Penelope Chetwode (1910–1986)

Like most upper-middle-class Englishwomen of her generation, Penelope Chetwode was never trained for anything in particular apart from the role of wife and mother. In the 1960s, when her children had grown up and her husband (John Betjeman) had found someone else to see to his daily needs, she found herself at leisure to pursue her own interests. Rural England is largely run by ladies in that situation, who keep the parish councils, charitable foundations, gardens, churches, stables, kennels and historic buildings organised via the piles of paper on their oversized kitchen tables. But what Lady Betjeman really wanted to do was travel to remote places on horseback, an activity that had given her great pleasure when she was a young woman in India in the 1930s (and her father was Commander-in-Chief of the British forces there).

She took a trial trip to Spain to prove to herself and her family that she could cope, and that she would be able to recoup some of the expenses by lecturing about her travels on the W.I. circuit. Then, in 1965, she set off for the Western Himalayas to re-create a trek from Simla to the remote Kulu valley she had undertaken in 1931. On that earlier occasion she had travelled very simply, accompanied only by a couple of aides-de-camp and three servants; in post-colonial India she had to make do with two mules and a groom. This book is essentially a description of her 1965 trek, with additional chapters describing a later visit to a religious festival in the valley, the architecture of mountain temples, and some of the eccentric Europeans who settled in the valley in colonial times.

Lady B obviously wasn't a very enthusiastic writer: it took her seven years to get around to finishing this book, and she must have had a lot more fun talking about her travels than writing about them. The style is quite natural and lively to read, but it isn't especially polished.

Apart from the slightly clumsy jokes against herself that obviously belonged to her W.I. shtick (coping with Indian toilet arrangements, only knowing "a few Hindi verbs in the imperative mood", etc.), everything is delivered very straight. However - especially when she's talking about the glories of the British Raj - her account is often hilariously funny. The part of the writing process Lady B obviously did enjoy was poking around in dusty libraries to dig out learned works on Hindu architecture and iconography and the memoirs of nineteenth-century empire-builders, and as well as useful background data she managed to find quite a few real gems of the genre. She also managed to find some former residents who were prepared to share their memories of Kulu with her.

The comedy could be purely unintentional, and she allows us to believe that if we want to, but one suspects that either she or whoever edited the text must have had a pretty clear idea what they were up to. The Misses Donaldson (who did their war service in the Army Remount Depot) are an absolute joy, and so is Mrs Tyacke, author of How I shot my bears. I don't think anyone could have reproduced Mrs Tyacke's picture of herself with her trophies without malice aforethought, and we shouldn't forget that Lady B was married to one of the leading experts on the funny side of Victorian England.

I enjoyed reading this, but I found it a bit patchy: Two middle-aged ladies is a better travel book, really. Lady B obviously had a real passion for the Kulu valley, and continued to visit it to the end of her life (she died on trek there in 1986), but, perhaps because she's trying to do too many things at once, that passion doesn't quite come over in this book.… (altro)

A charming, eccentrically amateurish account of a solo(*) riding tour through Andalusia in the early 1960s, when Lady Betjeman’s husband and children had grown up and left home and she was free to resume the habits of independent travel she had formed as a young woman in India in the 1930s.

With its brisk tone, it does read a little bit like an extended WI lecture, and on occasion made me recall her granddaughter’s hint that Lady B liked to muddle up her slides a little bit on purpose for comic effect when lecturing about her travels: sometimes we get just a shade too much “incompetent old lady” stuff to be quite convincing (she was barely into her fifties at this point, and still had a quarter of a century’s trekking in the Himalayan foothills ahead of her). But it’s none the worse for this little touch of artifice, which not only engages our amused sympathy, but also cleverly ties her story in with her three great literary models, Cervantes, Richard Ford, and George Borrow. (Although Borrow was as rabid an Evangelical as she is a Catholic, she is clearly prepared to overlook that in someone so sound on horses.) It’s certainly striking how little life in rural Andalusia seems to have changed since Ford and Borrow were there a century or so earlier. I imagine she’d find it rather different now. There is a wonderful Britishness about her ability to enjoy staying in primitive, uncomfortable conditions whilst simultaneously complaining about them!

Her sympathy with the local people she meets and her ability to establish a rapport with them are very endearing. Less so is her uncritical assumption that any right-wing dictator who is good to Catholic priests must be a Good Thing for his people...

(*) the other "lady" of the title is the mare - borrowed from the Duke of Wellington, no less - Lady B rode during her trip.… (altro)