by Cecil Beaton
I also enjoyed the company of pale, faded, romantic-looking Mrs Denham White, the sensitive wife of the doctor. She talked of the compensations of growing old: of watching others, and remembering rather than enduring and of being no longer wracked.
When his guests had left, John told me the only hope for me as a photographer after the war was to take pictures of the spirit of construction — the building-up of the new world. ‘The war has been lucky for you — you dabble in dégringolade, your idiom includes the representation of broken tanks and ruined cities. But in future you must feel for the people, not for the individual. If you have photographed one society person you’ve photographed the lot, but have you never seen the eyes of the people? Crowds are what must be photographed.’ In a cloud of mosquitoes he told me that for a person with my temperament I had rare powers of application: I had made my mark by using my feminine talents in an unfeminine way by doggedly applying myself. I was no genius, and my talents in another would have amounted to little, but my instinct and powers of adaptation were at the same time a weakness and strength.
My turn came to give advice. I told John that he should get another job if he was as miserable as he said he was among the flesh-pots of Calcutta. I told him that he should not mark time in an uncongenial atmosphere. He replied that life was hard; he had once been hungry, he still needed cash but, nevertheless, this environment was killing him; he suffered from appalling nightmares and was on a fair way to a nervous breakdown. Certainly his hands trembled like aspen, and his face resembled the underneath of something.
One of the ADC’s has a great power of mimicry and a keen sense of the ludicrous and a talent for discovering secrets. Much of his private information, which he cannot resist passing on, is unsuitable for commitment to paper, but today he sent me a note informing me ‘HE’s stool was not so good this morning.’ He told me, with mutual amusement, that on the return to the car from the picnic tea at Tuklabad Lady Wavell said to one of the ADC’s as she passed through a scrum of beggars: ‘Distribute the largess.’
Jaminy Roy, sitting in his studio wrapped in immaculate white muslin, looks like a long baked potato, nestling in a napkin; with many bowls of different colours on the floor in front of him, he paints as if he were making decorations on pottery. Once an academic portraitist, Jammy Roy became dissatisfied with the oily fulsome likenesses of rich people that he was able to produce with facility and technical skill, so retired to a small village. Here he studied Matisse and other modern painters, made his own water colours and started to paint in a brilliant and vital manner. After many years of poverty and hardship he is now considered India’s best modern painter.
PARLIAMENT PROROGUED
The Governor has prorogued Parliament. There have been such disorderly scenes in the Legislative Assembly that it has been decided to curtail them. I went to hear the final flurry.
An Alice in Wonderland mad-house presented itself. Everyone at the same moment seemed to be shouting and beating the air. One man, with a voice like a siren, moaned above the others, demanding an opportunity to speak without interruptions. I noticed later that when others were taking the stand he was the first to heckle. The Speaker, like a Grandville drawing of an insect, had a hard time trying to keep some semblance of order. He cried into a microphone, banging with his mallet to no avail. A dignified man, in a tarboosh, kept shouting, ‘Mr Speaker, may I go on? Oh, they won’t listen!’ he wailed. ‘They don’t want to hear truth and correct information — please Mr Speaker, oh please prevent us from becoming a laughing stock.’
A fat old man in a dhoti rose to his sandals and shouted in his metallic voice: ‘This is most vexatious for the honourable minister!’ Others took up the cry, ‘Vexatious, most vexatious!’ Finally the minister, who was supposedly so vexed, rose and remarked deprecatingly, ‘I can assure you it is not vexatious. I am not easily vexed.’
The Speaker gave hopeless rulings. The document from Government House proroguing the Assembly was greeted with shouts of ‘Ignorrit — ignorrrit’. The bedlam of noise and confusion rose to a crescendo, to be ended abruptly by the Speaker adjourning the house for fifteen minutes of prayer.
I discovered from the finance department that I can draw in arrears 150 pounds allowance. I feel like Croesus, having been poor for the last weeks and carefully eking out my last rupees.
A beautiful ‘authorized’ beggar firmly refused to be photographed, but he did so with extraordinary dignity and amusement. ‘Nothing doing,’ his head wagglings indicated, and he flicked his hands in a feminine way.
At lunch a Canadian brigadier, hearing that I was about to go to China, expounded on the seamy side of Chungking: how the Chinese continue to trade with the enemy, with supplies coming in non-stop from Shanghai. He expatiated on the appalling prices we have to pay (7,000 pounds for an old car on the black market) and the smells and dirt. Immediately after lunch, Mrs Casey, on the spur of the moment, decided to visit Bengal Home Industries. David Clowes, one of the ADC’s, and very punctilious about seeing that the new Governor and his wife do the social part of the job without a hitch, blew off steam. ‘Things must be laid on properly in this house; she’s got to have a flag on the car, and an outrider, and an OC.’ In spite of his bellowing, Mrs Casey did what she wished, and together we all went to buy things for the house. On her return, Peel, the military secretary, gave Mrs Casey a few tips about how to succeed in Calcutta. ‘You should encourage music: they would like it if you go to the concerts, and racing plays a large part in the life of the community. And HE should talk to some of the businessmen at the clubs here: they’re very powerful, and they give a lot to the war.’
I suddenly felt rather ill and tired, with a strange tightness around the pelvis. I tried to listen with one ear to this amusing lesson while at the same time trying to follow John Erwin on Indian art.
I went up to my bedroom and have remained there now for a week, suffering from a severe attack of dengue fever.
My body aches in the most unexpected places — on the shoulders, in the small of the back and behind the knees. I feel most uncomfortable and try to find ways of being flatter and flatter. I have no appetite and eat because I’m told to. While trying to dispose of the evening meal Dickie Herbert comes in. He has recently suffered a nervous breakdown, and the doctor says his liver is in such a condition that he might die if he does not stop drinking.
Mrs C. says rather refreshingly that she is turning the house into a hospital. Her husband has now taken to bed with a temperature raging; she is amused to find mine had gone up to 102 degrees. Later this evening, as I lie in a pool of sweat, David Clowes, from behind the mosquito-net curtains, tells me the SEAC people are fed up with me: they don’t see why the hell I should have preferential treatment over other journalists out here. He says it’s bad luck on the House stenographer that I have given so much extra work by dictating articles to him. And so he continues until we have quite a row.
I am unable to sleep in spite of an opiate as my limbs are braced with pain. My pyjamas, soused with sweat, make the effort of turning over on the other side an unpleasant experience. This is my darkest hour. A filthy owl or bat breathes stertorously just outside my window, and I find the night a long agony.
Mrs Priestley, the Scotch housekeeper, comes in to commiserate. Her attitude to India is wonderfully typical. In a toneless, sad voice she drones, ‘I don’t like Calcutta. There’s nothing to see here except their heathen temples and I wouldn’t go near them. You feel there’s evil abounding from them, because their religion is different, and they sacrifice wretched animals and do all sorts of things. No, there’s nowhere to go in Calcutta. Why, if you walk into those back streets there’s nothing but Indians — Indians — Indians — not a European to be seen anywhere. Yet the place must have colour or something, because when I went back home to Dumfries I was disappointed! You see, you never see a poor European in India, do you?’
Sunday
Awoke to feel seriously limp. No doubt about it —
I am an invalid and have no fight left even to think of work.
Throughout the day I have quite a number of visitors: Mrs Priestley, the housekeeper, with her toneless, tragic voice, comes in to know if I’d like another eiderdown; the insincere Mr Bibbety, the under-controller of the House who, I’m sure, would like to receive a rake-off on my illness, salaams from the waist, purses his blue lips, and says that however high the thermometer shows, one’s temperature is normal for Calcutta. Various ADC’s come in occasionally; David is worried that Mrs C. doesn’t do this or that, and afraid the prestige of Government House is going to be let down with a bang. John Erwin, very busy, starts on an intellectual talk. But his philosophizing is often interrupted. The Indian doctor smiles tragically and does not mind long silences. My bearer walks around silently, not understanding a word of English — nor I of Urdu — but he barks ‘Wurrywell’ and does just what I don’t want.
Jimmy and Ed, two delightful dissolute Americans with biscuit complexions and knife-grinding voices, come in to inform me about the brothels of Calcutta. A native girl charges four annas; there are 1,500 girls in the biggest brothel (situated quite near this House). Fifteen per cent of the population have VD. The grand brothel for officers is run by Madame Carmen, a Polish Jewess with red hair, in the Karaya Road. She takes half the fees. One girl complained she had had a bad month (because of flu had been away for ten days); nevertheless she had earned 8,000 rupees, although her average was 22,000 a month. Her intentions are to save enough so that after the war she can retire and get respectably married.
Disaster once more as I woke to find my leg, which had at last recovered from last week’s inoculations against plague, has now become inflamed and throbbed so painfully that I could not put it to the ground. Dr Mukergee was sent for, and he seemed alarmed when he took my temperature. Patting the heated portion of my thigh, he worked me up into a condition of alarm and despondency, as a knife-like pain increased and a raging fever took control. He would get Dr Denham White’s advice. Meanwhile he suggested my going into a nursing home. I had visions of an amputation. Later, Denham White calmed us both by smiling, ‘Oh, this is serum reaction. Nothing serious. Calcium will counteract that.’ He gave me pastilles, but it was some time before the fires in my leg abated. My trip to China has had to be postponed.
I shall now be leaving on the day my late lamented brother Reggie was born — April 3rd. How long ago it seems since that night of his death, and yet how vivid still is his memory! One of the first pilots of the Flying Corps, he would have been in his element flying in this war. He would almost certainly have done great things.
Part XI: China, 1944
FLIGHT OVER THE HUMP
Saturday, April 8th
At Dum Dum Airport, a mere clearing among the palm-trees, a Douglas DC3 waited to take an RAF pilot, going to Kunming to fly back a Liberator tomorrow, a handful of Chinese passengers and myself on that famously dangerous journey over the ‘Hump’. (These pilots are the highest paid of all with a salary of 200 dollars a month.)
To begin with, we flew low and bumped so violently and continually that all the Chinese were extremely sick. They made horrible noises into paper bags, and the smell was revolting. Then we climbed very high — mountains covered with icing sugar appeared on the right, their peaks soaring much higher than we were flying. The Gothic pinnacles were beautiful, but impossible to map-read and pilots get lost or caught in downward draughts. There are many Japanese fighters in the offing.
The second pilot came along with oxygen tubes which we were to share in turns. I found it a relief to breathe deeply into these masks, to fill my lungs with the warm, rather oniony, air. By degrees, the aircraft was getting very cold. I put on a scarf — I must reserve my overcoat for tonight’s ordeal.
The late afternoon sun turned the mountain peaks pink. At the height of 19,000 feet I felt dizzy and uncomfortable — my head rolled from side to side. The light went out of the day: evening became night. We must now be flying lower for oxygen was needed no more. A few sparse twinkling lights below in irregular design — Kunming. We seemed to stop moving in the air, so slowly did the engines purr. The lights below slowly passed us by. We landed. The Chinese families all smiling. Here more Chinese came aboard for the last trip to Chungking. Babies, small children, women with no luggage but what they possessed wrapped up in a cloth or sack — poor, but smiling — in party spirits — flashes of white teeth — screwed-up eyes — guttural expectoration.
With what relief was I told by the pilot that the most dangerous part of the trip was now over. But had I seen the Japanese fighter? Fortunately, he had not bothered to come after us.
We took off again. My head ached intolerably. I finished the bromide drink supplied by Dr Mukergee: time ceased to exist.
Again we were motionless in the air. Twinkling lights in greater numbers this time — rivers reflecting lights — high mountains also covered with lights. We circled several times then eventually came down between two mountains, almost skimming a river. Brump — brrrump on terra firma.
A full moon — a colder night than any we have known in India. A great deal of throat clearing from the Chinese — perhaps their way of showing relief from fear?
CHUNGKING
Saturday, April 9th, Chungking
Dazed with drugs and exhaustion I looked about me in the darkness of the Chungking night for someone to tell me where to go from here. Eventually, among the orientals, a pink-moonface came forward. ‘General Grimsdale[36] thought you would be more comfortable staying at the Embassy than at his HQ, and Sir Horace and Lady Seymour are expecting you.’ What benediction! ‘Can you walk up 400 steps,’ pink-moonface asked, ‘or would you prefer to go in a chair?’ I used my sore, stiff leg as an excuse to get into a light bamboo sedan, and be carried up a mountainside. Half-way, two Englishmen were heard approaching: one asked my name. Yes, it was Gordon Grimsdale come to greet me. Perhaps because of the bromides I reacted strangely unenthusiastically to his welcome, for I was really grateful that these two should have descended all these steps only to mount them again, on my behalf.
The full moon shone in an empty sky, and was reflected in a widely-curving river bordered by mountains. A few twinkling lights among black trees created an effect of mystery. Perhaps it was also my rather dazed condition that made everything seem slightly dreamlike and unreal. However, I was able to register the fact that Grimsdale informed me of a tour we are to make together to the front lines. We leave on Wednesday for ten or twelve weeks on a tour of British military missions. This is a piece of luck. We may be allowed within a few miles of the forward areas, though there is no possibility of visiting the Communist areas at Yenan or Shansi.
A small Chinese soldier with a rifle saluted. He was the sentry guarding a dwarf villa. We had arrived, by car, at the top of a mountain. This was the British Embassy.
A minute hall gave on to a tall, octagonal sitting-room. The Ambassador, a lanky, over-grown schoolboy with witty eyes and a tired, but benevolent, smile on his long, donkey face, wore grey flannels. He presented his wife. She had humorous eyes, dog-biscuit complexion, and a deep, dry voice. Surprisingly, she introduced me to an owl-like Brooks Atkinson, the New York Times drama critic. We sat talking, maybe for an hour, in a casual atmosphere about inflation, the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang. ‘We’re just picnicking here: we get, through the king’s messenger, per month one bottle of whisky, a pound of butter, and a pot of marmalade, but everything is prohibitive here — especially as the black market is in a panic that it may be officially closed down.’
In this stronghold against the Japs, Chungking, the makeshift capital of China, is thriving as never before. Even the coolies are rich, earning 3,000 dollars a month: to ferry a grand piano across the river would cost 40,000 dollars. Chungking, with its rich, red earth, yields two crops a year and is self-supporting, but aid is being flown over the ‘Hump’ to China at the rate of one plane every two and a half minutes.
Baffling were the price
s they quoted: the official rate is eighty dollars to the pound, but on the black market the pound is worth 1,200 dollars. A candle costs twenty shillings, a pound of boiled sweets thirty shillings; or, in dollars, pork costs seventy dollars a pound, a bottle of ink 200 and a gallon of petrol 900 dollars.
Of Madame Chiang it was said that her reputation is much greater outside her own country. The local people are so little conscious of her that were she to go out to a cinema, or on the streets, she would not be recognized. It seems that she was much put out by being so closely guarded while in America for she had been unable to go out and indulge herself in serious shopping. However one may dislike the woman, one must feel sorry for her, suffering as she does from time to time from a scourge of boils, due to her blood being too thick.
Sunday, April 10th
By degrees, the heavy mist lifted and I could see that the place where I had spent the night was a small villa, built with centre dome and four little apses, its slate roof flowering with yellow weeds. From this vantage point a wonderful panorama stretched below: on one side the Yangtze river, and on the other the Kialing. The boats with dark-brown butterfly sails reminded me of cockleshells.
From lower down the mountainside one could watch, at the junction of the two rivers, the tremendous life on their banks. On the steep slopes leading up to the town there is no transport: everything must be carried by primitive labour. The weights that are borne are appalling — monoliths! Both men and women wear almost permanently an agonized expression of effort: head thrust sideways, an extraordinary wriggle of the body, a swelling muscle bulging from under the yoke holding their burden.
