Introduction
Previous: 1925 and 1926
Next: 1927 – meeting and marrying Billy Whyte
Having decided to go to Malaya, Dorothy takes her time getting there, and then falls out with the friends who she had anticipated staying with. She explores Penang and northern Sumatra; but a bigger adventure awaits her.
A bit of geography may help. The Malay Peninsula in the 1920s was divided between i) the British-administered Straits Settlements, four ports of which Penang was the northernmost and Singapore the southernmost; ii) the Federated Malay States, four principalities which were in reality British protectorates and were linked in a common structure; and iii) the Unfederated Malay States, five principalities which were also British protectorates and were administered separately from each other and from the rest.
All of these apart from Singapore were merged to form the Malayan Union, later the Federation of Malaysia, in 1946; it was independent from 1957. They were then merged with two states on the island of Borneo and with Singapore in 1963, but Singapore left in 1965, giving Malaysia its current borders.
Penang, where Dorothy was based and where she met her husband Billy Whyte, is a port city on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, quite far north towards the Thai border. It is surrounded by, but not part of, the Malay state of Kedah. (The British annexed it from Kedah in 1786.) Dorothy refers to Kedah Peak, now known as Mount Jerai, the most obvious landmark visible from Penang.
Brastagi, now Berastagi, where Dorothy spent Easter with the Pinckneys and where the Davises also lived, is across the strait west of the Malay Peninsula on the island of Sumatra, then part of the Dutch East Indies and now part of Indonesia.
Johore, now usually Johor, which she chose not to visit with Rowley James, is the southernmost state on the Malay Peninsula. Its capital, Johor Bahru, is on the mainland immediately north of Singapore.
Taiping, where the Shersons and Sperlings had their rubber plantations and where I.H.N. Evans ran the museum, is 80 km southwest of Penang in the state of Perak.
Port Dickson, where Dorothy went to stay with the Huetts, is a port town (now a beach resort) 100 km south of Kuala Lumpur. Kuala Lumpur (KL for short) is the capital of Malaysia, located about half way between Penang and Singapore.
France
Actually I didn’t sail [to Penang] till March. I went back to Paris in the middle of January and had a lot of work to finish; I did two panels, “Quoi?” and “Les Chats” for Billie and Steuart, 2 dressing-gowns, 3 long scarves and 3 small ones. Then I had to put the flat in order for Moriţ who was to be there with Peter and his nursery governess, and of course Philip when he was in Paris – but he was traveling a great deal for Aveling and Porter and wasn’t often there. Moriţ had the two rooms downstairs painted yellow for Peter’s day and night nursery and they looked very nice. Rachel was terribly upset at my leaving; one night she dreamed she had gone to my funeral and when she came next day she insisted on embracing me to make sure that I was still living.
Marianne Goodhue “Billie” McKeever (1898-1934) had been a friend of Dorothy’s since their school days; she married Edmund Steuart Davies (1882-1955) in 1925.
I wish I knew what happened to the two panels. I have been trying without success to trace what became of Steuart’s estate.
Moriţ Bateman, née Blanc, had been a flatmate of Dorothy’s before marrying Philip Bateman in Romania in 1921.
Rachel was Dorothy’s maid.
I attended Dorothy’s actual funeral in 1979, more than fifty years after Rachel’s disturbing dream.
Then I went back to Cannes, to Zora. I had rather a bad cough and spent a good deal of time in bed. As the time for my departure drew near Zora began to get more and unhappy about it, and offered to pay back all the money for tickets etc, if I’d give it up. She told me later that I said I simply must go; that I felt it was terribly important – I don’t remember that at all. Anyway on March 4th she and Trevor Rigg came to Marseilles to see me safely on board the P & O Malwa, which was supposed to sail at Midnight, but didn’t actually sail till next day – to my great surprise Trevor came on board again the next morning; Zora didn’t come, but wanted to be sure that I was all right.
Zora was Dorothy’s aunt Lily Gordon Wickersham. who lived from 1870 to 1956; she gave Dorothy an allowance until her marriage. She is buried in the same grave as her mother, her sister, her brother-in-law and her niece Dorothy in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey; I tracked it down in September 2022, on the day of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral.
Trevor Rigg (1874-1962) was the brother of Zora’s dear friend Dollie Sperling, whose husband had had a rubber plantation in Malaya. Coincidentally Trevor’s wife, born Elizabeth or Lilian Mary Roche (1884-1926) was a distant relative of my grandfather (his mother’s third cousin, as far as I can tell). She had died in January of the previous year.
S.S. Malwa
I kept a fairly extensive diary of the trip but there are various entries in Roumanian and Arabic which I now can’t understand at all. I saw the little Syros in the port at Marseilles, the ship which had taken Carol and me to Greece; she looked very small indeed.
For the first few days I felt rather lonely, but then I began to make friends. There was a nice R.C. Chaplain going out to the British forces in China, and St. John Tyrrwhit, whom I’d known when he used to stay with the Buists when he was a boy. He, like his father, Admiral Sir Reginald, was a sailor, and his mother was a Corbally.
It is a remarkable coincidence that Dorothy already knew St John Tyrwhitt (1905-1961) so well. He was the son of Admiral Reginald Tyrwhitt (1870-1951) and Angela Corbally (1874-1953). His mother’s brother Louis Corbally (1877-1915) married my grandfather’s sister Nancy Whyte. Louis was killed in the First World War; I tracked down his grave in 2020.
The Buists were Frederick Braid Buist né Sparks (1861-1946) and Marion Carruthers nee Smythe (1875-1953), who were close to Dorothy’s aunt Bunnie (Lady Frances Hadfield, 1862-1949).
Then there was a young lawyer named Payne whom I was to see a good deal of, and a man called Harding, and another called Burston – I think those were the three I saw most of. On March 10th we reached Port Said and want ashore, Mrs. Carter, Miss Gowland (I think she was Australian) and myself and Payne, Harding and another man. We danced at the Casino Palace, but we had to be on board again at 10. I was able to say a few words of Arabic, which I was still studying.
Alas, no idea who Mr Payne, Mr Harding, Mr Burston, Mrs Carter and Miss Gowland were – clearly not close enough to be on first name terms.
This was not Dorothy’s first attempt at Arabic – some of the photographs from her earlier Egypt trip have Arabic place names written on the back, in her own handwriting. In general she was enthusiastic about languages; she was fluent in French and Italian, and I remember her trying to learn Sinhala to impress the staff at her nursing home shortly before she died in 1979.
There were one or two concerts, and nearly every evening there was a dance; I was pleased to find that Payne danced very well. The dances usually ended at eleven but often we sat out in deck-chairs to get as cool as possible and talked till the small hours. One night there was a fancy-dress dance; I wore my faithful old gypsy outfit. Commander Morrison was “wind up” – in pajamas and dressing-gown with a life belt and carrying a suit-case with the contents spilling out. But the funniest of all was a Mr. Currie as an old charwoman. The dance started with a Paul Jones, which got people going, and I danced with lots of people I didn’t know.
On the 14th we reached Aden, where we coaled. I had seen the Southern Cross the night before for the first time. We went ashore that evening, Mrs. Carter, Miss Gowland, Payne, Harding, and I, and took a car for the drive out to the Tanks; a lovely drive in the moonlight, past Arab villages with men sitting smoking and drinking coffee at the cafés, dressed in their brilliant robes. We were told the Tanks were 200 feet deep, dug out of limestone unknown ages ago. [The Cisterns of Tawila outside Aden can contain around 85 million litres of water. Their precise age is unknown because most of the evidence was destroyed by British remodelling in the nineteenth century.] I saw my first banyan tree out there. There were beggars at the bottom of the tanks, wailing pitifully “I no father, I no mother” – Payne said we seemed to have struck an orphanage. When we threw down coppers they took a long time to reach the bottom. Then we drove back to the Grand Hotel, where I saw my first punkahs. We had drinks there and I saw the mermaids, which of course are dugongs; I think there were two of them, preserved in glass cases.
I met one woman I liked very much, a Mrs. Huett, who I later went to stay with. On the other hand, Mrs. Carter, who was at my table didn’t seem to like me very much; I don’t think I ever knew why.
More on Mrs Huett below.
I played chess a good deal with Payne, Harding and Burston, all of whom were better than I, though I won a game now and again.
Ceylon / Sri Lanka (actually the heading given in the memoirs at this point is “Malaya”, but Dorothy has not got there yet)
On the 19th we reached Colombo late in the evening, and some of us went ashore and by car to the Galle Face Hotel, where we had “Galle Face Specials” to drink – I forget what they were but they sound quite potent! Lots of passengers had come ashore and there was a dance at the hotel. A friend of Harding’s named Cartwright had joined us and asked us back to his bungalow for drinks; we took rickshaws – my first ride in one. We sat on the verandah and had beer and lemon squashes, having to be very quiet not to wake the other men in the bungalow. I said it was delightful going out there; there was a full moon hidden by clouds, and we went along a broad road between villas and palm-trees under a dull silver sky. Then we went back to the Galle Face and so back to the Malwa.
The Galle Face Hotel in Colombo is still going. The most likely candidate for the “Galle Face Special” is their Pimm’s cocktail.
Next day Payne, Harding, Cartwright and I drove out to Mount Lavinia in a luxurious car. While the others had business to see to, Payne and I sat under a huge umbrella and watched people bathing. Before us there was a group of supercilious palms, very haughtily and languidly basking in the hot sun. Later we drove back to the Galle Face. By day the road was fascinating with natives walking, carrying great jars and boxes on their heads, or things suspended on poles over their shoulders; priests in yellow robes – there were two in robes of orange and yellow, so glorious a combination that I could have wept for joy. Another amazing colour scheme was a black skinned man in a pea-green shirt and a pinkish-red skirt. We passed two temples with elaborate carved gateways, a Buddha overhead. One had a door painted blue and yellow. There was a Scottish Presbyterian crenellated Gothic church almost next to it – what a contrast!
Mount Lavinia is not a mountain, but a beach suburb of Colombo.
St Andrew’s Scots Kirk is still standing, five minutes’ walk from the Galle Face Hotel. There are no longer any temples in the neighbourhood.
I was doing a good deal of palmistry and people kept pursuing me to get me to read their hands. [I hope she was not charging them for this ridiculous fraud!]
We passed along the western and southern coasts of Ceylon, lovely with the mountains behind and groves of coconut palms by the water’s edge; the sky was opal with ragged soft white clouds above the mountains.
There was no dance that night. Next morning I talked for a time to a Belgian diplomat, Baron Guillaume, and enjoyed talking French again.
The Guillaume family supplied Belgium with a number of prominent diplomats in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This one must be Baron Jules Guillaume (1892-1962) who in 1927 was appointed as the Belgian consul in Hankou (now Wuhan), then the Kuomintang capital of the Republic of China. His mother was Romanian, which must also have piqued Dorothy’s interest. In Belgium, he is best remembered for reorganising the royal household of King Baudouin in 1953.
Malaya [heading moved from above]
On March 24th we reached Penang; I was up at 4:50 to finish my packing. I saw the dawn rise over Malaya and at about 6:50 we docked. Rowley James came aboard to meet me as Vera was ill. He was quite pleasant and invited Payne and Burton to tiffin. His cousin Mrs. Tribe, Moya, was staying with them. The trouble was that Rowley had lost his job with the Straits Echo and they were about to leave the country. I offered to go to stay at one of the hotels but Vera said Rowley wouldn’t hear of it. He was quite pleasant to me to begin with, and Moya was really very nice – she took me to Pritchard’s, the chief European shop except for Whiteaway Laidlaw, and while we were having a drink there she introduced me to Mrs. Pinckney and her son Gerald, very nice but very young. They were staying at the E and O hotel.
Rowley James (1900-1938) had married Dorothy’s friend Vera Bideleux (1899-1983) in 1926; I actually remember meeting Vera a couple of times myself.
Moya Tribe, born Moya Caroline Cuppaidge (1890-1986) was the daughter of of Rowley’s maternal uncle John Cuppaidge, a doctor from Newry Co Down who had emigrated to Australia in 1884.
Gerald Pinckney (1904-1999) and his mother (née Heidi Olga Margarethe Englehardt, 1881–1968) were both born in Medan, Sumatra and died in England. The “very young” Gerald was only five years younger than Dorothy! Dorothy says a couple of paragraphs down that she thinks Gerald’s mother was Austrian; it’s clear that the Englehardt family, like the Pinckneys, owned tobacco plantations on Sumatra, but Englehardt is more usually a Baltic name.
The evening of that day Rowley and I took rickshaws and drove all through Penang, including the red light district, and we went into a Chinese theatre. The doctor had been to see Vera and said it was only tonsillitis, but he wanted her to stay in bed another day. I was perfectly happy just watching from the windows of their bungalow; I could see men climbing for toddy – going up the tall palm-trees with incredible speed by means of notches on the trunks and then hanging the earthen jars they took up with them to catch the juice from the freshly-cut stump.
The next evening there was a dance at the E & O and Moya Tribe and I went to it. We met lots of people and joined the Pinckney party. Mrs. Pinckney was charming to me. I think she was Austrian, her husband English. She suggested my going with them to Brastagi, in Sumatra, for Easter, and said there would be plenty of riding there. I tried to read Rowley’s hand one day, but found it very puzzling and said it made me feel rather worried for Vera. But Rowley was still being very pleasant to me, though I said in my diary that I wondered if it would last. It didn’t.
On Monday, I had arrived on Thursday; Moya took Vera and me for a drive in her car. On our way back we stopped at the Golf Club, and met two young men who asked us to the cinema that evening. We got back and Rowley made a terrific scene, saying Vera shouldn’t have gone to the Golf Club – I couldn’t understand why, but Moya said it was absurd. When the young men came for us Rowley said he wouldn’t let them come into the bungalow, saying that it was all upside down, but somehow they did, and Moya and I went to the film with them. Next morning she left, Moya, and Vera had to break it to me that the men were coming for the furniture that very day, which of course meant that I must go.
So we went to the E & O and saw Mrs. Pinckney and I took a room there for 56 Straits dollars. I think the rate was then 2/4 for the dollar. [So 56 dollars is 6 pounds, 10 shillings and 8 pence, which the Bank of England inflation calculator tells me is about £360 today; ouch.] The E & O sent for my luggage. I lunched with Rowley and Vera and he was most amiable, suggesting my going with them to Johore! Needless to say I didn’t. I went to the hotel after luncheon, and later Mrs. Pinckney took me for a drive, to the Snake Temple, a lovely drive. She also suggested that I should have meals at her table, which was very nice as I didn’t enjoy eating alone in the hotel dining-room.
I kept a very full diary all this time, but most of it isn’t now particularly interesting. Except for descriptions of the sunsets – which were magnificent nearly always – it is just a record of the people I met and the things I did; lots of drives, and going to the swimming club, where I said my swimming improved a good deal. The water was of course deliciously warm, and since then I’ve never enjoyed bathing in Europe except in the Mediterranean in summer.
The Penang Swimming Club is one of the venerable institutions of the city, founded in 1903. Shamefully, it did not allow Chinese members at that time and the Penang Chinese Swimming Club was founded in 1928, Dorothy’s second year in Malaya. (Thanks to Zen Cho for this.)
I saw something of Vera and Rowley before they left, but two days before he sent me a chit to say he didn’t wish her to have anything more to do with me. I did manage to see her for a moment and she was most upset, and said he was terribly jealous and she had lost nearly all her friends. However she did send one man to call, named Patterson and always known as Pat, and I saw a good deal of him. He was married but separated from his wife. However if I hadn’t met him I might never hade met Billy Whyte! One day Pat – who ran a car-importing business told me that people called Corbet-Singleton were getting a car through him and had been in that day. The name sounded familiar and I remembered that a friend of Hester Pinney’s, Enid McIlwraith, had married a rubber-planter of that name. I’d never met Enid, but I’d heard a lot about her and I was sure she’d also heard about me. So I told Pat that when they came again to tell them that I was at the E & O.
Rupert Victor Patterson (1894-1944) had married his first wife, Glays Lucy Lowen (1893-1916) in 1913; after her death, he then married Gwendoline Alice Freeman (1895-1970) in 1920. He later married Irene Mavis Hancock in 1936, so presumably had divorced Gwendoline in the meantime. He clearly invested quite a lot of time in his friendship with Dorothy.
Morice Grant Corbet-Singleton (1894-1963) had married Enid Mary McIlwraith (1903-1957) in December 1926, only a few months before. He was the grandson of the Australian politician Francis Corbet Singleton. She was the great-niece of Australian politician Thomas McIlwraith.
Hester Harriott Pinney (1901-1982) was mentioned in Dorothy’s 1925 entry as a friend of a friend.
But before I heard about them I went to Brastagi with the Pinckneys for Easter [17 April in 1927 – but the narrative now jumps back to the first half of April for a few paragraphs]. And before that I met a lot more people, and saw one sunset which I described at length, thus: “At the Swimming Club Pat and I watched a sunset of unbelievable beauty. Kedah Peak was before us across the strait, clouds all about it, a little new moon on our left with Venus under her [most likely 5 April 1927; at 7.30 that evening in Penang, Venus was 15 degrees and the new moon 30 degrees above the horizon], and across the sky from the right a great sweep of incandescent cloud, which made one catch one’s breath with its gorgeous glowing beauty. In the clouds along the horizon and over the setting sun there was every possible gradation of colour, brilliant, delicate and subdued. “The sky was a sweep of glowing cloud and over the Peak hung low faint filmy dreamy gossamer wisps, echoed soft in the sea below.”
On April 7th I wrote in my diary: “My last day of being 27! ‘Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, labuntur anni’. It does pass so quickly my life, and nothing accomplished.” [The Latin quote is from one of the most famous Odes of Horace, and my friend Chris Kendall translates it as “Alas, Postumus, the fleeing years slip away”.]
Spoiler alert: on her next birthday, Dorothy was eight months pregnant.
I met Mrs. Hanson, the young Duckworths, the Davises – with a son and daughter, both younger than I, and Mrs. Mann who turned out to be the sister of Mrs. Norman Forbes-Robertson whom I knew quite well in Cannes. We watched Gerald playing tennis – he was very good. He and his mother and I went to the circus but were disgusted by the ill treatment of the trained lions. Pat took me on day to lunch with the Shersons on their rubber-estate not far from Taiping. Other men I met were a Mr. Niven and someone called Reddish – they are all just names to me now.
I have not been able to identify Mrs Hanson, the Davises, Mr Niven or Mr Reddish – this is particularly frustrating as the Davises are mentioned a lot below.
The ‘young Duckworths’ are probably Frederick Victor Duckworth (1901-1974) and his first wife Elly Mary Chalmers (1907-1989); they had married less than two weeks before, on 31 March 1927, shortly before her 20th birthday. They divorced in 1933.
Mrs Mann was born Madeleine De Vere Wilson (1884-1963), and married Nugent Henry Mann (1882–1942) in 1916. Dorothy mentioned the “Forbes Robertson girls” in her 1925 records.
The Shersons appear to have been Dudley Berkeley Nowell Sherson (1887-1954) and Eva Frances Mercia “Gipsie” Cochrane (born 1889). They had had a baby girl in November 1926, though this is not mentioned by Dorothy; not the only invisible baby here.
Brastagi
On April 15th we took passages for Sumatra [the Dutch-ruled island where the Pinckneys’ Brastagi estate was located]. By this time Mr. Pinckney and Charles, their elder son, had joined us, so we were quite a large party, the four Pinckneys, Mrs. Mann, Mr. and Mrs. Tyndall – though I think that should be spelt Powell – and another man the Pinckneys knew. We docked at Maidan [the main port of northern Sumatra] next morning. We had drinks there and then drove up to Brastagi through jungle; we climbed higher and higher till we could see far off to the sea over a great plain. Then we came through a pass and onto the plateau where Brastagi is. There were two volcanoes in sight, and far away two hills behind which was a lake 50 miles long with an island 32 Miles long in it. [Lake Toba] The hotel was Dutch, spotlessly clean and very comfortable. There were many friends of the Pinckneys there, and we danced a lot, and rode. I talk of the “boys” of the party, meaning the two Pinckneys, Charles Fittock and Rodney Denier. I said that at first I ragged them too much and Charles told me they didn’t like it, so I stopped, but I found it hard to talk to them and I said they paid very little attention to me.
It’s not clear who is meant by “Charles Fittock and Rodney Denier”. The Pinckney brothers were Charles Percy Pinckney (1901-1982) and the already mentioned Gerald Henry Pinckney (1904-1999). Perhaps Dorothy was having trouble reading her own handwriting from forty-year-old diaries as she typed this up.
One day when they were all playing golf I rode alone. I said it was strange to be riding in the Sumatran jungle, with gigantic trees, soige with fern parasites, and monkeys singing in chorus, and of course cicadas. I got home rather tired and stiff. Later that afternoon I felt tired and feverish. By dinner I felt too ill to get up and was worried at the idea of being ill among strangers, with Zora so far away. Mrs. Pinckney came to see how I was and was sweet, and sent Charles – who was studying to be a doctor but wasn’t yet qualified, I think – to see me. He gave me quinine and I slept and sweated and woke and slept again; there was no bell – or I couldn’t see it – and the sheets were soaking. And the quinine made my head ring and I still seemed to be in the jungle with the cicadas singing. Really it was a horrid night, one of the worst I can remember. However I woke with no fever, only a headache, and was able to get up, though late, and Charles gave me some aspirin for my head.
Charles became quite a distinguished doctor.
The day before the boys and I had taken a car to the lake, that was 4000 feet above sea-level. We bathed, but the water seemed cold after the Pacific and of course wasn’t buoyant. I forgot to say that the day before that when we were riding Mrs. Pinckney’s pony stumbled and she came off and hurt her spine a bit, and rested a good deal for the next two or three days, but then seemed to be all right.
I had the impression that Mr. Pinckney didn’t like me; in fact I don’t think I really enjoyed that Easter holiday very much, though it was interesting seeing a new place. I did meet one very nice man, Mr. Purcell, in the Civil Service in Penang, a relation of the great Purcell. I said he was fat and had glasses but was awfully nice.
Victor Purcell (1896-1965) became a very distinguished expert on Chinese culture in Malaysia. He was just getting started in 1927.
We left on April 20th, so we hadn’t a long time there. We had tiffin at Medan, the famous reis-toffel – a most sumptuous curry. I did some shopping there too.
I am also a big fan of Indonesian rijsttafel.
I said in my diary that the Bataks [the indigenous people of northern Sumatra] were depressing people to watch, dressed in their indigo sarongs with square things like blue cushions on their heads. The old ones had their teeth filed but it was forbidden by then. Mrs. Pinckney told me that an old Batak woman said to her: “You have teeth like an animal, like a dog, we would not have teeth like that.”
I said Mr. Pinckney was very nice to me in Medan, so perhaps he hadn’t taken a dislike to me after all.
In Penang I stayed again at the E & O. The dirzee [tailor] arrived with five new frocks – he charged $4 to make a simple frock and $6 to copy one of my Paris ones.
I moved to a table by myself as I felt it was hard on the Pinckneys to have me always there. I said later that I thought none of the family except Mrs. Pinckney herself had much use for me.
I saw more of the Davises and one evening had Girlie, the daughter, and Pat and Reddish to dine at the hotel and dance. One morning I rode Girlie’s pony on the race-course. Niven took me swimming and to the Golf Club where we met the Davises who took us back to their bungalow for drinks and dinner. I was most enthusiastic about the whole family. We had one lovely picnic by a waterfall, a whole crowd of us. Once Pat drove me to a temple where we went up thousands of steps – or so I said – and saw turtle ponds and fish ponds and quantities of chapels with Buddhas and saints and high priest and four great statues of the winds, with their feet on the necks of various kinds of sinners; I couldn’t remember them all, but I said there was a thief, a liar, a fallen woman, an opium eater, a gambler, and a murderer. We climbed to a pagoda very high above the temple, but the view was not clear; the sky leaden, Kedah Peak scarcely visible nearer the sea, nearer still Penang with a shaft of sunlight picking out the Clock Tower, and then a great sweep of soft-looking coconut palms almost nearly to our feet. The temple was part of the Kek Lok Monastery.
I won a bet with Mr. Davis as to the date of Francis Scott Key’s writing the “Star-Spangled Banner” which of course was 1813 – everyone always thinks it was during the Revolution.
Actually “The Star-Spangled Banner” was written in 1814 rather than 1813, during the inaccurately named war of 1812.
Dorothy was likely unaware that she herself was a distant relative of Francis Scott Key; they were second cousins four times removed. Both were descended from Phillip Key (1696-1764) and Susannah Barton Gardner (1705-1742), whose burial vault I visited in Chaptico, Maryland in July 2024. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose full name was Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, was another descendant of the Keys; he and Dorothy were fifth cousins once removed.
Port Dickson
Early in May I went to stay with the Huetts at Port Dickson. I took the night train to Kuala Lumpur, getting there about 6:50 the next morning, and having half an hour to wait for the Seremban train. The Huetts met me at Seremban, which I reached about 9:30 a.m. I stayed there for a fortnight and enjoyed it very much. There was swimming and dancing and bridge and Mah Jong, which the Huetts taught me. Mr. Huett was Customs Officer with about 80 miles of coast to supervise; at that time there was an agreement among the planters in Malaya not to sell below a certain price (I think I’ve got that right) but the planters in the Dutch East Indies refused to join, so there was a great deal of smuggling, and the smugglers gave large bribes to the Malay Police. The Sumatra coast was only 30 miles away. No, I think I was wrong in what I said about the planters’ agreement; I think instead it was a question of Duty which the Malayan authorities put on rubber exports but the Dutch didn’t.
The Huetts are Francis John “Porky” Huett (1887-1953) and his wife Ellen Marian Ford (1895-1978). They had one daughter, Philippa, born in 1919. She is not mentioned in Dorothy’s account (another invisible child).
Anyway whatever the cause there was a great deal of smuggling, which Mr. Huett was supposed to prevent. One night he heard that a Tamil at the 12th milestone had been told that if he didn’t allow the smugglers to steal a certain amount of his rubber with a view to smuggling it, they would do him in. Mr. Huett thought it might easily be a blind but police were posted on the chance. About 11:00 p.m. we went to the 12th milestone to be in on anything that might be happening. Incidentally, looking back, I’m sure that Mr. Huett knew that nothing was at all likely to happen, or he would never have wanted to have two women there; I expect it was just to amuse me that the whole thing was arranged. [Probably!]
There was another man called Harvey, possibly also something to do with Customs, I don’t know – he and I sat in back and the Huetts in front. We also had a payang (a parasol of oiled paper which could also serve as an umbrella) in case of rain, a cushion for Mrs. Huett, and a couple of revolvers; a priceless combination, as I remarked. About a mile before the place we came across two police. Then we drove on beyond the bungalow which showed a light, and turning round we prepared to wait till midnight in the dark, with our lights out; but then deciding that someone might shoot at us we put on the lights again and drove on. We saw more police. Mr. Huett decided that it was a put-up job on the Tamil’s part so we came home. I felt it had been a real adventure but was disappointed that there had been no shooting – at least that is what I wrote in my diary, or rather I said that I did wish someone had fired off just one shot.
I wrote in my diary: “How the days fly by here: It seems only a smooth flow of time from morning to evening. We have early tea – chota hazri – on the verandah in our dressing-gowns sometime between 7:00 and 8:00, then dress, and breakfast is about 8:50. Then Mr. Huett goes to his work and I settle down to read, sew, sketch – the dog and cat are my usual models – and write and talk to Mrs. Huett. Towards 1:00 my host returns and we lunch, then off he goes and we lie-off till tea. After tea we may go to the Club or play bridge etc. here. We dine at anytime between 8:00 and 9:50.
But there were some dances too, and dinners out. I met a number of people and there was one man named Blackwell whom I liked very much; he reminded me of Major Reynolds (Bimbo) of the 9th Lancers, in Egypt. I didn’t meet him till about half-way through my visit, but I did like him and I think he liked me. He took me sailing one day and it was fun, Blackie lent me shorts and Mr. Huett lent me a shirt and toupee; I still have a snapshot of that. [Sadly I have not found this snapshot!] Some other people were to meet us at 1:00 – we had gone just after breakfast – but they were late and we had to wait. There were some water-buffaloes grazing near and suddenly they began to show signs of knowing were there; they sniffed the air, looked at us and so on. I didn’t know enough to be frightened but Blackie made me get behind a tree. He told me later that if they had charged he would have got me up into the tree somehow. He said, and others told me, the same, that the buffaloes very much disliked the smell of white men, though they didn’t mind Asiatics at all – one was always seeing small Malay boys ordering them about and the great creatures would slowly obey; the little boys used to climb up by way of the buffalo’s nose, holding the horns, and then ride on the neck. They washed the beasts, which lay down in the irrigation ditches, with the little boys clambering about over them and scrubbing them. But one was always told of cases where the Buffaloes had charged and gored white men – I don’t at all know if that’s true or not. Anyway this time they lost interest in us and went off in another direction, much to Blackie’s relief, and to mine too, when he had explained.
I was seeing a lot of Gordon Trounce, but again it is only a name now. My diary is so full of names; this would read like a telephone directory if I put them all down. There was one woman at the club who taught some of us the Charleston, Mrs. Watt. I suppose it must have come in since I left Europe or why didn’t I already know it?
I am very intrigued by Gordon Trounce, but have found nothing more than a Gordon George Trounce born in Australia in 1893.
I have found no clue as to the very attractive Mr Blackwell’s identity.
The famous film of a couple dancing the Charleston on the roof of a London taxi cab came out in March 1927.
To go back to the sail; I said the boat was a prahu [a general term for an outrigger], and that the Malay owner came too. Blackie steered, I sailed her, and the Malay helped raise and lower the sail. I liked Blackie very much, but I was leaving next day.
Oh, I forgot to put in that one day Mr. Huett took me out in the launch; we went north along the coast. The swell was fairly heavy and we were glad that Mrs. Huett had decided not to come, as she was not a good sailor. After stopping at one or two customs places we went up the Sepang (or Lepang, I can’t read my own writing!) for an hour, hoping to see some crocodiles, but we didn’t. [Tourists still go up the Sepang River to look at wildlife.] However we did see a brilliant green water-snake swimming along. We had tiffin and then I rested in the cabin but didn’t sleep; I read and watched the banks of the river, quite flat with mangroves by the water’s edge; an occasional waterway would off through the mangroves and here and there was a clearing with Malay huts, but no sign of life.
Mrs. Sands, a friend of Mrs. Huett’s, who was very kind indeed and gave me tiffin, and drove me all round the town and the Gardens. Her husband was home for tiffin and then we all rested and I slept, and after tea we drove to the Golf Club, a really magnificent one, and the golf course itself was the best in Malaya, I was told. After it grew dark we went to the Spotted Dog, the famous club of K.L. – technically the Selangor Club – and had more drinks and were joined by several people. Then as my train left at eight the Sandses took me to the station, which, I said, looked like a papier-mâché Alhambra. I said in my diary that the whole town was artificial and disappointing after all I’d heard, and that there was nothing but fake Arabic architecture. I had a compartment to myself in the train, but I didn’t sleep much as it was a glorious night of full moon [16 May 1927] and the coconut forests and distant mountains were most enthralling. And the dawn at about six was a thing of wonder and delight. Pat met me in Penang when we arrived about 6:45. I didn’t like the room they had given me at the hotel and after breakfast I saw the manager and changed it for one which I liked in the annex, but found that there was a dancing mistress there who gave lessons in the passage just outside my room, accompanied by a loud gramophone. However, as I said, there usually was a snag.
The next morning the Corbet-Singletons arrived. They asked me to go and stay the following week. For the rest of the time I went out with Pat and Reddish a good deal, went to some pahit parties, saw Mrs. Buckwell, whom I liked very much. I forgot to say that Moya Tribe had come back to the hotel before I went to Port Dickson and her husband had joined her and I liked him very much – years later, when she stayed with me in Ireland, I denied ever having met him; I’d quite forgotten.
Mrs Buckwell, born Dorothy Marie Wills (1889-1964), married Robert Leighton Buckwell (1873-1952) in 1912. They had five children born between 1914 and 1922, none of whom is mentioned here.
Moya’s husband was Leslie Fleetwood Tribe (1884-1953), a New Zealander.
One evening Niven took me to a Chinese wedding, the first I seen. They had a large electric sign “WEDDING” and under that “WELCOME” across the end of Greenhall Street, outside the bridegroom’s house. We went in and were warmly greeted and given seats and offered champagne, quantities of it, and watched three Chinese girls dancing to a Malay band and singing occasionally; two had apple-green muslin bajous (the baju is a sort of little jacket) and one had a cyclamen one. Then a lot of our friends came in and two of them danced with the girls, one of the men, Reddish, I said danced very well, as I remember it was not etiquette to touch the girl at all, the man more or less followed what she did, quite near her, but never touching. Later an old Chinese man danced too, really well. Then a Chinese band played European music and Reddish and I danced. Then most of our friends left and Niven and I watched a bit longer and then went to the bride’s house. She was staying with people opposite the E & O having come from India. Unfortunately, we were too late to see her, but two little Chinese girls led me by the hand up to the bridal room where there were lovely presents, among them a gold Chinese tea-set, most beautiful work. And what seemed like hundreds of sarongs in a cupboard with glass doors. The bed was very ornate and tinselly. It was spread with a sheet, two pillows, and a Dutch wife (bolster) neatly down the middle. We watched the dancing downstairs for a bit, two girls, and then departed. Niven drove me out to the Gardens for a breath of air, and then home.
Zen Cho tells me:
The Chinese wedding she went to must have been a Peranakan wedding if the bride’s trousseau consisted of sarongs (traditionally a Malay/Southeast Asian item of clothing rather than Chinese), but that makes sense as I think all the wealthy Chinese in Penang at the time would have been Peranakan, i.e. the Chinese who’d been there longer and acculturated to a degree. The description of the wedding also accords with my mother’s accounts of the weddings her grandfather would have hosted for his daughters: they ran for several days and basically anyone could drop in for free food and drink. My mom didn’t mention the dancing though, presumably those would have been hired dancers as dancing would have been considered very improper for the daughters of the house!
There were various other parties and things, and I went to the Buckwells for luncheon one day, but I was feeling restless and unsettled and thought I’d soon move on. I said that there was very little I could do by myself, and the men of course were working all day. I was thinking seriously of going on to Siam – but I never got there.
Hibernia
On May 28th I went to stay with the Corbett-Singletons on Hibernia Estate. Funny to think I’d never even heard of it before, and it was to play a big part in our fluctuating fortunes.
The Hibernia Estate had been founded around 1919 by Billy Whyte, my grandfather, who Dorothy had not yet met. It still exists in Perak, about 80 km by road from Penang, 35 km from Taiping and 12 km from Selama. It is now owned by Riverview Rubber Estates, which despite the name produces exclusively palm oil.
Before I went Mrs. Buckwell took me shopping one day and I bought a lovely Mah Jong set for 32 Straits dollars. [About £200 in 2025 prices, if you believe the Bank of England’s inflation calculator.] Also I had a slight accident riding. Girlie had lent me her pony again, and drove me to the race-course. I was cantering happily along when a man galloped by and the pony tried to bolt. As I was pulling him in the near stirrup-leather broke and I came off and rolled under his hoofs, which caught me on the left cheek and right ankle. I picked myself up and went back to the building where Girlie helped me wash off the dirt and blood, and I would have gone on with my ride but by the time we could get another saddle my head was aching and I was quite glad to go. I had breakfast with the Davises and then they dropped me at the hotel. That afternoon Niven took me swimming, and then we went to the Town Hall where they were practising a Maypole Dance, and I joined in. But next morning when I went to the Bank a man named Grant, who was in the Bank, said I’d better have an anti-tetanus injection – there was a case not long before of a football player who got tetanus in Singapore, and the race-course, like the football ground, had top-dressing. So I went to Dr. Gossip and had the injection. Mrs. Buckwell came to tiffin; Pat took me swimming and to dinner at the Runnymede, and next morning saw me off on the train ferry for Taiping, where Enid and Michael Corbet-Singleton met me. The Davises had invited me to go to Brastagi for Whitsun [Whit Monday in 1927 was on 6 June], but I refused because of staying with Michael and Enid. Also although I liked Mrs. Davis and Girlie and Jack very much, I was not so keen on Mr. Davis, though I don’t remember exactly why.
I met lots of their friends, and many of them had known Harvey Sperling, Dollie’s husband, who had been out there for years, I think his estate was called Yam Seng, [actually Matang] anyway it was near Taiping. One man I liked very much, named Jacques. The others played a good deal of tennis and I watched and sketched; my tennis was never good and by that time I had given up playing, I think. At one party we went to I said there was a woman, rather pretty, wearing a white frilly blouse with a royal blue plush skirt with bretelles attached by gilt buttons, and a white straw hat with white ostrich plumes drooping over the brim all round and a royal blue ribbon on it. I said it looked exactly like one of the chorus in a musical comedy laid somewhere in the Balkans.
Frederick Harvey Erskine Sperling, known as Harvey (1868-1921), had been married to Dorothy’s aunt’s dear friend Blanche Lucy Rigg (1872-1946), known as Dollie.
I made a dress for which I had bought the material in Taiping. John Woods came to stay; his father, Sir Robert Woods, was the majority share-holder in the Estate, and John was a junior director. I liked him but he did talk a great deal.
Sir Robert Woods (1865-1938) was a leading Dublin surgeon who also served briefly as Member of Parliament for Trinity College Dublin. None of the Irish sources that I have consulted mentions his commercial interest in Malaya.
John Lowe Woods (1899-1956) was the third of his five children, and is the subject of a biography, An Irishman in Malaya, by D.E. Moreton, published in 1977.
One day Enid and I drove to Penang – coming back I drove a good deal of the way, but she drove down. [It is about an hour’s drive today, and would probably have been an hour and a half then. I think this is the first time that Dorothy mentions her own driving.] I gave her luncheon at the Runnymede, also Dorothy Buckwell, Pat, and Mr. Hill. Then Pat drove us out to the swimming-club, and some of us bathed, of whom I was one. Another day we went to the Taiping Museum; I had already met Mr. Evans, the curator, and he took us over it. I was fascinated by the flints and the implements of agate and chrysophrase; many of them were the same type as the things I had seen in the Dordogne, but of much later date. There was an amazing collection of sarongs too.
Ivor Hugh Norman Evans (1886-1957) was a graduate of Clare College, Cambridge (as it happens, so am I), and was a very well known anthropologist and ethnologist covering both parts of Malaysia.
There was a forest reserve near which we often drove through, and saw deer, and once a big clumsy iguana crossing the road. There were tigers there too but I never saw any.
Unfortunately after the first days I said that I was getting on Enid’s nerves – she wasn’t too well anyway, and she was very unhappy and homesick. However when I was leaving she was very nice and told me not to hesitate to call on her if I needed anything or were ill.
Jacques had meant to drive me to Penang, but when the time came he had malaria, so I took a hired car to Bagan Serai and got the train there. Bit of a flap when I found one suit-case missing, so I got out at Parit Buntar and consulted the station-master, a very black but most charming person, and he found it in the luggage-van.
Bagan Serai is about half way between Taiping and Penang, so more than half way from the Hibernia Estate where Dorothy had been staying. Parit Buntar is about halfway between Bagan Serai and Penang, on the border between Perak and the Penang district.
The station master is “very black but most charming”. Hmm.
And so Dorothy returned to Penang, where destiny was waiting for her in the form of an Irish colonel, almost twenty years her senior, whose rubber plantation she had just been staying in.
