One of the things I am most proud of doing was imploring my sainted mother to write her life story, and also that I asked it in time, before age and bewilderment took their toll. Her writings start in 1993, twelve years before her death at the age of 85.
This is her account, as transcribed by my sister Juliana (thanks Jules), and this tract is a biography of her mother, Norah Kearns, of Cloonagh, Co Sligo. It also explains my compulsion to visit my mother's birthplace and early home, and my account of that wonderful experience will follow this post.
NORAH PARSONS (NEE KEARNS)
My first aim is to write my mother’s life story. In attempting that is, for me, quite a daunting task is to ask WHY I want to write it. The basic answer is that I feel in time to come succeeding generations of the family may be curious to know what their ancestors were like. I myself have a great curiosity in this direction and yearn to know something of those who have gone before. Now it is too late! I regret so woefully that I never questioned my father on details of his life, not did I hear from my mother anything of life in Sligo in her childhood.
As people age it seems there is a general desire to know more of the past, whereas in youth all that seemed ‘old hat’ and totally irrelevant.
So, in the belief that members of the family in the future really WILL be interested in the 20th century, I endeavour to write what I know of my mother’s life:-
She was born in Cloonagh, Co. Sligo, in June 1886. The actual day is not known, as she never ‘kept’ her birthday after the age of 21! But is was presumed to be June 22nd. This has been adopted by Tiggy (Catherine) Martin born in New South Wales on that day one hundred years later – June 1986.
Christened Norah Gabrielle Kearns, she was one of the younger girls and one son, Michael, born to Catherine and Thomas Kearns, who were tenant farmers at Cloonagh.
A most interesting informative description of life at the farmstead has been written by Ann Keating, daughter of Linda Kearns, the sister of Norah, who was next to her in age and her closest companion. This account is attached to mine, and it is important that it should be read along with this. From this account it will be seen that day to day life was certainly HARD. Water had to be collected daily from the well and peat and firewood brought in to keep the fire going. They baked their bread and their simple but wholesome food consisted of home-grown vegetables and occasionally meat. The cow has to be milked twice daily; butter and cheese had to be made - an unending round of essential tasks made up the daily toil.
All this sounds idyllic, when considered from the modern standpoint of ‘off-the-shelf’ bread, milk and baked beans but what is blurred out is the misery of fingers blue with cold and toes deadened near to frost-bite and the sheer fatigue of carting heavy pails of water up the steep hillside – not very glamorous in reality! Oil lamps that smelt and had to be re-filled – the wicks constantly trimmed – all this is well described by Ann Keating.
I never recall my mother speaking of her home, her family or her childhood, except for one remark about ‘riding bare-back across the fields’ – and when I visited Cloonagh with Alexandra in July 1996 I could well imagine the scene.
Ann’s story tells of the girls walking 5 miles to school and 5 miles back daily – to me an incredible feat- and that in winter as well as summer and on dirt roads, sharp and stony, very different from the smooth tarmac of today. How it came about that Linda and Norah should have been singled out to avail of a spell in a convent in Belgium will always remain a mystery. They must have been seen as intelligent, eager and courageous, who would turn the opportunity to good account, and so the pair set out to spend some months at the Belgian convent.
This must have been a complete eye-opener to them! A glimpse of how the rest of the world lived and it definitely opened up inspiring vistas for them. They would never be able to settle back to a simple life on the farm after that. So they both went to Dublin to train for a nursing career. Linda spent her life working to improve the status of the nursing profession in Ireland, while Norah travelled to India to a very different life. Incidentally Linda was finally rewarded with the Red Cross Medal for Work for Humanity, which was presented to her on her deathbed - a very rare and unique honour.
What of Norah’s appearance? Sadly there are few clear photographs of her, but she was about 5ft 6 in height and of medium build with mid-brown hair with chestnut lights in it – what my father said of her. Here eyes were very large and dark brown, very expressive. Mary has inherited this as well as her amusing way of telling a tale as a very good raconteur, acquired by her Irish descent, no doubt. She gained a very distinguished look when her hair turned show-white and silver in her forties. She stood out with a real air of nobility in her bearing. With a laugh she was always ready to see the funny side which would at once draw the tension out of any situation or crisis. She always complained her face was too big and her complexion sallow, but any shortcomings in her facial proportions (which I, of course, never saw) were outshone by her beautiful smile. To me she was just ‘Mummy’ and perfect because of it.
History leaves a gap in Norah’s life between Belgium and the outbreak of WWI. It is known she did training as a nurse, at the Rotunda hospital in Dublin, I believe, but there must have been several years between qualifying and the start of the Great War, when she would have been aged 28. There is no way of discovering how she spent those years, as she never spoke of it to me. Presumably she did work as a nurse.
However, when war broke out she crossed the Irish Sea for the second time, with three friends (one of whom was Kitty O’Shea, whom we afterwards met) to travel to the Shorncliff Military hospital in Folkestone. There they joined the Q.A.R.N. service (the Q.A’s) She never told us what they actually did there, presumably they nursed casualties evacuated from France, but she did say that whenever volunteers where called for, the four of them put down their names.
So by 1916 they found themselves on a hospital ship heading for the East. There is a wonderful picture of the four nurses each riding a camel in front of the pyramids of Egypt, Norah being the one wearing a veil over her hat. From Egypt the hospital ship went to the Turkish campaign in Mesopotamia (now called Iraq) where it plied up and down the Tigris.
Again very few details have come down to us about her experiences there, except for the incident of the Arab woman and her baby, which she used to tell as a ghost story, and the other an account of the soldiers who were lost in the desert and found their way back to camp, only to die through being overfed on their first return. These tales I have related elsewhere…she also spoke of their sleeping quarters being in the hold of the ship and rats running over them at night!
What we were told was that Norah contracted sand-fly fever and to recuperate afterwards she was evacuated to Coonoor in the Nilgiri Hills, South India! Whether it was that Mesopotamia was very, very hot at the time and a hill station in S. India was the nearest to a temperate climate that was reachable, one can only surmise. However somehow Norah found herself in the beautiful Nilgiri Hills, only about 200 miles from Coorg, where she was destined to spend the rest of her life. The beauty of the scenery and the cool and the greenness must have been a dramatic contrast to the sluggish heat of the Tigris.
However, having recovered her next move was to Bombay to board a ship for England to be demobbed, as it was now 1918 and the Armistice signed. But again volunteers where called for to nurse the Indian sepoys returning from France, who had brought Influenza with them and once again Norah’s name went down on the list. Ireland had no special call for her as her mother had died in 1916. There seemed no real urge to rush back. So she travelled to Lahore to the Indian Military Hospital.
BUT there came at that moment into the officers’ ward a young man with a broken leg, who had come off his motor-cycle while carrying despatches to Army HQ. His name was George PARSONS!
At first in delirium and great pain he was refusing any medication, but eventually took it from ‘the Irish nurse with the soft Irish brogue’ – he told us that many years later! And so a friendship began and quickly blossomed, because by July 2nd 1919 they were married in Bangalore by Father Nauroi, the local French Catholic priest. There survives a wonderful picture of the scene – wonderful for various reasons. The bride and lady guests are wearing ankle-length gowns, surely the latest post-war fashion from England – amazing that it should reach India so soon, and where did Norah get that beautiful lace veil in 1919? A large part of it Dinah later had made by the nuns in Mysore into a christening gown for Alexandra – worn by 22 other members of the family over the years – now quite an heirloom! It was wonderful that they could arrange a formal wedding at such short notice and wonderful that the photo has survived. It seems there must have been a formal reception somewhere but history doesn’t relate where, nor what became of the wedding dress. It could be the one that Norah is wearing 5 years later to be photographed with Alex and myself in the garden at Dalquarren, or maybe it was put to more immediate use by being cut up for underwear or a nightie!
Nothing is known of a honeymoon either, There probably wasn’t one, as Norah would perhaps have been impatient to get on up to the ‘tote’ as soon as possible, curious to see her new home. . (‘tote’ is the Kanarese word for a coffee estate)
How the journey from Bangalore to Coorg was made is not recorded. It is a distance of 150 miles with Mysore City half –way. That half would probably have been by train with an overnight stop. Beyond Mysore there was only one hard road which stretched from one pot-hole to the next, through the occasional group of mud-huts which would make up a village and on through dense jungle with panthers and tigers roaming, though unseen, till finally reaching Fraserpet, the boundary of Coorg. From there yet another 20 miles to be traversed, penetrating even deeper into seeming wilderness and desolation.
Desolation perhaps because of the lack of humankind, but the air vibrated with the calls of the jungle – the …monkeys quarrelling, the parrots, the jungle fowl screeching and the ceaseless yammer of the giri-giri beetles. Did Norah see it as a cacophony of welcome? It is hard to know; with her sense of humour she could have seen the irony of it, but with the constant jolting of the bullock tonga and the hard seats bruising the buttocks and the constant drip of the rain from the awning, the message could easily have seemed the contrary.
Eventually after many uncomfortable hours George announced that the 10th mile, as Chethalli was always called, would be round the next bend. A thrill – but when it actually appeared, what was it? Just one tiny brick building with a big sign ‘Post Office’ and written in Kanarese below, and a ‘toddy shop’ consisting of a ramshackle bamboo shelter with a row of tin mugs dangling from a pole ready to dip in to the huge chatty of toddy fermenting nearby. That was Chethalli in 1919! Not unlike Beltra Post office in Co. Sligo as Norah had last seen it.
There was still a mile to go, this time up a narrow cut track, leading off the road, winding up a steepish hill, with several sharp bends in it. On and on it went for nearly a mile and finally a little dwelling came into view – Dalquarren, there it stood, the outline dimmed by sheets of rain. Whatever Norah had imagined about it, in dreams waking or sleeping, in all her thought that had mounted over the past months, after all her imaginings – there it stood! This was Dalquarren – Journey’s End! - A small mud-built, one room shack with a clumsy door – just a shelter against sun and storm, and to be valued for that, they said!
In they both went, to see a table standing on uneven legs in the middle of the cow-dung floor. Newspapers covered it, thickly spread. They were dated 1914! No-one had entered this room for five and a half years!
They must have been thunder-struck. Poor George, bringing his bride to this! He had accepted the job as manager by post, in correspondence with George Martin, the owner, who had planted up the 80 acres of coffee in the 1890’s and opened up Dalquarren from jungle in about 1898. In the early years the estate had been run by a Writer who controlled the labourers and worked under the direction of George Martin who was living at Abial estate further up the road to Mercara, about 5 miles from Dalquarren.
In the agreement and terms signed by George Parsons, no real mention was made of the bungalow as the residence for the manager. So George inferred there would be some fairly adequate housing in existence.
Imagine then their horror, as they first entered Dalquarren. Poor George must have been flabbergasted and Norah too. Not the poorest shack in Ireland was ever as shabby as this! How could they live here? But times were hard, coffee prices low after the war and jobs hard to come by. George had no experience of anything but coffee so there was no alternative – they must accept life as it was and ‘manage somehow’
That was one of Norah’s sayings ‘Manage somehow’ and undoubtedly it was her humour that saw them through many a difficulty and disappointment, and also her courage, which she shared with George, because he too would need courage to see him through the many ups and downs of his long life.
I do recall Norah speaking of the rat that nibbled her fingers in her sleep that first night at Dalquarren. She thought she was back in the hospital ship! The rat probably did it again and again until gradually life became more civilised! But those first 2 months of the monsoon must have been a testing time – perhaps being newly–weds they were able to survive.
When the torrential monsoon rains eventually ceased by mid-September, life became more tolerable. The sun shone and coffee berries were colouring on the trees. Rooms were being built – a good big bedroom, a dining room, a drawing room with big fire place and large verandah, and office with outside door for George. The original little shack became the dressing room for George and beyond it was a large guest room (or spare room, as it was called). All this was extended over several years, but the fact that a start was made was all important.
The walls were mud – adobe- as it is called in France. This has been a standard method of construction world-wide for centuries, It is extremely durable and of course cheap, but it must never be allowed to get wet, or the wall with disappear! This is overcome by making a very low roof-line which is extended well down over the wall, almost to the ground and the wall painted with white lime. Most of the early planters’ bungalows in India and the Far East were built in this manner. Gradually as things prospered, sun-dried bricks were used and latterly of course manufactured bricks and concrete. This interesting warren of rooms which was Dalquarren, with its tiles roofs and 4 gables was where my two brothers and I were brought up, and which holds vivid memories. The rooms were on different levels, because of being situated on the hillside, and the floors were all of red tile which was quite a modern advance, as most bungalows had rammed cow-dung as a floor, which was then covered with coconut matting – the most uncomfortable, dust-ridden and terrible of materials!
Their first task on arrival was to engage a bearer and a sweeper who was employed to empty the ‘thunder-box’ in the lavatory and to sweep the floors in the house. Those who did this menial work were from the Harijan or sweeper caste – ‘untouchables’ and generally outcast. They had to step aside in the street in case their shadow should fall on a passing high caste person, which would render them unclean and necessitate a lengthy purification ceremony. Many of these untouchables were naturally attracted by the Christian code where all are considered equal in the sight of God, and therefore there were many converts and these people because the source of many of the domestic servants employed by the British.
I think Francis, the old cook George’s parents had employed at Beechlands years before, became their first servant, followed later by Joseph, who was known at first as Chokra (which meant ‘young boy’). Chokra was in fact 8 years old when he first came into the house. He was so small he would run under the dining table when serving and needed to reach the other side quickly! He eventually stayed for 43 years until George sold Dalquarren and returned to England for good in 1953. The sweeper would possibly have been from among the coolie labour employed on the tote. I recall ‘Kali’ years later doing this valuable, essential and unappreciated job.
To Norah all this would have been very strange and soon she became pregnant – another new experience! It was arranged that the birth would take place in Mysore City, being the nearest place for a good hospital and medical care. I duly arrived on June 4th 1920 to be christened Ernestine Mary Kathleen but an Irish nun who was present at the time said ‘Call her Maureen’ – the Irish for Mary and that is what I became and have since remained. Ernestine is my grandmother’s name (George’s mother)
So my life began in the depths of the South West monsoon, with 7 inches of rain beating down on the galvanised tin roof of Dalquarren, sounding as if it was being pelted by sticks and stones. I recall George told me of nights he spent pacing up and down their room with me bawling in his arms, just like many another baby before and since!
Eleven months later, Alex was born on May 10th 1921. Norah told me years after that there was a totally mistaken idea that a nursing mother couldn’t get pregnant! – So much for ‘modern’ nursing knowledge that she had acquired in Ireland!
Alex was born in Bangalore in a rented house. Nurse Philips was engaged for the event. She was a sergeant’s daughter of whom there were many as Bangalore was a military cantonment – a British regiment was permanently stationed there. Nurse Philip became a long-term friend and was there when Patrick was born in ’26 and again for whooping cough in Cannanore in ’28. He was christened George Alexander, which bore important consequences later. Apparently there was to have been another name, but Alexander it was. And apparently this was what decided ‘Uncle’ Alex, George’s uncle, to make George a joint heir of his large estate with his cousin, Cynthia. More of this will be told later.
There is little record of the five years of our early childhood. It was probably a time of consolidating their marriage and enjoying those early years with their children, uninterrupted by too many social engagements. A time for building friendships that lasted over the years. The nearest neighbours were at Paremba Colli (?)), 3 miles away, the Bucknalls, Mullins, Jacksons and Duncans. Possibly they were the happiest times of Norah’s life.
There was a photograph of ‘Oranges and Lemons’ played at a party, probably at Christmas time, with Alex and myself hugging the skirts of one of the ladies who were the arches. And there are the pictures of Norah sitting in a wicker chair in the garden at Dalquarren with the two of us; one with Fonseca, our Eurasian nanny. This must have been about 1925 and from this it appears life was easier financially.
Coffee prices had recovered and were going on to reach a definite peak in about 1930 just before the big slump that followed for a decade. This was the period of great prosperity in planting. There was the Mercara Week, with racing daily on the Downs outside Mercara, when people came from all over South India. It was the important high point of the social calendar. Most stayed with friends but others took rooms at the Mercara and Pollibetta clubs. The week culminated with a Ball where romances that had been growing all week came to fulfilment.
Norah and George were part of the match-making, it seems, their aim being to get Mollie, George’s sister, married off. She and her mother were guests at Dalquarren. They had come from Beechlands, their plantation in Pollibetta and a little tale is told of Norah actually squeezing herself into Alex’s cot, so that her bed would be available for ‘Granny’ and next morning when asked how she had slept, Granny replied ‘I have never been so uncomfortable in my life’! This was typical of the selfish attitude Granny had towards everybody and towards life in general.
Money was short with little surplus for luxuries, but they had each other and obviously thrived in that companionship. One wonders how Norah spent her days. For George there was the running of the tote, which varied with the seasonal work that coffee needed. His day began with ‘check-roll’ at 6.30 when he would walk out to meet the Writer who brought the list of coolies who had turned out for work, and George would give orders for the programme to be carried out that day. He would then return for breakfast with Norah. He would go back later in the morning to survey the work in progress after which tiffin would follow, a twenty-minute ‘shut-eye’ and office work till tea at 4.30. Then an evening stroll with Norah round the tote and back for a chota peg at 6 o’clock with dinner afterwards and bed probably by 10pm.
A simple daily routine, but how did Norah fill her day? They would have had two servants, who would have cared for the every day household chores of cooking and cleaning. Supplies for daily meals would have come from the bazaar in Mercara, Mahthoza Beg or from Spencers who were the big European grocers in South India retailing food and liquor. Rice would have been a staple food, with mutton the main meat dish. Cows being sacred, it was difficult to get beef, unless you could find a Muslim butcher. Often the ‘mutton’ was actually ‘goat’ meat, not sheep. Milk would be watered down till it was nearly blue! Ghee, a kind of butter, was mostly used. Of vegetables, beans were the most plentiful and of course potatoes. Tomatoes too and always onions; ladies’ fingers and brinjal were typically Indian vegetables. There was a wealth of marvellous fruits all the year round, mostly bananas, from tiny delicate finger-sized ‘pooch’ bananas to the giant fat pink-skinned and pink fleshed variety which were a meal in themselves; oranges of many sorts, the most delicious being the Coorg loose-jackets. As the name implies, the skin would drop off at a touch and the flesh within was superb; mangoes in season, guavas, cape gooseberries, tree tomatoes, papayas, melons, loquats and the Coorg plums if you could find them, growing shyly hidden in the bamboo jungle and seldom seen.
With no cooking, cleaning, washing or shopping most of us today would wonder how to fill our time. After breakfast she would meet Joseph, the cook-bearer and give orders for lunch and dinner. She might occasionally supervise the sweeper in the house-cleaning, or make a laundry list for the dhobi who would be seen toiling up the hill once a fortnight with his donkey loaded with the previous bundle of laundered clothing. It was a simple life no doubt. I imagine she spent much time with her two children. Sadly of course I can recall nothing of those early years, nor of her presence.
They were very isolated, with their nearest (white) neighbours three miles away, and Mercara, the nearest town, seven miles further. There was no transport so that many weeks must have gone by without venturing off the tote. Later they did acquire a motor-bike and sidecar, but I have no idea which year this was. After that came a Chevrolet, their first car, which must have been a revelation to them, opening up greats vistas of communication.
But for those first five years they had only each other for companionship and mental stimulation. It is difficult for us today to picture such isolation, constantly bombarded as we are by happenings in the outside world to the point of suffocation. It is difficult to picture the total seclusion of their lives before the days of radio. There was a daily newspaper, the Madras Mail, which came by post, so I imagine they devoured this from end to end, but the news reported was at least three days old. It took three weeks for a letter to reach England. The mail boat, owned by the P and O Steam Navigation Company, sailed from Bombay every Friday, but for urgent communication one could send a cable which got through in 24 hours, so there was no real isolation, such as known in earlier times.
The beauty of the scenery and the climate must have given Norah constant pleasure. For nine months of the year there was daily sunshine and a genial warmth. The worst months were during the south-west monsoons, from mid June to early September, with torrential rain in July – 7 inches a day at times. This was when roads were washed away and some of the outlying plantations were literally cut off. They could only be reached by foot. This never happened to Dalquarren, though it did mean shutting down and being resigned to depending on one’s own company for several weeks on end. Green mould would grow overnight on one’s shoes beside one’s bed!
Once the rains stopped the sun shone and things blossomed into new life. The coffee berries, swollen by the rains, now began slowly to colour and to ripen. For the rest of the year Coorg had a genial climate, brilliant sunshine most of the time, without scorching heat and in the evening the welcome of a wood fire. Flowers bloomed in profusion in response to the beautiful climate, birds and butterflies too. The scenery brought more than a wealth of joy with the beautiful outlook from Dalquarren across the hills to Sidepur with the ever-changing light, as daytime strengthened into noon, and shades of evening fell across the darkening scene.
Therefore her life was never dull, enfolded by such natural beauty
The monsoon season was obviously the time when people tried to get away from Coorg, which was fortunately the best time for ‘going home’, as it was called, for the summer in England. But if not that, then a 10 day visit to Bangalore or Mysore would be a welcome break to the incessant batter of the rain on the galvanised roof and the leeches which swarmed up one’s legs the moment one ventured out of doors for a walk along the paths between the dripping coffee bushes.
Of course when funds were limited there could be no monsoon break, so possibly Norah had to weather the full brunt of the monsoon for three or four years. 1921 after Alex was born in Bangalore on May 10th, 1922, 1923, 1924 and 1925. One wishes there was more that remains with us of those idyllic (we hope!) and unknown secret years. One pictures Norah being plummeted straight into the depths of the monsoon immediately on arrival in Coorg after their marriage in Bangalore on July 2nd. It couldn’t have been worse for her. She had obviously never seen rain like that, being used to the gentle rains of Ireland in her girlhood. It illustrates again the courage she had in tackling situations and how she won through. That first monsoon must have seemed endless – would it ever end? – where had she landed herself? –what sort of a life could this turn out to be? She must have been very homesick at times, recalling the happy scenes round the fireside in Cloonagh years before with all her sisters, and Michael, her only brother, and her parents and the friends and relations that so often crowded in to see them – the happy, smiling rosy faces and the merry laughter, story-telling and fun; potato cakes straight off the griddle and barm brack and soda bread and home-made butter and cottage cheese and the huge brown tea pot steaming on the hob. But as she ‘choked back a sob’ maybe she would probably realise that her dear mother was now dead and all the girls married and moved away to Dublin so the Cloonagh of long ago was no longer a homestead. Ireland too had turned a page of history, having become independent of Britain in 1921 when it became the country of Eire with six counties in the north becoming Ulster.
What must have caused Norah great sadness was the misunderstanding with her mother-on-law, which took nearly the whole length of her marriage to heal. This was on two counts – one, that Norah was Irish and two, that she was a Catholic. In a way this is understandable, because at that time the political situation in Ireland was one of rebellion and hate towards Britain.
There had been the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin and much unrest, although thousands of Irish men and women had joined the Armed Forces to fight for Britain and losses had been high. It was the time too of the Black and Tans, a kind of motley army that had been imposed on Ireland in the hope of imposing order. This is not the place to argue the rights and wrongs of this political strife, but there was an anti-Irish feeling among the public at large.
Of course Norah had enlisted as a nurse in the QA’s and had her war medals to prove it, whereas George had never claimed any medals, as he said that he felt he had done nothing to deserve any decorations, when compared with those in France and in other campaigns. But George’s mother took no account of Norah’s courage in all she had done and would not acknowledge it.
The other reason for her dislike of Norah was her religion. Being a Catholic was the most unpardonable and unacceptable thing in her mother-in-law’s eyes. Admittedly this was the generally held viewpoint of the time. Most people were bigoted in those days and held rigidly to whatever tenets of belief they themselves supported in bitter opposition to any contrary opinion. So one must not blame George’s mother or condemn her too strongly because she was only following the accepted behaviour of the day and that is what most people do all the time in any generation. Though for Norah, with her genial, open and accommodating ways, it must have been very hard to bear. This animosity must have made the early days of their marriage very difficult and certainly didn’t ease Norah’s entry into planting society, because others too will have had the same resentment towards an Irish Catholic. Of course Norah would have certainly experienced bigotry in Ireland in her childhood. Her family too no doubt frowned on her marriage to a Protestant and an Englishman.
Also among the small circle of British planters in Coorg, George Parsons would have been seen as ‘a good catch’ among the match-making matrons, so the fact that he had escaped from their foils must have been a huge disappointment, but they had not reckoned on George’s very independent and stubborn nature – he would decide for himself! – hence his choice of Norah, a woman of outstanding character and disposition. He didn’t give two hoots for protocol!
Actually there were some very beautiful and presentable young women in Coorg at the time, members of the well-established families of Robinson, Duncan, Jackson, Tipping etc. I recall meeting Irene Irwin (nee Robinson) in London years later, a very close friend of Aunt Mollie, and a beautiful and charming woman, sister of Liefe Robinson V.C. who shot down the first Zeppelin in 1916. She said to me ‘You now I could easily have been your mother!”
The fact that George’s mother and his sister, Mollie, lived in South Coorg on their own estate, Beechlands, in Pollibetta, could have been a bonus for Norah. Nothing has been said to me about this but I doubt whether Mummy ever went there. It was about 20 miles away, which is perhaps some excuse for lack of contact and the fact that they quite often went to Bangalore for long spells. I understand Daddy managed the tote in their absence; however they sold Beechlands to Mr Jeffrey in 1926 and went ‘home’ for good. She settled in London in a hotel in Queen’s Gate, South Kensington with her daughter, Mollie, and remained there till her death 20 years later in 1945.
