800 Years of Women's Letters

by Olga Kenyon

  7 December 1913 Sikkim

  Dear Philippe,

  I love you very much for what you have done to support me. I know you make sacrifices to provide me with a life that displeases you. This journey to Sikkim [in the Himalayas] has restored my spirits. I visited villages and monasteries with the Prince, travelling much in the manner of a medieval court, like a dream of a very old world. The Prince encouraged me to exhort the monks to practice a purer Buddhism. I took to the task with zeal, lecturing at the monasteries on the pure doctrine. I have been given a lama’s red robe to wear and the designation of ‘lamina’ [woman lama].

  I have found a tutor to instruct me in Tibetan. At my age [fortyfour] I must not delay learning the language. I am in a singular position as a woman, and a militant practising Buddhism. Orientalists in the West would be severely critical of my writing. What I want above all is to be completely accurate and document my findings so thoroughly that I’ll be able to return home a person of some importance in the world of Orientalists. All I need is a bit more time and experience. Don’t you think, given our situation and our characters, we can make the sacrifice to be separated a little longer? My hope is to spend time in Tibet if the authorities will let me. Then I’ll leave India, and travel home via Japan, with my cycle of studies on Buddhism in northern Asia completed.

  March 1914

  Now the Prince’s father has died he has become ruler so I travelled alone, except for my interpreter and a few porters to carry my camping gear through the azalea and rhododendron forests. We went up and down nearly vertical hills on my way to the north, where Sikkim borders Tibet. It was one of my most memorable journeys. The track enters a fantastic region near the frontier passes. In the intense silence of these wild solitudes only brooks chat gently. Up and up we went, skirting glaciers, catching occasional glimpses of valleys filled by huge clouds. And then, without any transition, as we issued from the mists, the Tibetan tableland appeared before us, immense, void and resplendent under the luminous sky of Central Asia. . . . Nothing can dim that first sight of Tibet in my mind.

  A. DAVID-NÉEL, MY JOURNEY TO LHASA (1938)

  Illegally entering Tibet in 1914, she spent time in a monastery, lived as a hermit in a cave, and became a lama herself. In 1923, disguised as a Tibetan beggar on pilgrimage with her adopted son, Yongden, she became the first Western woman to enter the ‘Forbidden City’ of Lhasa, where she remained for two months before her identity was discovered. This letter, written in 1923, is again to her husband.

  Next morning, leaving my old friend, the Mekong, we turned westward through the rocky gorge at the entrance of which we had slept. Soon it opened out into a narrow, densely wooded valley. The weather was sunny and walking easier. We passed two mounted Tibetan traders, who gave us scarcely a glance. Perhaps they thought we were Chinamen, for Yongden and I both wore Chinese dresses. Nevertheless this first meeting, precursor of the many which were to follow, gave us a little shock. Although we were yet in that part of Tibet, still under Chinese rule, wherein foreigners can travel freely, though at their own risk, it was most important that rumours of my wanderings in the neighbourhood of the border should not spread. For the Tibetan officials, once warned and on the alert, would have the road carefully watched, which would greatly increase the difficulties of our entering the forbidden area.

  A little before noon we came in sight of Londre. Had we been alone, Yongden and I, we could have easily avoided passing through the village by hiding ourselves in the wood until evening. It would have saved us much trouble and fatigue, for between the steep slopes of the Kha Karpo range which we were about to climb, there was but the width of this torrential river which we had followed upwards and crossed several times in the narrow gorge. But such a thing was out of the question, for I had expressly told the coolies that I intended to go into the country of the Loutze tribes to collect plants, and the road to Lutze-Kiang went through Londre and there turned in a direction exactly opposite to the Kha Karpo.

  Very disturbed, and reflecting that each step added a difficulty to my approaching flight, I followed the two Tibetans who meant to take me to a wooded tableland about ten miles higher, where they knew of a good camping-ground. As far as they could see, Yongden and I scarcely cast a glance at the country in the direction of the Dokar Pass; but in reality we did our best to impress on our memory the shape and peculiarities of the landscape which would help us when we had to cross it on the next night.

  Our passage in Londre was as inconspicuous as we could have wished. Not one of the villagers whom we met appeared to take any particular notice of us. This most happy circumstance was perhaps due to the fact that an American naturalist worked in the vicinity and employed a large number of people. No doubt the villagers thought that we were on our way to join him as assistants.

  After having proceeded for a few miles on the Lutze-Kiang path, turning my back to my real goal, I thought it imprudent to proceed farther. Safety required that plenty of time be allowed for the long tramp on the opposite side of Londre, so that dawn should find us far away from the village, having, if possible, reached the pilgrimage road. Once there, we could easily pretend to have come from any northern Tibetan part we cared to name, in order to get round the Sacred Mountain.

  I had hesitated a long time in choosing the road I would take in order to enter Tibet. The one I preferred, or perhaps I should say the one which circumstances seemed to be thrusting upon me, is followed every autumn by many travellers. By taking it I foresaw that I should run the danger of frequent meetings. Not that this inconvenience was without its favourable aspects, since our tracks could be more easily lost amongst those of pilgrims from various Tibetan regions, each of whom spoke in different dialect, and whose womenfolk had a variety of different dress and coiffures. The little peculiarities of my accent, my features, or my clothes would more easily be overlooked on such a road, and if enquiries were to be made, they would have to embrace so many people that confusion might very likely follow to my advantage. But of course I sincerely hoped that no enquiry would be made!

  A. DAVID-NÉEL (1938)

  DIPLOMATIC LIFE, TEHERAN

  Vita Sackville-West admired, liked and loved Virginia Woolf. She missed her when she accompanied her husband Harold Nicholson to Teheran when he was appointed Ambassador to Persia. This letter to Woolf was written in 1926.

  Teheran

  15 March

  Today being the birthday of the Shah, (though common report has it that he knows neither his birthday nor his age, being of low extraction,) last night a dinner was given in his honour at the Foreign Office. So at 8.15, an immense yellow motor draws up at the door: Harold in uniform and gold lace, little sword getting between his legs; Vita derisive, but decked in emeralds; escort in scarlet and white (the Minister is all for swank, – thinks it impresses the Persians;) the yellow motor proceeds down the street. Pulls up at the Foreign Office. Sentries present arms. The scarlet escort escorts. The sentries’ boots are muddy; everything is very shoddy here. Seventy people to dinner; the china doesn’t match, – not enough to go round, – the Persian ministers wear their robes of honour; grubby old cashmere dressing-gowns, with no collars to their evening shirts; dinner cold; I escape the awful fate of sitting between two Persians who talk nothing but their own language, and get Sir Percy, who is nice, and the Belgian minister, who tells me about the Emperor of Korea. (I never knew there was such a person; he sounds incredibly romantic; Hakluyt’s voyages, and all that.) Suddenly, an awful pause, and we stand up to drink the health of the eleven states represented. But first their national anthems must be played; and, glass in hand, we endure God Save the King, the Brabançonne, (I feel the Belgian minister at my side stiffen to attention,) the International Soviet Hymn, the Marseillaise, the Wacht am Rhein, and six unidentifiable minor powers. An unfortunate incident ushers in the ceremony: all the dirty plates have been stacked under Sir Percy’s chair, all the dirty knives and forks under mine, so as we rise to our feet shoving back our chai
rs there is a clatter. . . . Having drunk to our respective sovereigns and presidents, we drink to the Shah. We adjourn. There are fireworks. Now the Persians are really good at fireworks. The garden, from the balconies, coruscates with wrestling babies of Herculean promise, taxi-cabs with revolving wheels, aeroplanes with revolving propellers, catherine wheels, and VIVE SA MAJESTÉ IMPÉRIALE PAHLEVI in letters of gold reflecting in the central tank, – all very lovely, really, and fantastic, seen through clouds of smoke from above; while Tamur Tasch, officially Minister of Works, but really the Power behind the Throne, enquiries in my ear as to the merits of Thos. Goode and Son, South Audley Street, and the Army & Navy Stores.

  This is diplomatic life.

  This morning, the yellow motor again; and Sir Percy and Harold, both in uniform again, with fluttering plumes in their hats, (Sir Percy loving it, and Harold wretched,) going off to the Shah’s reception, the scarlet-and-white servants and the Indian lancers trotting before and behind the car.

  Do not imagine, however, that life is all like that. There are days of going into the mountains, and eating sandwiches beside a stream, and picking wild almonds, and of coming home by incredible sunsets across the plain. And every morning at seven we ride, and the freshness and beauty of the morning are inconceivable.

  Then once a fortnight the muddy car comes in, and there are letters: the only rift opening on the outside world. Otherwise it is all very self-contained, – what with the old white horse who goes his rounds every morning, bringing two barrels of water to every house in the compound, and the Sanitary Cart, which drawn by a donkey performs a sordid emptying function.

  EDS. L. DESAHO AND M. LEASKA, THE LETTERS OF VITA SACKVILLE-WEST TO VIRGINIA WOOLF (1984)

  FREYA STARK EXPLORES

  Freya Stark decided she must travel in the Middle East. She gambled her small income, successfully, on the stock-market to pay for her travels. She went to Lebanon in 1927, fell in love with it and began learning Arabic. By 1930 she was adventurously exploring Persia, seeing far more than Sackville-West. Here she writes to her mother, whom she called ‘B’.

  Nr. Khurramabad

  23 May 1930

  Dearest B,

  It is a most extraordinary sight to come out on to the Caspian after all the forest – all yesterday afternoon and six hours today riding through it, lovely in the lower parts like some lonely bit of Pyrenees with its rushing streams and enormously tall trees. One leaves the big river, the two Hizars they are, which have joined their waters and rush down foaming together: one crosses a small col which the Emir Sipahsalar paved with boulders before he was asked by the government to commit suicide: then one crosses the Valmirud – a broad slow stream in a big bed: up another steep, short col – and there is the Caspian, and between you and it a landscape that has walked out of a lacquered tray: a flat landscape shining like a dull mirror with endless little sub-divisions of rice plots divided by tiny mud barriers: islands of green trees, oranges and pomegranates in flower, rise all among these water plots, and every island has a few houses under enormous beehive roofs of rice thatching. Little observatories on four pillars, under a dome of thatching, stand about in the water, and beyond it all is a pale streak of sea without shadows that also might come out of a Japanese print. Blue dragonflies, with the outer half of their wings velvety black, dart about doing their little best with the mosquitoes: but, of course, this is a perfect trap for malaria and even the poorest house has a veranda which you climb to by a ladder and are supposed to be out of their way. I am sitting on one now, after lunch, and the centre of an interested row of onlookers who look very much more Russian than Persian, with darker eyes, and pretty oval faces, and a generally softer expression. Their language is quite incomprehensible – and especially today because my cold is so bad that I could scarcely understand English if there were any to be heard within fifty miles.

  My coming has evidently been heralded by the muleteers who went ahead, for I was greeted with looks of expectant surprise by all we met. It is quite a shock when you are jogging along amiably absent-minded to see people meeting you suddenly petrified with surprise.

  I had quite a good night having rediscovered the Keatings; and a nice airy balcony: and in the early light could see the caravans getting under way, the mules being groomed down and the packs fixed on, all in the cold wet light with mist overhead and everything drenched in dew. The men wore woollen stockings and a bit of leather or fur gathered round their feet by way of shoes. I believe these people used to be very wild and a man who is now political officer in Fars was kept a year or so as a prisoner tied to a tree: at least that is what Captain Holt told me, and said I should get to know him as he is as mad as me. Anyway they seem friendly enough now.

  24 May 1930

  I am waiting to know whether or no a motor is going to take me to Resht or not this evening. I had been hearing so long of Tunakabun as the centre of all things here, and was thinking of it as a kind of metropolis where civilisation, films and chairs were flourishing. What it is, is a peaceful little village with a market twice a week where people from Resht spread awnings and all sorts of bright cottons, buttons, beads, elastic, and such European oddments for the rice growers round to buy. It would be a charming spot with its green gardens and the row of wooded slopes rising to snow behind, if it were not a perfect deathtrap for malaria; I dose myself with quinine which may explain why I feel so peculiar – but I shall be glad to get away to a drier country.

  I felt rather depressed: having come to the end of my objective, and also having left the hills. The hill people are all gentlefolk in their way; one likes to be with them; on the plains, if you go into the same sort of house, you find just peasants, and it isn’t good enough.

  Resht

  26 May 1930

  I had just got so far when a motor car finally turned up. Two in fact; one which had been ordered from Shahzavar came along, but with the intention of taking me only half-way and then stopping; so we took the other one, which had a charming chauffeur like a Mujik with an enormous beard. The first car wanted to be paid for coming so far, but even the easy benevolence of the Doctor came to the conclusion that a car which comes to take you to a place where you haven’t asked to go, needn’t be paid. To make all sure we appealed to a village Elder with a red hennaed beard: and the verdict being in favour, started off without more ado. Most affectionate farewells. I felt I was leaving quite a familiar place: having sat under the orange trees, drinking tea in the Emir’s garden: and spent the morning with a little procession of Bahai notables behind me, visiting the bazaar (and buying a silk bedcover which I regret, for the sum would have just prevented me from being impecunious now): and having visited the school, which is a lonely old dilapidation in a garden with a tank and big trees where the little boys read out short moral stories in high sing-song voices. It was good to make for the coast and see the Caspian, grey in the grey evening, stretching away shallow and flat. The mountains were hidden, and it was drizzling now and then, but it is a magnificent coast. We got to a place called Ab-i-Garm, where some pools of steaming water spring up by the roadside and you can see the skinny Persians bathing while a little circle of chaikhanas and cars and crowd make it into a sort of fair: there was even a conjurer with his wares spread on the floor making the same jokes in Persian which his colleagues make in their European languages. I lost my people, who disappeared to drink tea, and when at last they reappeared it was with a fat blond chauffeur and a really nice car.

  It was now about seven o’clock, and I had discovered that it would be another four hours at least to Resht, and was not too pleased when it turned out that the fat chauffeur was taking me alone through the Caspian jungle. It did seem very lonely: the forest here reaches almost to the water’s edge; the sea lay very quiet and dull with a last light in it; and this road drifted alone through sand or gravel, with not a soul on it. Luckily the chauffeur was a really good man and not fond of talking: his only remark was as we came to a particularly shadowy bit under th
e trees, that there used to be a lot of robbers here. We met a woodcutter or two trudging home: a horseman now and then: and about one car an hour coming the opposite way. Here and there were clearings for rice fields. We punctured conveniently in one of these clearings – and the chauffeur turned out really capable and put it right quickly. After that I saw no more of the country; we went through like a dream, and it was extraordinarily like England – the green hedges, and trees, and thatched roofs. Only the little towns with their bazaars still busy looked foreign enough – shoemakers and tailors stitching away at ten o’clock at night round a big lantern, and the tea-shops handing round their little glasses. About 10.30 we waded up to the footboards through the first branch of the Safid Rud which I had crossed a week before near Chala; when we got across, a man in a little hut sounded a gong, and by the time we reached the second branch the ferry was waiting and a posse of men ready to get us across. It was so like a dream. I could not help wondering all the time how I came to be there on the edge of the Caspian in the middle of the night. A little after eleven I got here and asked for the Grand Hotel, an awful little place, with nothing clean but its noticeboard. I was too exhausted to care much, but refreshed next day.

  Dear love to you

  Freya

  EDS. C. AND L. MOOREHEAD, THE LETTERS OF FREYA STARK (1974–82)

  A BUDDHIST NUN RETURNS TO INDIA

  A Buddhist nun, travelling around India in 1990, here describes her reactions to the country in this letter to friends.

  To you all,

  19.11.90 6.30 a.m.

  Arrive in New Delhi Airport and after some bewilderment, finally fix up a taxi – direction Karmarpa Institute. The driver has a little picture of the Hindu god Hanuman by the wheel. I figure we’ll be alright, as he’s one of my favourite Hindu deities. Driving through the streets – Amazement. I’d forgotten how mind-blowing India is. We pass a large dead cow on its back, legs extended, it’s mouth wide open as if the spirit had been knocked from its throat. It was in the middle of the main dual carriageway into Delhi. No one seemed bothered about it.