Yes, I had three grandfathers. Two I never met. One was an army officer in British India. One was a drunk and a poet.
The third was a Yorkshireman, and became an orchardist. He brought his family – my Nana, my Uncle Ian, my Mum and my Aunty Franki – out to Tasmania. Where I was born.
2.
My mother’s father, The Colonel (I never heard him called anything else) was Hugh Maclean Halliday, born in Bengal. And buried there, dead at 54, among First World War casualties – listed as a ‘supernumerary, unattached’. A less than brilliant student at school in England, and not good at the soldiering either – but destined for it by family tradition – his position was clerical before the War.
That’s him on the beach, in his army shorts and solar topee.
He never knew about me. He died in 1920. I was born in 1939.
Nor about my brother, his other grandchild, born in 1943. (He had one legitimate son, old records tell us, who married but never had children.)
He told my dark-skinned Nana he had a wife back home in a mental hospital. Hearing the story, I thought ‘home’ must mean Scotland. But maybe not. His wife too, I learn from those old records, was born in India, into another of those British families there for generations.
Mum told me that when she was young, Nana regularly urged her,
'It's time to write a letter to the Colonel. Let him know how you're getting on at school. Tell him about the good marks you got.'
She dutifully did, but she found it puzzling. She didn’t understand, then, that he was her father.
Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #52.
Part 1 appears in the previous post, Part 3 in the following post.
Very global footprint indeed! I remember reading years ago that solar was the anglicized version of the word for pith ..from which those helmets were made.. Must google and check!
ReplyDeleteI always thought it just meant 'sun helmet' – but (having Googled it myself now) I see that 'solar' in this case is a corruption of 'sola' which does indeed mean 'pith'.
DeleteOh these installments are too short...I knew that Nana was interesting. Enjoyed this.Looking forward to reading more....Rall
ReplyDeleteBut it was Grandma you were interested in, last episode. (*Grin*.) Both my grandmothers were very interesting, in very different ways.
DeleteWhen did she realized that her mother was talking about her father? That had to be quite the shock.
ReplyDeleteAh, it was so long after the event that I heard these stories – but I think it was not until she was an adult that she put the pieces together, and not until I was that she told me the true family history. There's no doubt about it, however. For one thing, some obvious family resemblances between the Colonel and my little brother.
DeleteHow far flung we all are in one way or another. Some of my Irish ancestors were born in India.
ReplyDeleteFascinating, when one starts to delve.
DeleteThe Colonel, he must have been an interesting character. I do not know my paternal grandmother, she was dead when I was born. I only know about her from a photograph.
ReplyDeleteI wish I knew more about him. But by the time I wanted more details, there was no-one around who could really answer those questions.
DeleteOh wow! That must have been something of a shock to your mother when she put the pieces together.
ReplyDeleteI expect so. But it was a long time before she told me all the truth, concerned to play it down until I was grown up, so I have very few details about her reactions.
DeleteOh my, the stories we hand down from generation to generation. Truths, half-truths, untruths .... fascinating ... as is the photo you shared.
ReplyDeleteYes! For many years, growing up, when I asked if we had any Indian blood (wanting fervently to have that heritage) Mum told me, 'Oh no, we have some Spanish ancestry' – a lie told also to part-Aboriginal children here, and in both cases intended to protect us from racial discrimination.
DeleteHow fascinating, Rosemary! Were your mum's parents apart the whole time then? Was your Nana dark-skinned because she was Indian? Did he really have a wife in a mental hospital somewhere? I have only questions, ha ha! I'm intrigued :-)
ReplyDeleteI’m having to do some guessing. I suppose they never lived together, but he may have been stationed nearby when she was the matron of a hospital in Puri. Mum vaguely remembered that he was a visitor to the home when she was little, but recalled no overt father-daughter interaction.
DeleteI can find no confirmation that his wife was ever in a mental home – but what records we can find are scant.
Nana’s mother, Jane, was Anglo-Indian, probably illegitimate (daughter of ‘a high class English judge’ according to family tales, but who was brought up in an orphanage-school, presumably at his expense). Nana’s father, Jane’s husband Léon Pereira, was Goanese – that is, Portuguese + Indian, and assuredly legitimate himself, as the Portuguese were not afflicted with race prejudice like the British.