Mother's Chronicles - Book Four

19

Holiday Walks

What did the boys do during school holidays? From Manmohan's letters¹ to his poet friend, Laurence Binyon, we gather that at least during the long summer breaks they went to some hill or seaside resort. Getting away from London must have been a relief.

The first letter, dated August 10, 1886, Tuesday, is from Keswick (c/o Miss Scott, Ambleside Road) where the brothers were holidaying that summer. The two friends were still students at St. Paul's.

"I am sorry you cannot come to the Lake District —but I quite understand your difficulties in the way of expense and luggage, for we have been feeling the same. And Derbyshire, I can tell you from my own experience, is one of the loveliest counties in England if you only go to the right part. I stayed one whole Summer at Mallock Bank, and from there had a splendid walking tour —My brother, I, and another gentleman

1. Collected Poems of Manmohan Ghose,

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A view of the Lake District early this century

took the train to Monsel Dale and walked from there into Castleton Valley, slept at a very comfortable inn there, and next morning walked over Kinder Scout and into Hayfield and Chapel-on-the-Frith from where we took the train back. I advise you and your brother to take that walking tour. . . . My brothers are all right and enjoying themselves."

The next letter is also from Keswick, dated "Friday, Aug. 13^th. . . . We are only thinking of staying here till next

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Tuesday and then going off to the seaside to St. Bees, where we went last year; for we have had great trouble in getting lodgings in Keswick.

"We have been having very rainy and unsettled weather of late ... a little while ago I and my younger brother went together to Thirlmere, with Helvellyn looming up on one side all the way, but we did not see the lake which is a very pretty one —for, being a bleak and misty day it came on to rain when we were a mile from it and we had to turn back."

There Manmohan, then in his late teens, would wander about, muse, or compose poetry if he so felt inclined. Sri Aurobindo remembered these walks. "Manmohan used to have at times poetic illness," he said with a reminiscent smile. "Once we were walking through Cumberland. We found that he had fallen half a mile behind, walking at a leisurely pace and moaning out poetry in a deep tone. There was a dangerous place in front, so we shouted to him to come back quick. But he took no heed, went on muttering the lines and came to us with his usual leisurely steps."

Mano's third letter from Keswick is dated "Monday, August 23. On Friday we went all three of us with a gentleman to Thirlmere —up to the middle of it along the western side which is wooded with firs. Thirlmere is a lovely lake, and wonderfully placid and calm, lying between Helvellyn on the east and a high range of fells on the west, and its banks all round the brink are beautifully wooded, the trees going some distance up the hill sides. We crossed the lake in the middle by the Bridges, and came back by the beautiful Vale of St. John

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and a path round Naddle Fell, getting home at 6 P.M. and eating a tremendous tea (the four of us getting through two considerable loaves).

"On Saturday we went to Watendlath, which is certainly the loveliest place I have yet seen in the Lake District. It was a very fine day, and the whole party of us started at 9:30. We had two ladies, and of course not much walking could be done. They went with my eldest brother for an escort by coach through Borrowdale to Rosthwaite, and then walked over the fell towards Watendlath. My younger brother, myself, and the same gentleman walked along Lake Derwentwater and then up the Barrow woods, a steep hill-climb into Watendlath. The scenery in these woods is quite Alpine (with only the absence of snow) being a sheer rock at one place, densely wooded, from top to bottom rising one thousand feet from the Borrowdale Valley —while the hills above the woods are covered with the most lovely heather bloom .... We all met at a hill above Watendlath, had tea at a farm-house, and returned very leisurely by the Barrow Woods, reaching home at 10 P. M. . . .

Monday turned out to be a fine day and they went for a long walk to the Sty Head Pass. "We went on a most transparently clear day, with 'a live translucent bath of air' —and could see all along the Cumberland coast out to the sea."

He ended his letter with the news: "We are not going to stay at Keswick much longer, most likely till the end of this week. We shall be all broken up —My eldest brother will go to London to coach for an examination and we two to some place on the coast—most likely not to St. Bees."

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Next year, when Binyon went to the Lake District for his summer vacations, Mano, after suggesting a particular walk, added, "You should do it all by daylight; for we, who came back by the Sticks Pass and went to Ullswater by the shoulder of Helvellyn, started too late and were caught by the darkness in the Pass, and came down by striking matches to find the path and the sticks set up to guide the quarrymen in the snow —at the risk of breaking our necks every step."

Haven't we had some charming walks and seen the enchanting sceneries that Sri Aurobindo saw more than a century ago? He was always a great walker, was Sri Aurobindo.

Another year, another place. This time A. A., B. B. and M. M. were in London, in the same lodgings that old Ma Drewett had taken. The next three letters to L. Binyon are from 49, St. Stephen's Avenue, Uxbridge Road.

"April 15. It is rather wretched here in the holidays, more so than in school-time, for there is no one to speak to. ... I never knew till lately that my father was a Buddhist, nor indeed that he had any religion; strange to say he is; his great interest in science seems to have led him to it partly. He believes that all the forces of nature and human souls will merge into God, which seems to me a very strange theory. This is the doctrine of Nirvana." Hmm . . .

The next letter is dated "Wed. April 20^th, 1887." Mano tells Laurence, "You are the only one who gives me any encouragement to write [poems] . . . My brothers are quite apathetic about them." Were they? For in another letter he says, "My brother once remarked to me that he thought I imitated Mathew

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Arnold in many of my poems." The final examinations were looming ahead. "But I heartily long for those days, when I shall leave this place and go to Oxford. May they soon come! But I don't think I shall get a scholarship so soon as you will." He was wrong, for he won an open scholarship that very year at Christ Church College, Oxford; while his friend, Laurence Binyon, went up to Trinity College, Oxford, only the next year, in 1888.

Months went by, it was July, M. M. Ghose was now an ex-Pauline, while his younger brother A. A. Ghose was in Class M. VIII and two more years to go before he too would complete his studies at St. Paul's School. But the hols were here! Mano's letter is again from St. Stephen's Avenue, and dated July 1.

"Thank you very much for your note and the addresses you recommend. Since you say Littlehampton is so expensive (with bad drains too) we have adopted your suggestion of St. .Leonard's. I believe my brother has already written; but we shall not be able to leave London till the end of next week at the earliest.... I never knew 'Pan' could appreciate your poetry so well. In his character of me this time —he congratulates me for my scholarship and says I have made rapid progress — a strange inversion of my last character —which was 'slow but steady progress.' I never told you about the Farewell-supper at Cookson's. The fare was gorgeous and regal. . . . There were several drinking songs sung—some rather immoral I thought, and Cookson asked me very earnestly to give them an Indian song. I was on the point of reciting the opening lines of a Sanskrit Epic —but I thought better of it. The whole thing went off very well —and Cookson the last thing bade me farewell

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and wished me success at the University.

"My position, by the way, is very hazy just now: I do not know whether after all I shall be able to retain my scholarship, because my father is in some financial straits, and if he cannot help me £ 80 will not be enough to keep me at Oxford — the most expensive place on the face of the earth." He needed not "much under £ 200 a year" to stay on at Oxford.

"I am going to Oxford next week to find out if I cannot help myself in any way, or find help." Mano tried to get a job at the British Museum, but as they needed a man strong in Sanskrit, he was turned down.

His letter dated July 28 gives some further news about himself. "You may be sure I shall try all I can to get to Oxford. But I am in a rather strange position. My father wants me to go out to India, and slave as a barrister, and become a great man like himself. He is just now in difficulties and if he finds he cannot help me at the University he may consent to my staying in England, and trying for some Civil Service appointment just to earn some money. ..."

As St. Leonard's was full, the brothers wrote to another address in Hastings. "We have got the answer from Hastings and, terms being moderate, we have decided to go. My brothers most likely will go on Monday, but I am going to Oxford on that day, and shall not be able to get to Hastings till Tuesday. The place is 2, Plynlimmon Terrace."

His letter ends with a reference to the 'Gresidale walk' taken by Binyon. "It is one of the places I did not go to; but my brothers went and they at once remembered, when I told

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them of the wrong way up which you describe; only they came down that way instead of going up."

Another letter from Hastings, Sussex, 1887, is full of news. "I was going to write to you at once, when your letter came (also Swinburne's Byron, for which many thanks). I have just had a letter from my father, and I wanted to tell you the joyful news that he has willingly consented to my staying in England, and working at literature since it is so in my line. He also says that he would like me to go to Oxford, but his means are not sufficient to keep me there long."

He continues. "You ask me to send you anything I have written. I have written a pretty long lyric (very bad) . . . and another poem —and also a terribly ethical sonnet which was specially written for the moral purpose of putting into a school magazine —I was asked to write something for the 'Ulula', the Manchester Grammar School Magazine."

The heat of the previous days was gone. "This morning there was a terrific thunderstorm. The thunder seemed to crack, crash, burst, and momentarily split the sky, and shook the house like a leaf amid a storm of groaning rainy and hurrying wind."

In his last letter from Sussex, Manmohan says, "We are going to stay at Hastings a little more than a week from today. I should like to go home earlier but money has to come from my father, before we can pay our rent here. So we stay a little longer. . . . We are going back next Tuesday to London."

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