Harrow on the Hooghly, by John Lethbridge

"Harrow on the Hooghly" was a nickname given to the New School of Calcutta and Darjeeling, on its founding in 1940. The Hooghly is the principal river running through Calcutta; Harrow is one of England's most prominent private schools. It was one of a number of emergency schools set up early on in the Second World War, for children of British parents in India who would otherwise have been educating them in Britain. In 1940 India would have seemed much safer than Britain; there was a real threat of invasion by Germany and, worse, the sea lanes were becoming very dangerous. Getting passage as a civilian was very difficult, and the normal route to India via the Suez Canal was impossible until after VE Day in 1945. There was an excess of refugee children in 1940, with a pressing need to be educated, who could not be accommodated in the existing European schools in India.

Then Japan went to war with Britain and the situation in India suddenly looked very threatening. If you glance at the map you'll see why Calcutta was very vulnerable. The New School, which in time honoured colonial fashion escaped from the summer heat up to the cooler climate of Darjeeling at seven thousand feet, based itself permanently there after Japan's quick conquest of Burma. By 1944 however, the tide of the war had clearly turned and the need for the New School receded, as passage back to Britain became more reliable and safer. It was agreed to close the School. 

In 1990 a 50th Anniversary celebration was held, at St Anne's College in Oxford, and this book Harrow on the Hooghly was the outcome of a desire to put together some sort of written history. It was organised and written by John Lethbridge, one of the 80 ex pupils who were able to attend. He sent round a questionnaire and received 59 replies and 47 reminiscences.

Sadly, my mother Molly wasn't one of them. 

There was a letter from John Lethbridge slipped into this copy of the book, regretting that he hadn't had my mother's address when the reunion was organised. She attended the School in its first two years, and then the family seems to have moved further West, and she continued at the Loreto Convent School in Simla. But my grandparents were mainly based in Bengal, since my grandfather was, I think, an engineer(?) on the Bengal and Nagpur Railway, and Calcutta/Kolkata was the capital of Bengal.

You'll see six photos here. They're not from the book (which is well illustrated with photos and simple maps of the School's locations in Calcutta and Darjeeling), but five are from amongst my mother's photos. They are only loosely related to the subject, but perhaps add a little to the theme of the narrative. Of course my mother was quite young (she was born in 1926) and there aren't many pictures from that time anyway. This one shows a Tibetan monastery in Darjeeling. The town is just South of Sikkim, still independent in those days, as was Tibet a little further North.

So how easy was it to create a functioning school in such short order? Finding good qualified staff was unsurprisingly hard, and keeping them on harder still. The book does explain that things were quite chaotic for a year or two, but also that the staff was surprisingly stable for the last two years. As for the physical reality of the school, there was never an identifiable campus, and in fact there was no major construction of any kind of accommodation, except for a few structures in Darjeeling, 1940s equivalents of Portakabins. The school existed scattered among a hodgepotch of disparate buildings and sites around Calcutta and even in a small hill town like Darjeeling. Finding buildings was made relatively easier by the circumstances of the war; there were many abandoned or unoccupied buildings with absentee owners, some quite substantial. It probably helped with aspects like boarding and the coeducational nature of the school, to be using separate sites.

(Picture: "Seen on a walk") Anyone reading this is bound to be wondering, isn't this all taking place against the backdrop of the end of Empire? Isn't the New School an example of the cosseted and artificial world sustained for the benefit of the British colonial elite? Yes, it is. And it's inevitable that the reminiscences of the book, fifty years on, are filtered through the rose tinted lenses of nostalgia. Especially since they involve school days and childhood. There are many Indian characters who feature in the book, though usually named according to their function, such as cook or ayah (nanny). Relationships are often warm and generous, but even then they're obviously dependent relationships. It's hard to judge, but contemporary attitudes seem to have been very variable, especially among the staff. I'll mention the Head in a minute, but many of the staff appear to have been progressive for the time, both politically and in educational matters. And one reads more than once of regrets by some teachers and others about condescending attitudes from pupils towards the Indians. On the other hand, in the face of the appalling Bengal famine of 1943, the pupils were energetic in fundraising and concern (whether they knew quite how responsible the British were, one can't say). The picture isn't simple. The British came into a social system that was already highly stratified, ie. the caste system. The British slotted in neatly at the top. And there was class snobbery among the British as well. You knew your place. At the very top was the renowned ICS, the Indian Civil Service. The "heaven-born". A familiar fact bears repeating: India, this extraordinary, huge, complex land was administered by a mere 600 individuals, the members of the ICS. Out of ~275 pupils at the New School, 15 were children of ICS officials.

The School was always stretched in what it could offer. Sport has eternally been a prerequisite of any British school, especially private ones; and even in its limited circumstances the School did put together teams playing cricket, boxing, hockey (both sexes) and netball. Few recorded any victories. But the pupils didn't lack for exercise, especially up in Darjeeling. Most would experience dramatic improvements on moving down to the plains from the rarified air of the hills. They loved the hills, the views of the Himalayas (Darjeeling is close to Kanchenjunga, 3rd highest mountain on Earth), trekking or just the constant climbing and descents of the 'khud', the hillsides, to and from School. And their time in Darjeeling was book ended by a consummate treat, since some enjoyed an adventurous drive by station wagon (picture: on the way to Siliguri), and others on the fantastic Darjeeling Himalaya Railway, known as the Toy Train, a narrow gauge railway obliged to tackle the steep gradients by means of Z-bends and in some places, complete loops over itself.

Despite those rose tinted spectacles, Harrow on the Hooghly - the soul of the New School was surely more in Darjeeling than in Calcutta - does feel like a fair and fully dimensional portrait. There are allusions for instance to a degree of bullying early on. And the staff certainly weren't perfect. One teacher left 'under a cloud'; but a more general problem was the uneven standard of the teaching, which couldn't be helped. They had to take what they could get. Considering everything, the New School was remarkably fortunate, especially in acquiring the services of their Headmaster, Harold Loukes. He was an Oxford man, a lifelong Quaker with several books to his name, a respected educationalist and on the evidence of exam results, a very good and inspiring teacher. The first picture (Googled!) above shows him in later life with two of his children; there's an even chance that the young man next to him there is also in the picture below, taken by my mother, I assume during her time at the School: "Joyce Lee, Drake Hocking, and Anthony Loukes".

Many of the teachers are spoken of with affection and admiration, they must have changed some lives. But the ethos of the School was undoubtedly set by Harold Loukes. Many pupils who moved back to England to school for 'proper' education, were very unhappy in the face of the grey and restrictive schooling offered there. Some comment that back in Britain a coeducational school was likely to be severe and admonishing regarding any contact between boy and girl pupils. Harold Loukes was having none of that sort of attitude. He addressed the issue at the start, telling the pupils that they were well brought up and he trusted them. No scandals are recorded during the School's time. As for corporal punishment, he was set against it. Although on one occasion a boy exasperated him so much he did reach for a cane. He would have been gloomily resigned to the result: the boy was of course received as a hero by many of the girls.

In contrast to sport, the New School excelled in its drama productions, both with classical plays and with revues and also musical concerts. People paid money and turned up to see them. And there was a lively Debating Society, and achievements in art and craft. Perhaps a book like this is bound to puff up such things, but the impression one receives is that students were flourishing on the whole, and most were happy. 

As for my mother Molly, she's only mentioned a couple of times in passing, secondly as having gone on to teach in kindergarten. This is only part of the story; she joined up as soon as she was allowed - here she is in uniform - and became a Wasbie (Women's Auxiliary Service Burma), providing support to General Slim's army. Supposedly behind the front lines, but a friend of hers told me Molly had come under sniper fire at one point. At the end of the war she was mentioned in dispatches. I didn't appreciate at first the significance of that: it's a humble little bravery award, an unostentatious oak leaf cluster. She came down in a Liberator crash (large four engined aircraft) in a paddy field near Calcutta, and despite a broken back kept the pilot's head above water until help came. 

During the course of the New School's existence quite a few pupils left to join up, and some of them were casualties. After VE Day, with most in Britain feeling the war was over, Slim's army and the rest of the Allies in the Far East and Pacific, had to carry on until August in 1945. They became known as, and felt themselves to be, the 'Forgotten Army'.

I hope you'll allow me the addition of my mum's story. I was bound to read Harrow on the Hooghly wanting to learn a little more about her life, especially since like so many of her generation, she had said so little about her wartime experiences. She may herself have been barely mentioned in the book, but I know she was very glad to read it, and see many of her friends feature. 

And I was very glad to read it too. It's such a poignant book; it describes a school which only had a bare, fleeting existence, which was a tiny part of something enormous ie the British Empire which was soon to vanish like dust in the hot desert wind; but which touched the lives of a few hundred people. In special and unique ways, perhaps, thanks to the remarkable talents and personality of Harold Loukes. Now, anyone who was there has almost certainly passed away. But if you're reading this maybe you've Googled a parent or grandparent who might have been there, or the New School itself. If like me you have such a connection, see if you can find this book, it'd be worth your time reading it.