1950s: 1960s: Naomi Mitchison: Correspondence with Aitkenhead
Novelist and poet and social commentator
Naomi Mitchison (1960- Baron Studios)
Unfortunately, Naomi never put the year of writing on any of her letters. The following extracts may thyerefiore not be in chronological order. The one shown below was written to Aitkenhead about a copy of the Kilquhanity Broadsheet that she she had received at Carradale House:
From Carradale House (undated)
Dear John,
This is awfully good. I think your pictures (childrens) of cows and pigs quite excellent and full of accurate observation, and in general a great feeling for nature. The bit about the School Council is so good too.
This drought is getting serious, isn’t it. I get so fed up with holiday people wishing it would go on. I’ve been pretty busy and have the house full too. A new granddaughter! My brother was here, like a terribly sweet but rather overwhelming elephant.
Do give my love to Val, whose material I specially liked. I shall be snding her a book in a bit.
From Carradale House (cMarch 1956):
Dear John,
I am sorry not to have answered your letters; I had been ill – jaundice or some nonsense – and then went to Egypt for a month. I came back feeling much better, but now feel awful. Ever since I got back people have been at me for one thing and another. If only I had someone to help. However I am going south again where at least it is rather a different kind of interruption. I suppose what all women who do a lot of work need is a good wife. The whole bloody set-up is weighted against us still.
I really do sympathise with you and your inspectors. Yes, of course one must lie to authority. But cleverly.
I’m surprised that Neill wants to teach. But if he does it means he really has a vocation. I hope the training won’t put him off! Maybe he would come over some day, perhaps in summer. There are usually some young about. I will send books when I am here next. Do you want signed books only or would any books in good condition be useful? I am in the middle of an enormous educational scheme, a kind of outline of knowledge for fifteen to eighteen year olds. Meanwhile my eleven grandchildren likely to increase to fourteen this year. Val having her third and finding things pretty difficult. If only she could collect some kind of decent mother’s help! These German girls are such a gamble and there is nothing else.
Well, sorry to be gloomy, but I could do a lot if I had the time which all runs down the drain with a lot of nitwits.
Naomi
From Harcourt Buildings, Naomi’s London Address; 11th October:
Dear John,
I wonder if you would like to put me up for a couple of nights over the Castle Douglas sale?
This week I am in London. Val has got herself engaged to be married to Mark Arnold Forster (journalist and historian who famously wrote the TV series The World At War). I must say he is one of the very nicest young men I have ever come across and I begin to feel mildly maternal about him; Val is much too possessive, going round like a bitch with a bone in her mouth, but he seems to put up with it. She cooks very well indeed nowadays!
District Office, UYO, by Aba, Eastern Nigeria (23nd February c1956/7)
Dear John,
Your letter turned up just before I started off for Nigeria. I’m doing some writing – intend to earn my plane fare in American papers! And as you can see I am staying with Ian (Orchardson). He is terribly bad at writing and tells me he hasn’t kept in touch, which is naughty of him. But he is doing very, very well, I think. He is a splendid looking young chap now, still very much of an athlete and goes for runs in the evenings – very un-English but equally very un-Nigerian. His wife, who is a charmer (white!) is at the moment in London; they are expecting the first baby in May and it is probably sensible to have it in England. It wll be difficult for her here but I think she will be able to cope.
Ian is obviously doing the job as capably as possible, and is liked and accepted. At the moment he is deep in election preparations, which have to be done from the District Offices. Politics here is madly corrupt, though one hopes this is a stage which will be grown out of. They have just passed a hurried law about impersonation!
He has a bungalow here with one big sitting room, two bedrooms and a bath etc, depending on water which os brought up the hill on the backs of a string of ‘his’ convicts, who also use the old bath water to water the garden, where he has managed to grow a few beans and lettuces in dreadfully sandy soil. When the Tilley lamps are lit in the evenings the strangest creatures come in – last night a praying mantis, and masses of handsome but rather alarming beetles.
There are lots of books and he hasn’t got into the bad habit of unlimited gin, which is such a bore in most places. I don’t find I want alcohol at all in this steamy weather.
. . . The people are awfully nice, very friendly and oddly clean. The women wear lovely draped dresses of beautiful cotton – lovely design and colour – all made in Manchester, though one can’t get them there.
Earlier on I was in some very wild country, real thick jungle that you couldn’t see a yard through, all matted with creepers and ferns, with enormous outrageously large trees clawing their way through to the light. Crossing a river in a dug-out canoe was exciting too.
We had a bit of bad luck in January, as the horrible Herring Industry Board is selling up all the grant and loan boats which couldn’t pay in the bad times – and finally force us to sell our’s (boat). It is really a shame, as there is now a chance of herring again in the Clyde. And the Secretary of the board was extremely offensive.
Now, you really should try your stories on the BBC children’s hour. Write down one or two and see how they go. The Glasgow people always want things with a Scots background, and you should say I advised you.
Naomi
The reverse of the photograph written by Naomi:
'1an just 8 I think. Just before he came to Britain for school. He is wearing a cap he made himself.'
Naomi Mitchison had her own ‘affair’ with Africa and made regular visits with a determination to make ‘improvements’ to the life of it’s people. She wrote for the Manchester Guardian about her attendance at the celebration to announce Ghana independence and the inauguration of President Kwame Nkrumah. (As a personal coincidence the Pyle family were also in Ghana at that time, my father, lecturing in Religion at the university of Accra). Naomi wrote about Nkrumah’s speech:
. . . after the last few words he burst into a dance of achievement and joy which was taken up all round. But not by the journalists, who piled back into their buses, most of their minds on drinks and typewriters, a few slightly shocked at the carry-on. . . I slipped into the High Life, a constant bath of happiness.
Jenni Calder, Mitchison’s biographer, wrote in The Burning Glass:
‘The liveliness and colour of West Africa captivated Naomi. The vivid expression of identity also stirred her. At the opening of the Ghana parliament she wore a tartan scarf, ‘the nearest a poor news-girl could get to national costume’. The gesture was important to her.’
From Carradale House: 12th September
I rather gather you aren’t coming this year – too busy like me! Could you send a Kilquhanity prospectus to Mrs Martin, Lusaka, Zambia? She has two little girls, quite bright, I think, but one has had some kind of hip infection and has to do a lot of lying down. . . They are half ‘Coloured’ she is a white south African who had to leave in a hurry; her husband is a very nice coloured chap, educated, but of course you know how it is. I helped him through Botswana and have known them both for years.
John and Morag and the Children would regularly spend some of the Summer holiday with car and caravan at Carradale, Naomi’s Scottish base.
Dear Morag and John,
That was a very sweet poem – I do so know the feeling. Here am I supposed to be so attached to Carradale and all that, but really my roots were on the slope of the Ochills on the far side. It isn’t nearly as beautiful, I suppose, but that isn’t everything. Ah well, jobs and other people shoveo ne around don’t they.
At the moment I’m in London but hope to get back to Africa next month. And that home place is likely to be in bad trouble. I can see it being fought over by South Africa and Zimbabwe plus any other states. What a mess we are making. And allowing ourselves to be filled up with nuclear weapons as a front line for America!
Meanwhile the SNP seems to be dead, and its own fault. We have the hell of a stupid Tory as Argyll MP.
From Carradale House: 17th November
. . . Good to hear of your family. I envy you having them so near. I am going into winter quarters in Val’s London basement. Heating this house is really too much. Most of my grandchildren seem headed for science in some form, though the youngest is passionately anti-intellectual and has decided to devote her time to tap-dancing. She goes to the toughest comprehensive in Islington so probably it is all self-defence. Val’s Kate has a lovely job, having been chosen to be archivist in a tiny museum – but all her own. Neil deep in Gaelic, pleased to hear of your progress. I could wish I didn’t get so rheumatic but one can’t have everything.
p.s. I have now started a proper caravan site – lovely on a fine day! But we shall have to put the prices up a bit next year.
Naomi Mitchison writing in Saltire Self Portraits 1986
Back in the forties it seemed only a matter of a few years before we could see Scotland a recognised nation with at least some degree of genuine self-government, which could be enlarged through time. This has not happened. I am certain that it is necessary for all our sakes. I am also still certain, a I became in the fifties and sixties, that until there is some form of public landownership in Scotland, and above all in the highlands and Islands, there will still be a problem of rural unemployment and unhappiness. Over the last twenty years far too much of both the Highland and the Lowland areas of Scotland have been closed off by private owners or by Government.
This has been worsened by the establishment of NATO bases, almost entirely manned by American troops and usually, perhaps always, with nuclear potential. The people of Scotland have had no say about this. We are supposed to acquiesce in the abolishment of all civil rights, . . .
Anger is growing. Ways out have to be found and taken. There may not be much time left. I am getting near my nineties; I would like to see some of this before I die. (Page 33)
Naomi sent two of her daughters to Kilquhanity and was instrumental in the arrival of Ian Orchardson, the first black child to attend.
