My Savitri work with the Mother

04 July 1959

Now it was July—the month of rich blossoms. The Mother sent me a card dated 4th July 1959, which depicted a painted pigeon. She inscribed:

My dear little child Huta,

I have received all your nice letters and am glad that your studies are going on well. I was waiting for the arrival of your brother to tell you that I had got the things you sent me—but he has not yet come.

My love and blessings are always with you.

Doris took me to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Victoria and Albert Museum is a beautiful building in the Renaissance style which was first built in 1857. The present building was opened in 1909 by King Edward VII. It is the national museum of industrial art, illustrating the crafts of all nations at various periods—all kinds of metal work from gold to steel, pottery and glass, Gothic tapestry, wood-carving and antique furniture, drawings, paintings, miniatures of the Tudor age. I was lost in all this magnificent display of curios.

I liked the terracotta virgin with the laughing child and a Kuan-yin figure in painted and gilded wood which was Chinese, a lady holding a minor which was an earthenware Chinese figure, the Virgin of Sorrows in carved and painted wood, the Angel of the Annunciation and quite a number of other paintings by the Great Masters and their students. Raphael's cartoons were engaging. The oil painting of J.M.W. Turner depicting Venice was very attractive. My memory winged back to my trip to Venice in 1952. A gondola glided down the Grand Canal, a broad ribbon of silver before me, mirroring the blue sky. Night with the million stars, the moonlight and the music of the gondolier. It was a memorable experience. The beauty of Venetian glassware and the grandeur of the colossal Cathedral of St. Mark's and the Doge's Palace are still vivid in my mind. I also recollected how often the Mother used to send me reproductions of Turner's paintings in which he had fused glorious colours on canvas and lavished his wondrous, lively imagination.