                innocently asleep on his bed, hands folded on his chest like a crusader on his tomb. In a
                moment he opened his eyes, smiled sleepily and said kindly, “Did you have a nice walk
                my love?” So of course I couldn’t play the neglected wife as he obviously didn’t think
                me one and we had a very pleasant dinner and party in the hotel that evening.
                Next day we continued our journey but turned aside to visit the farm of a sprightly
                old man named St.Leger Seaton whom George had known for many years, so it was
                after dark before George decided that we had covered our quota of miles for the day.
                Whilst he and Lamek unpacked I wandered off to a stream to cool my hot feet which had
                baked all day on the floor boards of the car. In the rather dim moonlight I sat down on the
                grassy bank and gratefully dabbled my feet in the cold water. A few minutes later I
                started up with a shriek – I had the sensation of red hot pins being dug into all my most
                sensitive parts. I started clawing my clothes off and, by the time George came to the
                rescue with the lamp, I was practically in the nude. “Only Siafu ants,” said George calmly.
                Take off all your clothes and get right in the water.” So I had a bathe whilst George
                picked the ants off my clothes by the light of the lamp turned very low for modesty’s
                sake. Siafu ants are beastly things. They are black ants with outsized heads and
                pinchers. I shall be very, very careful where I sit in future.

                The next day was even hotter. There was no great variety in the scenery. Most
                of the country was covered by a tree called Miombo, which is very ordinary when the
                foliage is a mature deep green, but when in new leaf the trees look absolutely beautiful
                as the leaves,surprisingly, are soft pastel shades of red and yellow.

                Once again we turned aside from the main road to visit one of George’s friends.
                This man Major Hugh Jones MC, has a farm only a few miles from ours but just now he is supervising the making of an airstrip. Major Jones is quite a character. He is below
                average height and skinny with an almost bald head and one nearly blind eye into which
                he screws a monocle. He is a cultured person and will, I am sure, make an interesting
                neighbour. George and Major Jones’ friends call him ‘Joni’ but he is generally known in
                this country as ‘Ropesoles’ – as he is partial to that type of footwear.
                We passed through Mbeya township after dark so I have no idea what the place
                is like. The last 100 miles of our journey was very dusty and the last 15 miles extremely
                bumpy. The road is used so little that in some places we had to plow our way through
                long grass and I was delighted when at last George turned into a side road and said
                “This is our place.” We drove along the bank of the Mchewe River, then up a hill and
                stopped at a tent which was pitched beside the half built walls of our new home. We
                were expected so there was hot water for baths and after a supper of tinned food and
                good hot tea, I climbed thankfully into bed.

                Next morning I was awakened by the chattering of the African workmen and was
                soon out to inspect the new surroundings. Our farm was once part of Hickson Wood’s
                land and is separated from theirs by a river. Our houses cannot be more than a few
                hundred yards apart as the crow flies but as both are built on the slopes of a long range
                of high hills, and one can only cross the river at the foot of the slopes, it will be quite a
                safari to go visiting on foot . Most of our land is covered with shoulder high grass but it
                has been partly cleared of trees and scrub. Down by the river George has made a long
                coffee nursery and a large vegetable garden but both coffee and vegetable seedlings
                are too small to be of use.

                George has spared all the trees that will make good shade for the coffee later on.
                There are several huge wild fig trees as big as oaks but with smooth silvery-green trunks
                and branches and there are lots of acacia thorn trees with flat tops like Japanese sun
                shades. I’ve seen lovely birds in the fig trees, Louries with bright plumage and crested
                heads, and Blue Rollers, and in the grasslands there are widow birds with incredibly long
                black tail feathers.

                There are monkeys too and horrible but fascinating tree lizards with blue bodies
                and orange heads. There are so many, many things to tell you but they must wait for
                another time as James, the house boy, has been to say “Bafu tiari” and if I don’t go at
                once, the bath will be cold.

                I am very very happy and terribly interested in this new life so please don’t
                worry about me.

                Much love to you all,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate 29th. November 1930

                Dearest Family,

                I’ve lots of time to write letters just now because George is busy supervising the
                building of the house from early morning to late afternoon – with a break for lunch of
                course.

                On our second day here our tent was moved from the house site to a small
                clearing further down the slope of our hill. Next to it the labourers built a ‘banda’ , which is
                a three sided grass hut with thatched roof – much cooler than the tent in this weather.
                There is also a little grass lav. so you see we have every convenience. I spend most of
                my day in the banda reading or writing letters. Occasionally I wander up to the house site
                and watch the building, but mostly I just sit.

                I did try exploring once. I wandered down a narrow path towards the river. I
                thought I might paddle and explore the river a little but I came round a bend and there,
                facing me, was a crocodile. At least for a moment I thought it was and my adrenaline
                glands got very busy indeed. But it was only an enormous monitor lizard, four or five
                feet long. It must have been as scared as I was because it turned and rushed off through
                the grass. I turned and walked hastily back to the camp and as I passed the house site I
                saw some boys killing a large puff adder. Now I do my walking in the evenings with
                George. Nothing alarming ever seems to happen when he is around.

                It is interesting to watch the boys making bricks for the house. They make a pile
                of mud which they trample with their feet until it is the right consistency. Then they fill
                wooden moulds with the clayey mud, and press it down well and turn out beautiful shiny,
                dark brown bricks which are laid out in rows and covered with grass to bake slowly in the
                sun.

                Most of the materials for the building are right here at hand. The walls will be sun
                dried bricks and there is a white clay which will make a good whitewash for the inside
                walls. The chimney and walls will be of burnt brick and tiles and George is now busy
                building a kiln for this purpose. Poles for the roof are being cut in the hills behind the
                house and every day women come along with large bundles of thatching grass on their
                heads. Our windows are modern steel casement ones and the doors have been made
                at a mission in the district. George does some of the bricklaying himself. The other
                bricklayer is an African from Northern Rhodesia called Pedro. It makes me perspire just
                to look at Pedro who wears an overcoat all day in the very hot sun.
                Lamek continues to please. He turns out excellent meals, chicken soup followed
                by roast chicken, vegetables from the Hickson-Woods garden and a steamed pudding
                or fruit to wind up the meal. I enjoy the chicken but George is fed up with it and longs for
                good red meat. The chickens are only about as large as a partridge but then they cost
                only sixpence each.

                I had my first visit to Mbeya two days ago. I put on my very best trousseau frock
                for the occasion- that yellow striped silk one – and wore my wedding hat. George didn’t
                comment, but I saw later that I was dreadfully overdressed.
                Mbeya at the moment is a very small settlement consisting of a bundle of small
                Indian shops – Dukas they call them, which stock European tinned foods and native soft
                goods which seem to be mainly of Japanese origin. There is a one storied Government
                office called the Boma and two attractive gabled houses of burnt brick which house the
                District Officer and his Assistant. Both these houses have lovely gardens but i saw them
                only from the outside as we did not call. After buying our stores George said “Lets go to the pub, I want you to meet Mrs Menzies.” Well the pub turned out to be just three or four grass rondavels on a bare
                plot. The proprietor, Ken Menzies, came out to welcome us. I took to him at once
                because he has the same bush sandy eyebrows as you have Dad. He told me that
                unfortunately his wife is away at the coast, and then he ushered me through the door
                saying “Here’s George with his bride.” then followed the Iringa welcome all over again,
                only more so, because the room was full of diggers from the Lupa Goldfields about fifty
                miles away.

                Champagne corks popped as I shook hands all around and George was
                clapped on the back. I could see he was a favourite with everyone and I tried not to be
                gauche and let him down. These men were all most kind and most appeared to be men
                of more than average education. However several were unshaven and looked as
                though they had slept in their clothes as I suppose they had. When they have a little luck
                on the diggings they come in here to Menzies pub and spend the lot. George says
                they bring their gold dust and small nuggets in tobacco tins or Kruschen salts jars and
                hand them over to Ken Menzies saying “Tell me when I’ve spent the lot.” Ken then
                weighs the gold and estimates its value and does exactly what the digger wants.
                However the Diggers get good value for their money because besides the drink
                they get companionship and good food and nursing if they need it. Mrs Menzies is a
                trained nurse and most kind and capable from what I was told. There is no doctor or
                hospital here so her experience as a nursing sister is invaluable.
                We had lunch at the Hotel and afterwards I poured tea as I was the only female
                present. Once the shyness had worn off I rather enjoyed myself.

                Now to end off I must tell you a funny story of how I found out that George likes
                his women to be feminine. You will remember those dashing black silk pyjamas Aunt
                Mary gave me, with flowered “happy coat” to match. Well last night I thought I’d give
                George a treat and when the boy called me for my bath I left George in the ‘banda’
                reading the London Times. After my bath I put on my Japanese pyjamas and coat,
                peered into the shaving mirror which hangs from the tent pole and brushed my hair until it
                shone. I must confess that with my fringe and shingled hair I thought I made quite a
                glamourous Japanese girl. I walked coyly across to the ‘banda’. Alas no compliment.
                George just glanced up from the Times and went on reading.
                He was away rather a long time when it came to his turn to bath. I glanced up
                when he came back and had a slight concussion. George, if you please, was arrayed in
                my very best pale yellow satin nightie. The one with the lace and ribbon sash and little
                bows on the shoulder. I knew exactly what he meant to convey. I was not to wear the
                trousers in the family. I seethed inwardly, but pretending not to notice, I said calmly “shall
                I call for food?” In this garb George sat down to dinner and it says a great deal for African
                phlegm that the boy did not drop the dishes.

                We conversed politely about this and that, and then, as usual, George went off
                to bed. I appeared to be engrossed in my book and did not stir. When I went to the
                tent some time later George lay fast asleep still in my nightie, though all I could see of it
                was the little ribbon bows looking farcically out of place on his broad shoulders.
                This morning neither of us mentioned the incident, George was up and dressed
                by the time I woke up but I have been smiling all day to think what a ridiculous picture
                we made at dinner. So farewell to pyjamas and hey for ribbons and bows.

                Your loving
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate. Mbeya. 8th December 1930

                Dearest Family,

                A mere shadow of her former buxom self lifts a languid pen to write to you. I’m
                convalescing after my first and I hope my last attack of malaria. It was a beastly
                experience but all is now well and I am eating like a horse and will soon regain my
                bounce.

                I took ill on the evening of the day I wrote my last letter to you. It started with a
                splitting headache and fits of shivering. The symptoms were all too familiar to George
                who got me into bed and filled me up with quinine. He then piled on all the available
                blankets and packed me in hot water bottles. I thought I’d explode and said so and
                George said just to lie still and I’d soon break into a good sweat. However nothing of the
                kind happened and next day my temperature was 105 degrees. Instead of feeling
                miserable as I had done at the onset, I now felt very merry and most chatty. George
                now tells me I sang the most bawdy songs but I hardly think it likely. Do you?
                You cannot imagine how tenderly George nursed me, not only that day but
                throughout the whole eight days I was ill. As we do not employ any African house
                women, and there are no white women in the neighbourhood at present to whom we
                could appeal for help, George had to do everything for me. It was unbearably hot in the
                tent so George decided to move me across to the Hickson-Woods vacant house. They
                have not yet returned from the coast.

                George decided I was too weak to make the trip in the car so he sent a
                messenger over to the Woods’ house for their Machila. A Machila is a canopied canvas
                hammock slung from a bamboo pole and carried by four bearers. The Machila duly
                arrived and I attempted to walk to it, clinging to George’s arm, but collapsed in a faint so
                the trip was postponed to the next morning when I felt rather better. Being carried by
                Machila is quite pleasant but I was in no shape to enjoy anything and got thankfully into
                bed in the Hickson-Woods large, cool and rather dark bedroom. My condition did not
                improve and George decided to send a runner for the Government Doctor at Tukuyu
                about 60 miles away. Two days later Dr Theis arrived by car and gave me two
                injections of quinine which reduced the fever. However I still felt very weak and had to
                spend a further four days in bed.

                We have now decided to stay on here until the Hickson-Woods return by which
                time our own house should be ready. George goes off each morning and does not
                return until late afternoon. However don’t think “poor Eleanor” because I am very
                comfortable here and there are lots of books to read and the days seem to pass very
                quickly.

                The Hickson-Wood’s house was built by Major Jones and I believe the one on
                his shamba is just like it. It is a square red brick building with a wide verandah all around
                and, rather astonishingly, a conical thatched roof. There is a beautiful view from the front
                of the house and a nice flower garden. The coffee shamba is lower down on the hill.
                Mrs Wood’s first husband, George’s friend Vi Lumb, is buried in the flower
                garden. He died of blackwater fever about five years ago. I’m told that before her
                second marriage Kath lived here alone with her little daughter, Maureen, and ran the farm
                entirely on her own. She must be quite a person. I bet she didn’t go and get malaria
                within a few weeks of her marriage.

                The native tribe around here are called Wasafwa. They are pretty primitive but
                seem amiable people. Most of the men, when they start work, wear nothing but some
                kind of sheet of unbleached calico wrapped round their waists and hanging to mid calf. As soon as they have drawn their wages they go off to a duka and buy a pair of khaki
                shorts for five or six shillings. Their women folk wear very short beaded skirts. I think the
                base is goat skin but have never got close enough for a good look. They are very shy.
                I hear from George that they have started on the roof of our house but I have not
                seen it myself since the day I was carried here by Machila. My letters by the way go to
                the Post Office by runner. George’s farm labourers take it in turn to act in this capacity.
                The mail bag is given to them on Friday afternoon and by Saturday evening they are
                back with our very welcome mail.

                Very much love,
                Eleanor.

                Mbeya 23rd December 1930

                Dearest Family,

                George drove to Mbeya for stores last week and met Col. Sherwood-Kelly VC.
                who has been sent by the Government to Mbeya as Game Ranger. His job will be to
                protect native crops from raiding elephants and hippo etc., and to protect game from
                poachers. He has had no training for this so he has asked George to go with him on his
                first elephant safari to show him the ropes.

                George likes Col. Kelly and was quite willing to go on safari but not willing to
                leave me alone on the farm as I am still rather shaky after malaria. So it was arranged that
                I should go to Mbeya and stay with Mrs Harmer, the wife of the newly appointed Lands
                and Mines Officer, whose husband was away on safari.

                So here I am in Mbeya staying in the Harmers temporary wattle and daub
                house. Unfortunately I had a relapse of the malaria and stayed in bed for three days with
                a temperature. Poor Mrs Harmer had her hands full because in the room next to mine
                she was nursing a digger with blackwater fever. I could hear his delirious babble through
                the thin wall – very distressing. He died poor fellow , and leaves a wife and seven
                children.

                I feel better than I have done for weeks and this afternoon I walked down to the
                store. There are great signs of activity and people say that Mbeya will grow rapidly now
                owing to the boom on the gold fields and also to the fact that a large aerodrome is to be
                built here. Mbeya is to be a night stop on the proposed air service between England
                and South Africa. I seem to be the last of the pioneers. If all these schemes come about
                Mbeya will become quite suburban.

                26th December 1930

                George, Col. Kelly and Mr Harmer all returned to Mbeya on Christmas Eve and
                it was decided that we should stay and have midday Christmas dinner with the
                Harmers. Col. Kelly and the Assistant District Commissioner came too and it was quite a
                festive occasion, We left Mbeya in the early afternoon and had our evening meal here at
                Hickson-Wood’s farm. I wore my wedding dress.

                I went across to our house in the car this morning. George usually walks across to
                save petrol which is very expensive here. He takes a short cut and wades through the
                river. The distance by road is very much longer than the short cut. The men are now
                thatching the roof of our cottage and it looks charming. It consists of a very large living
                room-dinning room with a large inglenook fireplace at one end. The bedroom is a large
                square room with a smaller verandah room adjoining it. There is a wide verandah in the
                front, from which one has a glorious view over a wide valley to the Livingstone
                Mountains on the horizon. Bathroom and storeroom are on the back verandah and the
                kitchen is some distance behind the house to minimise the risk of fire.

                You can imagine how much I am looking forward to moving in. We have some
                furniture which was made by an Indian carpenter at Iringa, refrectory dining table and
                chairs, some small tables and two armchairs and two cupboards and a meatsafe. Other
                things like bookshelves and extra cupboards we will have to make ourselves. George
                has also bought a portable gramophone and records which will be a boon.
                We also have an Irish wolfhound puppy, a skinny little chap with enormous feet
                who keeps me company all day whilst George is across at our farm working on the
                house.

                Lots and lots of love,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate 8th Jan 1931

                Dearest Family,

                Alas, I have lost my little companion. The Doctor called in here on Boxing night
                and ran over and killed Paddy, our pup. It was not his fault but I was very distressed
                about it and George has promised to try and get another pup from the same litter.
                The Hickson-Woods returned home on the 29th December so we decided to
                move across to our nearly finished house on the 1st January. Hicky Wood decided that
                we needed something special to mark the occasion so he went off and killed a sucking
                pig behind the kitchen. The piglet’s screams were terrible and I felt that I would not be
                able to touch any dinner. Lamek cooked and served sucking pig up in the traditional way
                but it was high and quite literally, it stank. Our first meal in our own home was not a
                success.

                However next day all was forgotten and I had something useful to do. George
                hung doors and I held the tools and I also planted rose cuttings I had brought from
                Mbeya and sowed several boxes with seeds.

                Dad asked me about the other farms in the area. I haven’t visited any but there
                are five besides ours. One belongs to the Lutheran Mission at Utengule, a few miles
                from here. The others all belong to British owners. Nearest to Mbeya, at the foot of a
                very high peak which gives Mbeya its name, are two farms, one belonging to a South
                African mining engineer named Griffiths, the other to I.G.Stewart who was an officer in the
                Kings African Rifles. Stewart has a young woman called Queenie living with him. We are
                some miles further along the range of hills and are some 23 miles from Mbeya by road.
                The Mchewe River divides our land from the Hickson-Woods and beyond their farm is
                Major Jones.

                All these people have been away from their farms for some time but have now
                returned so we will have some neighbours in future. However although the houses are
                not far apart as the crow flies, they are all built high in the foothills and it is impossible to
                connect the houses because of the rivers and gorges in between. One has to drive right
                down to the main road and then up again so I do not suppose we will go visiting very
                often as the roads are very bumpy and eroded and petrol is so expensive that we all
                save it for occasional trips to Mbeya.

                The rains are on and George has started to plant out some coffee seedlings. The
                rains here are strange. One can hear the rain coming as it moves like a curtain along the
                range of hills. It comes suddenly, pours for a little while and passes on and the sun
                shines again.

                I do like it here and I wish you could see or dear little home.

                Your loving,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate. 1st April 1931

                Dearest Family,

                Everything is now running very smoothly in our home. Lamek continues to
                produce palatable meals and makes wonderful bread which he bakes in a four gallon
                petrol tin as we have no stove yet. He puts wood coals on the brick floor of the kitchen,
                lays the tin lengh-wise on the coals and heaps more on top. The bread tins are then put
                in the petrol tin, which has one end cut away, and the open end is covered by a flat
                piece of tin held in place by a brick. Cakes are also backed in this make-shift oven and I
                have never known Lamek to have a failure yet.

                Lamek has a helper, known as the ‘mpishi boy’ , who does most of the hard
                work, cleans pots and pans and chops the firewood etc. Another of the mpishi boy’s
                chores is to kill the two chickens we eat each day. The chickens run wild during the day
                but are herded into a small chicken house at night. One of the kitchen boy’s first duties is
                to let the chickens out first thing in the early morning. Some time after breakfast it dawns
                on Lamek that he will need a chicken for lunch. he informs the kitchen boy who selects a
                chicken and starts to chase it in which he is enthusiastically joined by our new Irish
                wolfhound pup, Kelly. Together they race after the frantic fowl, over the flower beds and
                around the house until finally the chicken collapses from sheer exhaustion. The kitchen
                boy then hands it over to Lamek who murders it with the kitchen knife and then pops the
                corpse into boiling water so the feathers can be stripped off with ease.

                I pointed out in vain, that it would be far simpler if the doomed chickens were kept
                in the chicken house in the mornings when the others were let out and also that the correct
                way to pluck chickens is when they are dry. Lamek just smiled kindly and said that that
                may be so in Europe but that his way is the African way and none of his previous
                Memsahibs has complained.

                My houseboy, named James, is clean and capable in the house and also a
                good ‘dhobi’ or washboy. He takes the washing down to the river and probably
                pounds it with stones, but I prefer not to look. The ironing is done with a charcoal iron
                only we have no charcoal and he uses bits of wood from the kitchen fire but so far there
                has not been a mishap.

                It gets dark here soon after sunset and then George lights the oil lamps and we
                have tea and toast in front of the log fire which burns brightly in our inglenook. This is my
                favourite hour of the day. Later George goes for his bath. I have mine in the mornings
                and we have dinner at half past eight. Then we talk a bit and read a bit and sometimes
                play the gramophone. I expect it all sounds pretty unexciting but it doesn’t seem so to
                me.

                Very much love,
                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate 20th April 1931

                Dearest Family,

                It is still raining here and the countryside looks very lush and green, very different
                from the Mbeya district I first knew, when plains and hills were covered in long brown
                grass – very course stuff that grows shoulder high.

                Most of the labourers are hill men and one can see little patches of cultivation in
                the hills. Others live in small villages near by, each consisting of a cluster of thatched huts
                and a few maize fields and perhaps a patch of bananas. We do not have labour lines on
                the farm because our men all live within easy walking distance. Each worker has a labour
                card with thirty little squares on it. One of these squares is crossed off for each days work
                and when all thirty are marked in this way the labourer draws his pay and hies himself off
                to the nearest small store and blows the lot. The card system is necessary because
                these Africans are by no means slaves to work. They work only when they feel like it or
                when someone in the family requires a new garment, or when they need a few shillings
                to pay their annual tax. Their fields, chickens and goats provide them with the food they
                need but they draw rations of maize meal beans and salt. Only our headman is on a
                salary. His name is Thomas and he looks exactly like the statues of Julius Caesar, the
                same bald head and muscular neck and sardonic expression. He comes from Northern
                Rhodesia and is more intelligent than the locals.

                We still live mainly on chickens. We have a boy whose job it is to scour the
                countryside for reasonable fat ones. His name is Lucas and he is quite a character. He
                has such long horse teeth that he does not seem able to close his mouth and wears a
                perpetual amiable smile. He brings his chickens in beehive shaped wicker baskets
                which are suspended on a pole which Lucas carries on his shoulder.

                We buy our groceries in bulk from Mbeya, our vegetables come from our
                garden by the river and our butter from Kath Wood. Our fresh milk we buy from the
                natives. It is brought each morning by three little totos each carrying one bottle on his
                shaven head. Did I tell you that the local Wasafwa file their teeth to points. These kids
                grin at one with their little sharks teeth – quite an “all-ready-to-eat-you-with-my-dear” look.
                A few nights ago a message arrived from Kath Wood to say that Queenie
                Stewart was very ill and would George drive her across to the Doctor at Tukuyu. I
                wanted George to wait until morning because it was pouring with rain, and the mountain
                road to Tukuyu is tricky even in dry weather, but he said it is dangerous to delay with any
                kind of fever in Africa and he would have to start at once. So off he drove in the rain and I
                did not see him again until the following night.

                George said that it had been a nightmare trip. Queenie had a high temperature
                and it was lucky that Kath was able to go to attend to her. George needed all his
                attention on the road which was officially closed to traffic, and very slippery, and in some
                places badly eroded. In some places the decking of bridges had been removed and
                George had to get out in the rain and replace it. As he had nothing with which to fasten
                the decking to the runners it was a dangerous undertaking to cross the bridges especially
                as the rivers are now in flood and flowing strongly. However they reached Tukuyu safely
                and it was just as well they went because the Doctor diagnosed Queenies illness as
                Spirillium Tick Fever which is a very nasty illness indeed.

                Eleanor.

                Mchewe Estate. 20th May 1931

                Dear Family,

                I’m feeling fit and very happy though a bit lonely sometimes because George
                spends much of his time away in the hills cutting a furrow miles long to bring water to the
                house and to the upper part of the shamba so that he will be able to irrigate the coffee
                during the dry season.

                It will be quite an engineering feat when it is done as George only has makeshift
                surveying instruments. He has mounted an ordinary cheap spirit level on an old camera
                tripod and has tacked two gramophone needles into the spirit level to give him a line.
                The other day part of a bank gave way and practically buried two of George’s labourers
                but they were quickly rescued and no harm was done. However he will not let them
                work unless he is there to supervise.

                I keep busy so that the days pass quickly enough. I am delighted with the
                material you sent me for curtains and loose covers and have hired a hand sewing
                machine from Pedro-of-the-overcoat and am rattling away all day. The machine is an
                ancient German one and when I say rattle, I mean rattle. It is a most cumbersome, heavy
                affair of I should say, the same vintage as George Stevenson’s Rocket locomotive.
                Anyway it sews and I am pleased with my efforts. We made a couch ourselves out of a
                native bed, a mattress and some planks but all this is hidden under the chintz cover and
                it looks quite the genuine bought article. I have some diversions too. Small black faced
                monkeys sit in the trees outside our bedroom window and they are most entertaining to
                watch. They are very mischievous though. When I went out into the garden this morning
                before breakfast I found that the monkeys had pulled up all my carnations. There they
                lay, roots in the air and whether they will take again I don’t know.

                I like the monkeys but hate the big mountain baboons that come and hang
                around our chicken house. I am terrified that they will tear our pup into bits because he is
                a plucky young thing and will rush out to bark at the baboons.

                George usually returns for the weekends but last time he did not because he had
                a touch of malaria. He sent a boy down for the mail and some fresh bread. Old Lucas
                arrived with chickens just as the messenger was setting off with mail and bread in a
                haversack on his back. I thought it might be a good idea to send a chicken to George so
                I selected a spry young rooster which I handed to the messenger. He, however,
                complained that he needed both hands for climbing. I then had one of my bright ideas
                and, putting a layer of newspaper over the bread, I tucked the rooster into the haversack
                and buckled down the flap so only his head protruded.

                I thought no more about it until two days later when the messenger again
                appeared for fresh bread. He brought a rather terse note from George saying that the
                previous bread was uneatable as the rooster had eaten some of it and messed on the
                rest. Ah me!

                The previous weekend the Hickson-Woods, Stewarts and ourselves, went
                across to Tukuyu to attend a dance at the club there. the dance was very pleasant. All
                the men wore dinner jackets and the ladies wore long frocks. As there were about
                twenty men and only seven ladies we women danced every dance whilst the surplus
                men got into a huddle around the bar. George and I spent the night with the Agricultural
                Officer, Mr Eustace, and I met his fiancee, Lillian Austin from South Africa, to whom I took
                a great liking. She is Governess to the children of Major Masters who has a farm in the
                Tukuyu district.

                On the Sunday morning we had a look at the township. The Boma was an old German one and was once fortified as the Africans in this district are a very warlike tribe.
                They are fine looking people. The men wear sort of togas and bands of cloth around
                their heads and look like Roman Senators, but the women go naked except for a belt
                from which two broad straps hang down, one in front and another behind. Not a graceful
                garb I assure you.

                We also spent a pleasant hour in the Botanical Gardens, laid out during the last
                war by the District Commissioner, Major Wells, with German prisoner of war labour.
                There are beautiful lawns and beds of roses and other flowers and shady palm lined
                walks and banana groves. The gardens are terraced with flights of brick steps connecting
                the different levels and there is a large artificial pond with little islands in it. I believe Major
                Wells designed the lake to resemble in miniature, the Lakes of Killarney.
                I enjoyed the trip very much. We got home at 8 pm to find the front door locked
                and the kitchen boy fast asleep on my newly covered couch! I hastily retreated to the
                bedroom whilst George handled the situation.

                Eleanor.

                #6259
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  George “Mike” Rushby

                  A short autobiography of George Gilman Rushby’s son, published in the Blackwall Bugle, Australia.

                  Early in 2009, Ballina Shire Council Strategic and
                  Community Services Group Manager, Steve Barnier,
                  suggested that it would be a good idea for the Wardell
                  and District community to put out a bi-monthly
                  newsletter. I put my hand up to edit the publication and
                  since then, over 50 issues of “The Blackwall Bugle”
                  have been produced, encouraged by Ballina Shire
                  Council who host the newsletter on their website.
                  Because I usually write the stories that other people
                  generously share with me, I have been asked by several
                  community members to let them know who I am. Here is
                  my attempt to let you know!

                  My father, George Gilman Rushby was born in England
                  in 1900. An Electrician, he migrated to Africa as a young
                  man to hunt and to prospect for gold. He met Eleanor
                  Dunbar Leslie who was a high school teacher in Cape
                  Town. They later married in Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika.
                  I was the second child and first son and was born in a
                  mud hut in Tanganyika in 1933. I spent my first years on
                  a coffee plantation. When four years old, and with
                  parents and elder sister on a remote goldfield, I caught
                  typhoid fever. I was seriously ill and had no access to
                  proper medical facilities. My paternal grandmother
                  sailed out to Africa from England on a steam ship and
                  took me back to England for medical treatment. My
                  sister Ann came too. Then Adolf Hitler started WWII and
                  Ann and I were separated from our parents for 9 years.

                  Sister Ann and I were not to see him or our mother for
                  nine years because of the war. Dad served as a Captain in
                  the King’s African Rifles operating in the North African
                  desert, while our Mum managed the coffee plantation at
                  home in Tanganyika.

                  Ann and I lived with our Grandmother and went to
                  school in Nottingham England. In 1946 the family was
                  reunited. We lived in Mbeya in Southern Tanganyika
                  where my father was then the District Manager of the
                  National Parks and Wildlife Authority. There was no
                  high school in Tanganyika so I had to go to school in
                  Nairobi, Kenya. It took five days travelling each way by
                  train and bus including two days on a steamer crossing
                  Lake Victoria.

                  However, the school year was only two terms with long
                  holidays in between.

                  When I was seventeen, I left high school. There was
                  then no university in East Africa. There was no work
                  around as Tanganyika was about to become
                  independent of the British Empire and become
                  Tanzania. Consequently jobs were reserved for
                  Africans.

                  A war had broken out in Korea. I took a day off from
                  high school and visited the British Army headquarters
                  in Nairobi. I signed up for military service intending to
                  go to Korea. The army flew me to England. During
                  Army basic training I was nicknamed ‘Mike’ and have
                  been called Mike ever since. I never got to Korea!
                  After my basic training I volunteered for the Parachute
                  Regiment and the army sent me to Egypt where the
                  Suez Canal was under threat. I carried out parachute
                  operations in the Sinai Desert and in Cyprus and
                  Jordan. I was then selected for officer training and was
                  sent to England to the Eaton Hall Officer Cadet School
                  in Cheshire. Whilst in Cheshire, I met my future wife
                  Jeanette. I graduated as a Second Lieutenant in the
                  Royal Lincolnshire Regiment and was posted to West
                  Berlin, which was then one hundred miles behind the
                  Iron Curtain. My duties included patrolling the
                  demarcation line that separated the allies from the
                  Russian forces. The Berlin Wall was yet to be built. I
                  also did occasional duty as guard commander of the
                  guard at Spandau Prison where Adolf Hitler’s deputy
                  Rudolf Hess was the only prisoner.

                  From Berlin, my Regiment was sent to Malaya to
                  undertake deep jungle operations against communist
                  terrorists that were attempting to overthrow the
                  Malayan Government. I was then a Lieutenant in
                  command of a platoon of about 40 men which would go
                  into the jungle for three weeks to a month with only air
                  re-supply to keep us going. On completion of my jungle
                  service, I returned to England and married Jeanette. I
                  had to stand up throughout the church wedding
                  ceremony because I had damaged my right knee in a
                  competitive cross-country motorcycle race and wore a
                  splint and restrictive bandage for the occasion!
                  At this point I took a career change and transferred
                  from the infantry to the Royal Military Police. I was in
                  charge of the security of British, French and American
                  troops using the autobahn link from West Germany to
                  the isolated Berlin. Whilst in Germany and Austria I
                  took up snow skiing as a sport.

                  Jeanette and I seemed to attract unusual little
                  adventures along the way — each adventure trivial in
                  itself but adding up to give us a ‘different’ path through
                  life. Having climbed Mount Snowdon up the ‘easy way’
                  we were witness to a serious climbing accident where a
                  member of the staff of a Cunard Shipping Line
                  expedition fell and suffered serious injury. It was
                  Sunday a long time ago. The funicular railway was
                  closed. There was no telephone. So I ran all the way
                  down Mount Snowdon to raise the alarm.

                  On a road trip from Verden in Germany to Berlin with
                  our old Opel Kapitan motor car stacked to the roof with
                  all our worldly possessions, we broke down on the ice and snow covered autobahn. We still had a hundred kilometres to go.

                  A motorcycle patrolman flagged down a B-Double
                  tanker. He hooked us to the tanker with a very short tow
                  cable and off we went. The truck driver couldn’t see us
                  because we were too close and his truck threw up a
                  constant deluge of ice and snow so we couldn’t see
                  anyway. We survived the hundred kilometre ‘sleigh
                  ride!’

                  I then went back to the other side of the world where I
                  carried out military police duties in Singapore and
                  Malaya for three years. I took up scuba diving and
                  loved the ocean. Jeanette and I, with our two little
                  daughters, took a holiday to South Africa to see my
                  parents. We sailed on a ship of the Holland-Afrika Line.
                  It broke down for four days and drifted uncontrollably
                  in dangerous waters off the Skeleton Coast of Namibia
                  until the crew could get the ship’s motor running again.
                  Then, in Cape Town, we were walking the beach near
                  Hermanus with my youngest brother and my parents,
                  when we found the dead body of a man who had thrown
                  himself off a cliff. The police came and secured the site.
                  Back with the army, I was promoted to Major and
                  appointed Provost Marshal of the ACE Mobile Force
                  (Allied Command Europe) with dual headquarters in
                  Salisbury, England and Heidelberg, Germany. The cold
                  war was at its height and I was on operations in Greece,
                  Denmark and Norway including the Arctic. I had
                  Norwegian, Danish, Italian and American troops in my
                  unit and I was then also the Winter Warfare Instructor
                  for the British contingent to the Allied Command
                  Europe Mobile Force that operated north of the Arctic
                  Circle.

                  The reason for being in the Arctic Circle? From there
                  our special forces could look down into northern
                  Russia.

                  I was not seeing much of my two young daughters. A
                  desk job was looming my way and I decided to leave
                  the army and migrate to Australia. Why Australia?
                  Well, I didn’t want to go back to Africa, which
                  seemed politically unstable and the people I most
                  liked working with in the army, were the Australian
                  troops I had met in Malaya.

                  I migrated to Brisbane, Australia in 1970 and started
                  working for Woolworths. After management training,
                  I worked at Garden City and Brookside then became
                  the manager in turn of Woolworths stores at
                  Paddington, George Street and Redcliff. I was also the
                  first Director of FAUI Queensland (The Federation of
                  Underwater Diving Instructors) and spent my spare
                  time on the Great Barrier Reef. After 8 years with
                  Woollies, I opted for a sea change.

                  I moved with my family to Evans Head where I
                  converted a convenience store into a mini
                  supermarket. When IGA moved into town, I decided
                  to take up beef cattle farming and bought a cattle
                  property at Collins Creek Kyogle in 1990. I loved
                  everything about the farm — the Charolais cattle, my
                  horses, my kelpie dogs, the open air, fresh water
                  creek, the freedom, the lifestyle. I also became a
                  volunteer fire fighter with the Green Pigeon Brigade.
                  In 2004 I sold our farm and moved to Wardell.
                  My wife Jeanette and I have been married for 60 years
                  and are now retired. We have two lovely married
                  daughters and three fine grandchildren. We live in the
                  greatest part of the world where we have been warmly
                  welcomed by the Wardell community and by the
                  Wardell Brigade of the Rural Fire Service. We are
                  very happy here.

                  Mike Rushby

                  A short article sent to Jacksdale in England from Mike Rushby in Australia:

                  Rushby Family

                  #6086

                  In reply to: Tart Wreck Repackage

                  “A dil-do factory?” She was aghast. “A fucking carrot dildo factory?”

                  “Admit it, we’re rubbish at this” Tara said. “Even Rosamund may be better at this than us.”

                  “Oh don’t push it.” Star lit a large cigar, a nasty habit that cropped up when she was nervous. She blew a smoke ring and sighed. “At least the rogering was a nice change. Good clean sex, almost a spiritual experience.”

                  “Oh come now, with all the don’t-need-to-know details…”

                  “Well, don’t be such a prude, you were there after all. With all that luscious moaning. Haven’t seen you so flushed in ages…” Star tittered in that high-pitched laughter that could shatter crystal flutes.

                  “Wait… a minute.” Tara was having a brainwave. “We may have overlooked something.”

                  “What? In the sex department?”

                  “Shush, you lascivious banshee… In the flushed department.”

                  “What? Don’t speak riddles tart, I can’t handle riddles when my body’s aching from all that gymnastic.”

                  “Can’t you see? They got to get rid of the dissident stuff unfit for cultish dildoing, if you catch my drift.”

                  “Oh I catch it alright, but I’ve checked the loo… Oh, what? you mean the compost pile?”

                  “I’ve seen trucks parked out the back, they where labelled… Organic Lou’s Disposal Services… OLDS… That’s probably how they remove their archives, if you see what I mean.”

                  “Alright, alright, we’ll go investigate them tomorrow. Meanwhile, what about Mr French?” Star was puffing on her cigar making a good effort at trying to remember and link the details together.

                  “I have a theory. Although it usually would be more in your area of theories.”

                  “What? Alien abduction?”

                  “No, don’t be ridiculous. I’m talking time travel… Haven’t you noticed the scent of celery when we were at the mansion and the appartment?”

                  “A dead give-away for time-travelling shenanigans!”

                  “Exactly. And if I’m correct, might well be that it’s Mr French from the future who phoned us, before he returned to his timeline. Probably because he already knows we’re going to crack the case. Before we know.”

                  “Oh, that’s nice. Would have been nicer if he’d told us how to solve it instead, if he knew, from the future and all? Are you not sure he’s not from his past instead, like before he got in that dreadful car accident?”

                  “Oh well, doesn’t matter does it? And probably won’t any longer once we locate the Uncle Basil in the Drooling Home of Retired Vegetables.”

                  #5808

                  Truth be told, April was missing the US. She missed all their little coterie of maids living in the shadows of the powerful. Missed the drama most of all.

                  She’d been secretly texting Norma and May, while June was lazily sipping mojitos with Jacqui.
                  Norma was fine, but May and the other alien staff had suddenly disappeared when the Secret Services had started to investigate more deeply into the staff’s backgrounds after all the kidnapping fiasco. At least, August had been covering for Norma, such kind soul he was. Besides, the President’s wife could no longer live without her butter chicken. But May and the others couldn’t face the music apparently. Funnily, they couldn’t find “real” American maids nowadays suited to replace them. Good luck with that!

                  April couldn’t tell June, obviously, since her friend harboured such hatred for the system that had them put in jail. As for herself, she couldn’t argue with the fact they’d deserved it. Nothing a good lawyer couldn’t fix though. That’s why she loved the idea of America. Guilty as charged, indeed. Those charges now vanished.

                  She’d thought first that it would fuel her inspiration nicely, but it was the opposite. The sudden extra time had distracted her entirely, and her inspiration seemed inaccessible.

                  She was starting to make up her mind. She would go back, to her family in Arkansas. That could only be temporary of course, as her mother, bless her soul, would start to have her meet all the gents in the neighbourhood in the hopes to finally get her only daughter married. Talk about drama. If that doesn’t kick-start her inspiration engine, nothing would.

                  Problem was, with the virus around spreading mass panic, there seemed to be no sure way to fly back. She would have to devise some circuitous plan.

                  #5807

                  In reply to: Tart Wreck Repackage

                  The front door of Mr French had a certain Gothic quality to it which caught the eye of Star. She was a sucker for the glitz and the extravagant –the more garish, the better. Had she got her way, their office would be full of the cumbersome stuff. Catching the glint in Star’s green eyes, Tara rolled hers. She clanged the metal lion to signal their presence.

                  A decrepit butler called off their ruckus after what seemed like a pause in eternity. They could hear the rambling from a distance behind the door. “I’m coming! No need for such noise! Ah, these youngs nowadays, not a shred of patience!…”

                  “Are you sure about it Star? After all, the deposit check cleared, why should we be concerned about Mr French. And we still haven’t got much to go on about Uncle Basil…”

                  “Shttt, let me handle it,” replied Star shaping her face into a genial one, oozing honey and butterflies.

                  When the butler finally opened the door, he snapped her shut “We’re not interested in whatever… hem, services you’re offering Mesdames.”

                  Tara caught Star’s hand mid-air, as it was about to fly and land square on the rude dried up mummy’s face in front of them.

                  “Sir, you must have us confused. We’ve been hired a week ago by Mr French for a very private matter we cannot obviously discuss on the doorstep. Please check with Mr French, maybe?”

                  The butler’s face turned sour. “Yes of course, I understand. Then you should know Mr French has been in a coma since his dreadful accident last month. Since you have a direct line to him, I suggest you… call him?” And with that, he slammed the door shut on their faces.

                  “Rude!” Tara mouthed.

                  “At least, that tells us something my dear.”

                  “Don’t bait me like this. I’ll ask, what exactly?”

                  “That our Mr French is not who he says he is…”

                  “I wonder if it has something to do with the immense fortune he made with his voice…”

                  “That would be a very interesting question to answer indeed.”

                  #5600
                  TracyTracy
                  Participant

                    June

                    June was born in Glasgow, Kentucky in 1957. Her real name is not known yet. She comes from a military family who used to move around a lot, hence, never really felt home in any place, and kept largely her distances with relatives. At a young age of 17 (1974), she eloped with her then fiancé and did a tour of the USA on a shoestring, aiming to stow away on a Californian ship to reach Hawaii. We find her years later, happily divorced, and sought in 5 states for various charges, primarily identity theft and credit card fraud. A chance encounter with April led her to her next scam: registering as an experienced nanny “au pair”, coming from Glasgow, Scotland. She didn’t manage to stay too long at her employs, yet a fortunate event led her to apply and be selected for the nursing of the President’s precocious baby. She loathes all that the President represents, but likes a challenge, and the irony of being a wanted con-artist on the run under the nose of the Secret Services.

                    #4665

                    Aunt Idle:

                    I was looking forward to it, to tell you the truth. Things had been so dull around the Inn for so long, I’d started to feel that the old place had slid right off the map. Maybe things would have been different if Bert had remortgaged the place, but he’d refused, and there was no persuading him. So we’d bumbled along managing to keep the wolf from the door, somehow. It was quiet with the twins gone to college, and Devan who knows where, off traveling he’d said but had not kept in touch, and lord knew, Mater wasn’t much company these days. And there were so few guests that I was in danger of talking them to death, when they did come. Bert said that was why they always left the next morning, but I think he was pulling my leg.

                    Then out of the blue, I get a request to make a reservation, for two reporters here to cover the story, they said. I almost said “what story, there is no story going on here” and luckily managed to stop myself. If they wanted a story, I’d give them a story. Anything to liven the place up a bit.

                    On impulse, I decided to give Hilda “Red Eye” Astoria room 8 at the end of the corridor. Now there was a story, if she wanted one, the goings on in room 8! And to make it look like the inn was a busy thriving concern, I gave Connie “Continuity” Brown room 2, next to the dining room. Connie Brown was doing a report for the fashion column, and had inquired about the laundry services, and if there was a local dressmaker available. Of course I assured her there was, even though there wasn’t. But I reckoned Mater and I could manage whatever they required. Fashion shoot at the Flying Fish Inn, I ask you! What a joke.

                    I asked Bert what story he thought they were here to cover. He shifted in his seat and looked uncomfortable.

                    “We don’t want then digging around here, you don’t know what they might find.”

                    I looked at him piercingly. He asked me if a gnat had got stuck in my eye and why was I squinting. I wasn’t sure which dirty dark secret he was referring to, and frankly, would be hard put to recall all the details myself anyway, but I had a sneaking suspicion the old inn still had plenty of stories to tell ~ or to keep hidden awhile longer.

                    The main thing was to keep Hilda and Connie here as long as possible. Just for the company.

                    #4093

                    It didn’t take too long to Ed Steam to find her. By his count, only a few hundred reality reboots.

                    It could have been more, but keeping a steady count of all the trigger-cackles was tricky.
                    He never was quite the same person each time. Hopefully, he’d noticed after the 57th reboot that something new had happened — since that particular reboot, it had seemed easier to keep track of his identity from reboot to reboot.

                    As if Zero-point Bea had realized something, and honed her entangling capabilities.

                    Ed had tracked her at the border. Funnily, nowadays she was more or less the only unchanging thing in the whole universe.
                    She had rented a small apartment near the border, and was offering reallocation services on an ad-hoc basis.

                    There were still many characters refugees who were looking for a story placement, and that’s what she provided them.

                    Ed was there for one thing: termitate her. His reality now was quite different from the one he originated, but despite all the changes, he was still in charge of preventing the surges wherever they happened.
                    It was a moral dilemma. Already so many persons had been displaced by the cackling surges and Bea’s uncontrolled shifting realities. Not even a map-dancer could now keep track of all the transfocal encounters and reallocation. The world was a much different place now, on shifting grounds and sandy whorls with no minute of fame.

                    Ed was next in line, dreading that he couldn’t get to her before the next cackling reboot.
                    The success of his mission was paramount to the security of the fabric of reality.

                    #3598
                    matermater
                    Participant

                      Mater:

                      I am beginning to think the Inn may be riddled with ghosts. Or is it me who needs to go to mental health services? Perhaps I really am losing my marbles?

                      #3589
                      matermater
                      Participant

                        Mater:

                        I showed Finly to her room. I have put her in room 10 — opposite Mr What’s-his-name, the guest — which is the nicest guest room in the house and one of the few which Fred got round to doing up before he left.

                        On the spur of the moment I asked her if she believed in ghosts. She looked at me intently and said “There’s a lot we don’t understand. I can’t say I believe or disbelieve.” And that was it. I didn’t press it further. She is a serious girl but her references were excellent and I think she will be a hard worker. Not one to take nonsense from anyone.

                        I asked her if she would like the day off tomorrow to settle in and suggested she could start her duties on Wednesday.

                        “I can see I have my work cut out here,” she said. “The sooner I get started the better.”

                        And dear God we need some help around here, I thought.

                        The other day I caught Dido throwing gin all over herself and laughing. I am concerned I will need to call mental health services soon. I didn’t say anything at the time — I don’t think she saw me. I have been annoyed with her in the past for her lackadaisical attitude towards caring for the kids, but when I saw the poor demented thing throwing gin at herself, well, for the first time I felt really sorry for her.

                        #3584
                        F LoveF Love
                        Participant

                          It was Mater who decided they needed to get some cleaning help. She commandeered Clove to do some research on the internet and eventually found a woman from New Zealand, Finly, who was offering her cleaning services in exchange for room and board.

                          “Bloody kiwis,” said Bert when he heard. “The place is riddled with them. Bloody come and take our jobs. Haven’t we got more than enough of them here already? I am having a hard enough time avoiding that Flora, going on about her spiritual bloody awakening.”

                          “If you can find anyone local who would be willing to do the cleaning in exchange for a place to stay, I will be glad to consider them,” retorted Mater sternly. “But in the meantime this place is fast becoming a pig-sty and Dido is too busy smoking and drinking to see it.”

                          Naturally Mater got her way and a few days later Bert, still grumbling, agreed to go and pick Finly up from the airport. Mater assembled the family in the main living room.

                          “Now remember, the main thing is to be courteous. God only knows why she agreed to come to this backwater of a place, but we don’t want to put her off.”

                          ”Don’t we indeed?” smirked Aunt Idle.

                          “Yeah exactly, it is friggin’ weird I reckon. Why would she come here?” asked Clove, privately deciding she had better run a more thorough background check on Finly.

                          “I thought Finly was a boy’s name,” said Coriander. “That would be cool. A boy cleaner. I hope he’s hot. He can clean topless”

                          Aunt Idle, who had already been into the gin even though it wasn’t yet 10am, put her hand over her mouth and started to giggle.

                          “It can be a girl or a boy’s name and someone called Coriander is in no position to throw stones. And mind your language, Clove.” responded Mater tartly.

                          Clove rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Well as long as she doesn’t try and boss me around, it might be quite fun to have a slave to clean up after me.”

                          Prune had been keeping an eye on the window. “Shush, she’s here!” she shouted excitedly.

                          #3330

                          With the aid of the holographic map, Irina, Mr R and little Greenie have been exploring the island.
                          The next day they found a crashed plane from Aeroflot, not very far from their own landing spot. It was half burried in the mud and covered in green mossy vegetation. The doors were open as an irresistible invitation to enter.

                          “A surprise, Mr R. I thought that this place was on your map. If I remember well, it didn’t show such an object.”
                          “Forgive me, madam, indeed this plane wasn’t there when I triangulated the map I showed you.”
                          “You mean it’s fresh ?” Irina’s voice seemed to suddenly carry some interest. “Maybe we can find some survivors”, she added, already doubting it considering all the moss on teh metallic shell.
                          “I’m afraid we won’t, madam. I didn’t want to bother you with that little detail until I was sure. There are objects on this island that only appear after a certain date. Have you noticed it also happens with the vegetation and the insects ?”
                          Irina pouted, “I prefer leaving that to your expertise.”
                          “Of course, madam”, said the robot, affable. “The paradox is…”
                          “Another paradox ? How interesting.”
                          “…that it doesn’t seem to include us, or that little person.”
                          “Any idea what the implications are ?” Irina began to wonder if there was any danger of being stuck permanently on this island.
                          “I have several hypothesis”, he began, “The most probable is the lost room hypothesis. We arrived there through time space displacement and are not a natural part of this environment, hence we don’t change with its natural environment or inhabitants because we are not under it’s time sequence according to the Lehmon’s law.”

                          Irina pouted. She looked at little greenie and thought of the implications about how their new friend arrived there. Whenre did she come from ? For her to be a bog mummy, she must have been there a long time. Or did she arrived already bogged ?
                          Something caught her attention about the plane and distracted her of further thinking about the subject of their continuity risk in this place. The logo of the plane looked not so oldish.
                          “Mr R. ? What do you think the date of the crash was ?”
                          “The plane was lost in 2112.”

                          Without further thought about safety, she entered the plane, followed first by little Greenie as she have been calling her new protegee, and by the robot who despite still talking about technicalities of accidental space time crossing theory, had turned on his speleo lights.

                          Interestingly enough, Irina noted the clothes on the chairs or in the alleyways, here a pair of glasses, there a necklace, all layered as if the person wearing them had been puffed away.

                          “Well, well, what have we here ? The light Mr R, please,” said Irina with as much excitement as a snail. He obliged her with his usual professionalism, revealing a teal blue scarf with pistachio green spirals. She took the cloth and stretched it to have a better look. It was one of those artistic kind of hippy abstract patterns connecting you to the cosmos.
                          “I can’t think of anybody who would buy that thing, maybe she stole it from one of those duty free shops before they took off,” she said as petulantly as a pitfall trap.
                          “Come here little Greenie, it’s time to make you pretty.”

                          Irina did not have the chance to play with dolls when she was a kid, she didn’t know if she had some psychological lack or a bad doyle dating from that unremembered period of her life. She had compensated by toying with real people, playing with their emotions and deeper needs, or what they thought they needed. She became an expert at manipulating others, which gave her her first job in insurances, and then in the secret services. But then, she dealt with adults, showing emotions, or a certain level of brain activity. She wasn’t used to children stored in bogs.

                          She tried to put the scarf on Greenie’s head, and to smile like she had seen people do in the movies. Although something unexpected happened. Greenie became suddenly distressed and agitated. Then, she punched Irina in the face and began to mumble incoherent things.
                          That child is stronger than I thought. And at the same time, she noticed a name in that gibberish. Didnt she just shout : “I frigging love you, Sadie Merrie.”

                          “Her brainwave is showing unusual activity”, stated Mr R. “And my sensors indicate the presence has returned, with some friends. They just appeared outside of the plane.”

                          #3137
                          EricEric
                          Keymaster

                            Finding a time smuggler on such short notice was near impossible, Linda Paul soon found out when she hit the web. There were sure long lists of pages offering the services at seemingly attractive prices, but then never covering all the highly recommended options, such as the time collision waiver, and collateral time damage waiver.
                            She had a pretty good idea of what she needed to smuggle back and when, but all the time pathways simulations seemed to run into a dead-end.
                            After a stroke of genius, realizing that the one-timeway drop-off prohibitive surcharge may be the reason why she couldn’t get decent tariffs, she changed her simulation for a return.

                            “Time and item of origin/return…” she muttered as she typed “Queen Anne’s crocheted ferrets, 1625, Louvres Palace”.

                            Of course, going forward in time was easy, so she would simply need to give specific instructions to the time smuggler to pass on those bloody ferrets along the timeline.

                            A click here, accepting the long conditions with hardly a glance, “blabla, not covering extra temporal charge… blabla… ensured discretion, yes, yes, service cannot be used to leave historical artifacts protected by the amendment on the … or any incongruent item blabla… smuggling service comes with no obligation of results…”
                            The rest was piece of cake.

                            She already had the perfect time mule in mind for the delicate mission of reintroducing the crocheted ferrets where her dragqueen competition was now held.

                            :fleuron2:

                            When Nicole du Hausset, widow of a poor noble man, one of the two femmes de chambre of Madame de Pompadour, first hear Madame talk about her first encounter with the Count in 1749, she remembered immediately about her mother, and grand-mother’s secret instructions.
                            A few nights later, she wrote down in her diary “‘A man who was as amazing as a witch came often to see Madame de Pompadour. This was the Comte de Saint-Germain, who wished to make people believe that he had lived for several centuries.”

                            For some reason, she was to find a way to give him two scrawny century-old (and quite frankly smelly) crocheted ferrets, as a token for the Queen.
                            She still had seven years or so to make it happen, that was time ample enough to do the deed, if the Good Lord would grant her enough life, or else she would need to pass the burden to the next of kin.
                            She’d never known exactly why this was significant, but she’d been told that her family’s past riches were due to the success of this task, passed on to the next generation until 1757.

                            It didn’t take very long. An elaborate and convincing lie did come easier to her than she would have known, and the Count swallowed it hook and sinker. Next thing she knew, she’d glimpsed the plush beasts in the midst of the menagerie of the Queen, and felt relieved of a life and generation-long burden.
                            She could now return to a simple and uncomplicated life, although she would sometimes wake up at night in cold sweat, having had dreadful nightmares that the ferrets had disappeared before the date.

                            #3129
                            EricEric
                            Keymaster

                              Jean-Pierre Duroy, the Grand Intendant of the Palace of Versailles woke up every morning an hour before dawn, when everything was still calm, the last fêteurs of the guest nobility were, at last, fast asleep and the stars’ lights were beginning to fade on the dark sky. The Palace was never sleeping really, but this was as close a moment of peace as he could get.
                              His wife Annie, the Head of the Royal Pastries Chefs, would usually sleep contentedly an hour more, waiting for the chantecler’s sonorous hail to the rising sun.

                              When he realized he had overslept for the first time in many years of services, he knew there was something not quite right about this particular day.
                              As usual, and especially during winter, there was much to be done. Preparing the routine menus for the noble tables, getting his army of little people bustling around to stock the fires with wood for the cold-fearing ladies, clean up, wash clothes, drapes and the darn mirrors. Receive the fresh foods from the local markets, clean up the latrines, which tended to get clogged with the dreaded cold… When that was done, he had to make sure the servants were doing their job properly, not abusing the generosity of His Majesty, taking good care of the Gardens, which was an horror when the snow started to melt, ensuring the guards reported to their duties, etc. etc.
                              And after all that, no matter what, do a meticulous accounting in the Royal Ledger.
                              Jean-Pierre was but a cog in that enormous machine, but a cog which could make a vital difference between a day gone right, and a day gone awfully wrong.

                              He had to turn that day around quickly lest it would be the latter, he thought while putting his white starched breaches. A last look at his wife who was starting to move her weight around and yawn, and he was out.

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