Scope and Content
"Very many thanks for magazines, cuttings, and your letter ... all of which were most interesting. It would take me a long time to comment on them all. Perhaps the most interesting cutting was the one about the Reverend K.T.N.Menon's presentation at Kempston (Beds.Times 11/11/66). I first met him at Oxford in the early 20s. He came from India as an undergraduate - non-collegiate - and he lodged with the widowed mother of my old friend Ida Huckings. (I may have told you that I met Ida exactly 50 years ago last month, in 1918, when I was a Cadet in the Royal Flying Corps. We did our pre-flying training in Oxford, and were established in the colleges, which of course had emptied when war broke out. I was in Lincoln College, which earned me the nickname of "Lincoln Imp" - shortened to IMPO by Ida - and IMPO I have remained ever since! Ida was 27 when we met, and I was 19. I regarded her as very old! Her fiance was killed in France a few weeks after we met. Ida was a remarkable young woman - she wrote poetry and was devoted to literature - although she was only a shop-girl. And she was - and is - a wonderful correspondent. On my leaving Oxford for Cranwell, we started a correspondence which has continued withouth interruption for half a century! Our lives have been entirely apart - there have been intervals of 10 years without our meeting. The Eagles were very keen to meet her, and eventually we drove over to Oxford to fetch her for a few days of her holiday, and this became an annual event. They took a great fancy to her. Miss Di told me to giver her her lovely collection of amethysts on her death. As the years passed, she eventually became the Manageress of the draper's shop where she spent all her working life. She retired a few years agon, and, like her mother before her, took in undergraduate lodgers. About three years ago she developed trouble in her throat, and had to go into the Radcliffe Hostpital for treatment. Of course, she is well on in her 70s now. I imagine it was cancer. But it seems she is much better, and though she has dropped the undergraduates, she has her brother-in-law living with her (a widower about her own age), and he is a great help. She has never been here, and the last time I saw her was in 1959, when I was in Oxford for the weekend, and I took her out to dinner at the Mitre. But we never fail to exchange a letter every month - except when I am abroad - and then I send postcards. I hope to get to Oxford sometime this year to take her out to dinner again (champagne this time!) to celebrate our 50 years of unbroken friendship. But back to K.T.N.Menon. During his time in Oxford, he became devoted to Ida's mother, to Ida herself, and more than devoted to Ida's younger sister, Gwen. On taking his degree, he decided to become a Christian, with the result that his family in India (wealthy Buddhists) promptly cast him off, and performed his funeral ceremonies there! However, Menon saw the Commissioner for India here, with the result he got a job in the India Office. He and Gwen were married (I was a curate at SJDK and went to the wedding) and they settled down in a nice house in Purley. Eventually Nicholas and Kalyani were born. Menon was a devout chuchman, and became a lay reader. On retiring from the India Office he decided to take Orders and eventually landed at Kempston. Nicholas eventually went to Merton College, Oxford and took Orders, and is now curate of some West End parish. Kalyani has some important job as Education Supervisor, I don't quite know what. I had not seen Menon (known to us as KUTTAN - KTN) since my London days until a few years ago, when he rang up from Margate to say he was there for the day with a Mothers' Union outing! He took a taxi out to the Castle, and spent a couple of hours here. His wife Gwen, I have not seen since I visited them in Purley about 1930: so you can imagine how interested I was to see her as a white-haired lady in your cutting! I shall send it to Ida. She may not have seen it. The Menons are now living at Wantage, and Ida goes over to see them occasionally. All that from one cutting!
I was interested in the paragraph in one of the magazines about the death of Dr.Welch, of which I had not known. I had not seen or heard from him since the War. But I did hear that there had been trouble in his marriage. Once, when he came to preach, or rather do duty for me when I was away, he brought a lady with him, and took her into S.Joseph's, expecting the Eagles to invite her to lunch with him. They were rather taken aback. I don't remember how it turned out. Anyway, there was a divorce, and he married the lady. This, of course, brought his ministry to an end, and he got a job as Head of a Training College in Nigeria. That was the last I heard of him. As for Colin Dunlop, I knew him many years ago at New College, and met him once or twice later, but we were never close friends.
I noticed the death of Joyce Craddock, Mrs.Cardinal's daughter. She must have been in her 50s, I expect: I remember her as quite a girl. Mrs.Cardinal was one of the first people I met in Ampthill. She was scrubbing the floors of the Rectory when I arrived with my mother to look over the place, and she continued to clean for seven years. Then one of my housekeepers upset her, and she left. I always liked her. She had good manners and was a wonderful worker. If I could have got her as my housekeeper, my life would probably have been much happier. What a nice-looking lad Dick Ball's son is! No, I have no recollection of Sandra or Robin Welch. There were two Welch boys in the choir, and I remember one of them was killed in the War.
What happened, by the way, to Graham James and his brother? Graham turned up at Richmond just as I was preparing to come here in 1954.
Yes: I shall have been here 14 years in December. That is as long as was my stay in Ampthill! How the years fly!
There are many other comments I could make on the cuttings, which I was very pleased to receive. But I must pass on.
I am indeed sorry to know of Mr.Coll's troubles. I have always thought that three parishes was too much for one priest. They could have joined Steppingley and Millbrook. But Ampthill by itself is quite enough for one man.
My arrangements for 1968 are taking shape. The meeting to discuss estimates for the cliff work and decide on the raising of the money has been fixed for Friday, May the 3rd. So I must stay here for that. I hope to get over to Normandy the following week, and I shall be there until the end of June. Then I return here with my cousin's two lads - 18 and 16 - for the month of July. They have not been to England before, so I shall have a busy time showing them round London, Oxford, Canterbury etc. though, if the weather is fine, I expect they will get most pleasure from the beach and the sea, as they live inland in France. The elder boy goes to Caen University in September. They are great horsemen, as their uncle (on their mother's side) owns famous stables at Argentan. (Incidentally, the Queen visited them last year. You may have seen about it in the papers.) At the end of July, they will return home, and I go up to Yorkshire to stay with my English cousins, and from there to Hoscote, to spend August and maybe part of September with the Staverts. On the way South, I shall go to Liverpool to visit Laurie Brown, the Bishop of Warrington, about whom I told you I think in a recent letter. So I should be back here in the autumn.
My next voyage will be on a Norwegian ship from Antwerp to Peru and Chile. We shall follow the same route across the Atlantic as I went last December ... to Curacao: then through the Panama, and down the West Coast of South America to Valparaiso. I shall celebrate my 70th birthday somewhere en route! After that?? I have not visited Australia and New Zealand. I have never had the slightest desire to see Australia; but I should like New Zealand, I think. But it is no use going on a round trip on a cargo ship. I should have to go there, and stay at least a month (two weeks on each island). This would be a very expensive business. However, if I did it, I should have been practically all over the world (excepting Iceland and Greenland: no thank you!). And I haven't been to Canada (except Vancouver).
Actually, I should be quite content to settle down here and end my days with my books - with occasional trips to my London club to see my friends and go to the theatre. But the roving spirit is still strong within me, and I must not get into the armchair before I must. I am devoutly thankfuly that my health so far continues excellent. I don't seem to have anything wrong with me, I have all on my teeth, and I wear glasses only for reading. And I can walk for miles without getting tired. I seem to be taking after my father, who was amazing at 80. When I look at some at contemporaries, with their heart trouble etc. I think I have a lot to be thankful for. One notices it most at reunion dinners in London ... "Who is that old man over there who looks as if he has one foot in the grave?" ... "Good Lord! It's George!" And one wonders what one looks like oneself!
I think I told you that Mrs.Fantle (who changed her name to Mrs.Grant) and her mother and mother's second husband, all went off to live in Spain last year. Mrs.F. will probably be turning up at Hoscote in the summer: so Mrs.Stavert tells me. They took to each other when they met here.
My neighbour Mrs.Olley continues to flourish. Her daughter, who is a brilliant scientist working at the Torrey Research Depot in Aberdeen, has become engaged to a barrister in Tasmania, and goes out to be married in June. He is 58, and she is 42. She made a disastrous marriage some years ago with a man ten years younger than herself. That would not have mattered much, as they were obviously devoted to each other. But he was a Jew: and his family strict Jews. They resented his marriage to a Gentile, and more or less blackmailed him ("we shall not leave you a penny") into deserting her. So she divorced him. It appears that the barrister is a very keen churchman, and insists on a church marriage. As June (that's her name) is the innocent party, the Bishop of Tasmania has agreed to perform the ceremony! The Bishop, incidentally, is coming to the Lambeth Conference in July, and says he will call on Mrs.Olley to pay his respects. Mrs.O. herself intends to fly out to Tasmania next December (when I go off on my voyage) on a visit. It will be a good thing if June can find some place near her for Mrs.O. to settle, as she will be a long way from her daughter if anything should happen to her.
My other neighbour, Sydney Crouch, has made a wonderful recovery from his heart operation last year. But he is advised not to live alone, and is making arrangements to share a house with his brother and sister-in-law up in the Midlands. His flat here is up for sale, and there is a posssibility that a lady now in Scotland will acquire it. Sydney is now with his brother for a month, so I do not see much of him.
My remembrances to Andrew and your family.
Yours sincerely,"