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Excerpted from the Memoirs of a Cabinet Secretary by BP Peiris
A few months after leaving Royal, I entered our University College under the Principalship of Robert Marrs who lectured to us on Philosophy. I was then a first year Arts student. Professor Pakeman spoke on the British Constitution and Warden Stone of St Thomas’ on Latin and Greek, and Roman and Greek History.
But alas! My stay at University College was to he very short indeed – just two months. I lived at the Union Hostel at ‘Alcove’ in Turret Road. The warden was Mr C. Suntharalingam. I got precious little to eat, and it was no fault or negligence on the part of the warden. It was just bad manners on the part of the hostellers. I was always a bit late, about five minutes, for meals. We sat in messes of four. When we had egg curry for lunch, there were four eggs in a dish in each mess, similarly with prawn curry, there were sufficient prawns for four.
But when I came and sat down in my usual place, the egg, which was my portion, had gone; who took it, I was never able to find out; the prawns had all gone and I had only the gravy. At tea time, the butter and milk had all been consumed and I had to be satisfied with bread, jam and a cup of plain tea. At dinner it was the same, and this occurred day after day. The three others had no manners and no consideration for the fourth fellow who was a few minutes late.
I am not here condemning all the hostelers; there were well-mannered, well-behaved students. Unfortunately, I got into a bunch of greedy, voracious and selfish students, which made me extremely unhappy. We used sometimes to get parcels of fruits etc. from our parents -oranges, mangoes, mangosteens – which were much appreciated. When I received such a parcel, I always shared it with my friends. There was one student who locked up all the fruits he received in one of his drawers and never failed to take the key with him even when he went to the toilet!
As I said, I was very unhappy. It was not my idea, even as a young fellow, of what a University should or ought to be, and I told father so and suggested that he send me to England to study law. My father did not oppose the idea, but consulted Mr (later Sir) Susantha de Fonseka who readily acquiesced, and said it was a wise move. I had now to find a place in a college in Oxford, Cambridge, London or one of the other Universities.
Father accordingly went with me to Sir James Peiris, in his time President of the Cambridge Union and, at the time I went, Vice-President of the Legislative Council. Father made the mistake of starting the conversation saying that he had come to ask for a favour. Sir James was not exactly angry but looked very surprised that my father, who knew him so well, should make such an irregular request. Sir James “did not do favours” or abuse his position.
There was a look of disapproval on his face and my father hurried to tell him what the favour was – a letter from him to his College in Cambridge to secure me a place there. “Oh Edmund,” said Sir James, “if that is all, I shall gladly write.” Unfortunately for me, his College had no vacancies, and I joined the University of London. At one time I had received the princely allowance of five cents a day. Now I was to be sent, at 19, to England at seven pounds a week. It turned my head and made me nervous. I had never handled so much money before.
And now arose a problem. Father did not like my living in ‘digs’ in London. He wanted me to stay with an English family and enjoy good English home life. As the Mudaliyar of the district, he knew the Assistant Government Agent Mr E. T. Dyson, a good and kindly Christian gentleman. Dyson liked a simple life, and was a stranger to tobacco and drink. When father asked him whether he could find me a good home in England, he had said “Yes”. The lady (my good luck) happened to be holidaying at Peradeniya at the moment, and father, mother and I were invited to lunch. We arrived at the appointed time, introduced ourselves and, over lunch, terms were agreed upon. When I reached England, I was to live in her house in Sutton in Surrey, about 15 miles out of London.
Came sailing day. All Panadura seemed to be at the jetty to say “Good Luck”. Rubber was then, (in 1928), nearly three rupees a pound and each one at the jetty gave me a gold sovereign. I got over seventy in all at a time when England had gone off gold and an Englishman had not seen a sovereign since the Great War of 1914.
Friends and relatives departed after kisses, tears and farewells, but two good friends came on board later, my teacher Victor C. Perera and my classmate, Eustace Pieris. I had the Captain’s permission to keep them as my guests to dinner on board. No extra charge was made and I therefore gave the dinner steward a sovereign as tip. He looked at me amazed, did not seem to know what he had received, put it in his palm and pressed it against the table top. He had never seen a sovereign.
On another occasion in London I purchased some gramophone records and paid a sovereign. I returned home with the records and change to find that change had been given me for ten shillings only. I went back to the shop the next day and mentioned the matter to the shopkeeper. He apologized, gave me an extra ten shillings and said he could not make out a sovereign from a half-sovereign.
The voyage itself was uneventful, except for the fact that Sir Wilfred and Lady de Soysa with all their children including the eldest, Harold (later Lord Bishop of Colombo) were on board and looked after me. I have not met two more gracious and kindly persons than Sir Wilfred and his good lady. One hour with the children and you could not but succumb to their charm. We disembarked at Marseilles, the de Soysas going on holiday to Nice in the South of France and I taking the night train to London via Calais and Dover.
On the platform at Marseilles, a Ceylonese who said he had been resident there for several years and ran a restaurant, approached us and introduced himself. When he found that Sir Wilfred and party were going to Nice and that I would be alone waiting a few hours for the boat-train to Calais, he asked me to come along with him to see the city. Sir Wilfred, who knew I had the sovereigns on me, got behind the man and signaled to me not to go. I ‘did’ the city with an officer of the American Express who brought me back to the station in good time and put me in my wagon-lit when the train arrived.
Sutton in Surrey
The night in the sleeping-car from Marseilles to Calais and the journey from Dover to London were comfortable. So was the Channel crossing. I kept gazing out of the window at the green fields, the cattle pasturing, the huge advertising boards and the neat little houses flying past as the train sped on. When the countryside gave way to back-to-back houses and overcrowding, and the number of lines began to increase at an alarming rate and the train reduced speed, I knew we were approaching the terminal station of Victoria, but it was a long time before the train finally pulled up at the station.
I was met by my uncle, D.S. Jayawickrama and Mr Amos of Richardson & Co. Mr Richardson was to be my Guardian and banker for the duration of my stay.
I spent my first night in a guest house and next day went shopping. The vastness of London frightened me. The buses, the noise, the several lines of traffic, the tall, big-built policemen in the smart helmets, the neon signs, Piccadilly Circus – this was all so different from our small Colombo and its Fort Station, our ramshackle buses and our puny policemen. I arrived in London in February 1928 when it was bitterly cold, but the cold did not affect me. After a few days in London, I moved to Sutton Lodge, the place which Mr Dyson had found for me.
I found myself in a large country house with about 10 bedrooms, standing on seven acres of land, with its own tennis court, croquet lawn and kitchen garden. The house was situated on the narrow London – Brighton Road and the entrances to the house were so narrow that a large car could not be turned in but had to be parked on the road.
The lady in charge, Miss Overton, aged about 60, was educated at Oxford at a time when Oxford did not confer degrees on women; but I believe that on the Oxford Examination, Dublin University conferred a degree. She was a heavy smoker, a charming lady. Years later, she revisited Ceylon and spent some days at Panadura as a guest of my parents.
On the day of my arrival, a Danish girl, aged 19 arrived, and, from then onwards, it was a case of one or two new arrivals each day, all females of about the same age but from different countries, until the house was full. Except for the butler, I was the only male in the house. These girls, all from well-to-do families and with about the same allowance as I received, came about February each year and returned to their homes by Christmas.
English was compulsory in all their schools. They spoke English, but not as the Englishmen spoke it. In most of their languages, as in Sinhala, Latin and German, the verb comes at the end of the sentence. For example, the German girl will ask me “Will you with me for a walk come?” All the girls came to learn idiom and, when Miss Overton was not free, I used to take the lesson which meant reading a bit of Shaw or Galsworthy and explaining it to them.
In this way, during the three years I stayed at Sutton Lodge, I was privileged to enjoy the friendship of these girls of many nationalities, some of whom still write to me at Christmas. Amongst them, as far as I can now remember, were Margaret and Trudy Brunner, sisters (Switzerland), Greth Ahner (Sweden), Sombor Marta (Hungary), Szmidel Zsuzsi and Verona Mermelstein (Czechoslovakia), Zofia Gabryszewska (Poland), List Pospichil (Austria), a beautiful girl from Vienna for whose picture a toothpaste company offered her about £ 250 for permission to use it for purposes of advertisement, Ilse Wolff (Germany), Nina Rissoni (Italy) and Idelette Allier (France), whose father was a great friend of Mahatma Gandhi, and Ramain Rolland.
It was a delightful experience. We were all part of the establishment. Miss Overton gave us a completely free hand about the house. If we felt hungry, we raided the larder and sliced a portion of ham or cheese. The Swiss girls, who consumed enormous quantities of potatoes, were always hungry. After dinner, I was made to go out into the garden and shake the apple and pear trees and bring the girls some fruit to eat. Sometimes I would take about four of the girls about a mile down the road for bacon and eggs – the equivalent of our egg hoppers. But they never let me pay the entire bill. I had to keep a careful account of the expenditure and this was equally divided on our return home and I was reimbursed.
It was so at table also. As the only male I was expected to have my cigarettes and pass my case round the table, and with thirteen girls, a packet of twenty did not last very long. But I was never out of pocket because every one of the girls kept me supplied with ample stocks to supply them at table!
There was one thing that irritated me: Miss Overton insisted that I should dress for dinner. The girls all changed into long black dresses and I could not protest as the lone male. The butler was superb.As I said before, the Swiss girls were great potato eaters. It was the custom of the house to put new arrivals on either side of Miss Overton who presided at the head of the table with me at the other end. It was also the practice, with 13 girls, Miss Overton and myself, fifteen in all, to make for a fish course, thirty pieces of fish and thirty potatoes with other vegetables. On the first day of the Swiss girls’ arrival, they were served with fish, and then with the potatoes, and one of the girls asked “Is this all for me?” “Good Lord, no,” said Miss Overton, “Take only two.” It was after that that we started our tramp for bacon and eggs.
In my third year at Sutton Lodge, I had male company. There was a French boy Pierre Dujardin, a Spaniard and two Dutch boys. There was also a Siamese Prince who said that his father, a Sultan, had many wives and 52 children.
The Swedish girl, Greta, asked me within a week of my arrival at Sutton to come with her and take her round London. It was a case of the blind leading the blind. Armed with road maps and bus routes we set out and, after seeing the sights like the Tower of London, the Mansion House, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace and Queen Victoria’s statue from the top of an open bus, we arrived again at Piccadilly Circus for lunch.
I was a stranger in the place and walked into the biggest and cheapest eating place there – Lyons Corner House, which had three floors, each seating about a thousand persons with an orchestra on each floor, and open day and night. It was difficult to find a table, but after much walking we found one at which a gentleman was finishing his peach melba. With his permission, we sat down opposite him, I facing him and Greta next to me.
When he had finished his meal and paid the bill, he rose and, in rising, tilted the small table with the result that plates, glasses and cutlery went crashing on the floor. The balance of the peach melba went on Greta’s expensive blue frock. Being in unfamiliar surroundings, I became very nervous as a thousand faces turned round to stare at Greta and myself. I called the waitress and asked that Greta be taken to the ladies’ room to tidy herself.
In the meantime the officer in charge of the floor dressed in a morning suit, walked up to the table and inquired of the gentleman “I presume it was an accident, Sir”. “Not at all, not at all,” he repeated. “Then will you please come with me,” said the official, and took him to the Manager. I was there seated alone, eyes still staring at me, with the fellow in the Manager’s room and Greta in the ladies’ room. It was a most unpleasant experience within seven days of my arrival in England.
Greta returned, her dress clean but spoilt by ice-cream stains. The floor manager returned with the brute and addressing me said, “Sir, this gentleman says he did this deliberately. In the circumstances, it is for the lady to take legal action if she considers it to be necessary.” I explained the position to Greta. I was only a witness, and as no damage had been done to my clothes, Greta said in her Swedish English ” I have been in your country only a few days. I don’t want to go before the ‘Judge’. I can buy another frock but this man manners I can’t teach. Ask him go.” And there it ended. It was the story of a man who was jealous that a “nigger” could take out a girl of family and status whom he was not able to take out and entertain.
Before these girls returned to their homes each Christmas, they all left their addresses with me and invited me to come and spend my long vacation with their parents. They were all people of means; but I had not the money to travel all the way across Europe from Norway down to Italy. I therefore selected three places – France, Germany and Switzerland.
Apart from the girls I have spoken of, there was for a short time at Sutton an elderly Indian lady, the wife of a Judge of the High Court of Madras. On the day of her arrival, as I was about to go on one of my evening walks to the pub, she asked me to be kind enough to bring her a pint of brandy. When the dinner gong sounded, she was absent and I was asked to go and see what the trouble was. There was no reply to my knock or her door. I opened it and saw the brandy pint empty on the carpet by the bedside and her head hanging half out of the bed. I reported that the lady wanted to be excused as she was not feeling quite well. The next day she repeated her request to me and asked me to dispose of the empty. I had to refuse.
In France, I stayed in a delightfully lovely place called Hardelot Plage. ‘Plage’ in French denotes the sea beach. It was about 12 miles from Boulogne and thousands of acres of land there had been bought by my friend Pierre’s father. Apart from his father’s house there were only about 10 other houses, a guest house, a golf course with a hotel called ‘The Golfer’s Hotel’ and of course, the promenade about a mile and a half long.
With my Kandyan walking stick and a turban of seven yards of georgette with a tail about eighteen inches long, I used to take the prom every evening in the company of Pierre’s sister and a few other girls. An Indian friend of mine had taught me how to tie a turban and I never wore a hat after that. When I finally left England, each of my seven turbans in different colours was cut in half, ironed and given to the girls to make frocks!
Pierre’s family were simple, homely and dignified. His sister insisted that I teach her how to tie the turban, which I did. Her father, an extremely wealthy man insisted that I spend my last two days in France – I was there for about three weeks – at his town house in Lille, to which place I was driven in a luxurious car.
At table, the French people had a custom entirely different from the English. I found a spotless table cloth, two glass blocks on either side of the plate and one fork and knife. The English array of silver was not there. The food was excellent and dinner consisted of several courses. After each course, the plate would be replaced, each person placing his fork and knife on the glass blocks in order that the table cloth might not be soiled.
On my second day in Lille and my last day in France, Pierre’s father, at dinner, paid me, as a student, the biggest compliment that has ever been paid to me. He asked the butler to go down to the cellar and bring the two oldest bottles of Champagne. These, covered with dust and cobwebs, were left standing for some time on the table before they were opened. A toast was drunk to my health. Next morning, with much regret, I bade farewell to the family and was driven to the station to entrain for Heidelberg in Germany.
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