Deborah Baker - The last Englishmen : love, war, and the end of empire

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Copyright 2018 by Deborah Baker

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Poetry excerpts from Mountains, Letter to William Coldstream, Esq., Tell Me the Truth About Love, Memorial for the City, Palais des Beaux-Artes, and Everest copyright 1930, 1937, 1940, 1952, 1994 by W. H. Auden, renewed. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. and Penguin Random House. Unpublished excerpts from the letters and expedition journals of Michael Spender are quoted with the permission of the Estate of Michael Spender; unpublished excerpts from the letters and journals of J. B. Auden are quoted with the permission of Anita Money; quotations from W. H. Audens letters and his unpublished Berlin Diary are quoted with the permission of his executor, Edward Mendelson. Excerpts from Autumn Journal first published by Faber and Faber and the unpublished India Diary by Louis MacNeice, parts of which appear in Selected Prose of Louis MacNeice first published by the Clarendon Press, are quoted with the permission of the Louis MacNeice Estate and the David Higham Agency, Ltd.

This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

Published by Graywolf Press

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Published in the United States of America

Printed in Canada

ISBN 978-1-55597-804-4

Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-994-2

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

First Graywolf Printing, 2018

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017953357

Jacket design: Kimberly Glyder

Jacket art: Photograph of John Auden in Karakoram courtesy of Philip Spender

For Lila

I am the last Englishman to rule in India .

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

Explorers and the Royal Geographical Society

John Auden, geologist of the Geological Survey of India

Michael Spender, surveyor and mapmaker

Arthur L. Hinks, secretary of RGS and Mount Everest Committee

Eric Shipton, explorer, leader of the 1935 reconnaissance of Everest

Bill Tilman, mountaineer and leader of the 1938 Everest expedition

Bill Wager, Greenland geologist and Everester

Frank Smythe, leader of the 1931 climb of Kamet, Everester

Hugh Ruttledge, leader of the 1933, 1936 Everest expeditions

Sir Francis Younghusband, first president of Mount Everest Committee, explorer, soldier

English Writers

W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, Louis MacNeice, and George Orwell

London Art Crowd

Nancy Sharp, William Coldstream, and Sonia Brownell, the Euston Road Venus

Calcutta Parichay Adda

Sudhindranath Datta, poet, intellectual, founding editor of Parichay

Apurba Chanda, school friend of Sudhins, secretary to Tagore, civil servant and later secretary to Shaheed Suhrawardy

Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel laureate, patron of Parichay

Basanta Kumar Mallik, Oxford flaneur, philosopher, author of the theory of conflict

Hassan Shahid Suhrawardy, professor of art history, Russophile and anti-Bolshevist

Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, rogue brother of Shahid, Muslim League politician

Susobhan Sarkar, professor of art history, Calcutta University

Hirendranath Mukherjee, lecturer in history and political philosophy, Calcutta University

Humphry House, Oxford friend of Susobhan Sarkar, lapsed cleric, professor of literature, Calcutta University

Michael John Carritt, Indian Civil Service officer

Reverend Michael Scott, vicar

Mulk Raj Anand, novelist, Indian nationalist

Protap, Bharat, Minnie, Anila, and Sheila Bonnerjee, grandchildren of W. C. Bonnerjee, first Indian president of Indian National Congress

Lindsay Emmerson, editor of the Statesman

Sinbad Sinclair, Burmah Shell executive and husband of Elinor

Jamini Roy, painter

Sarojini Naidu, poet and Congress leader

Secret diarist

Relatives

George Augustus and Constance Rosalie Auden, parents of Bernard, John, and Wystan

Harold and Violet Spender, parents of Michael, Christine, Stephen, and Humphrey

Aunt May and Uncle John Alfred Spender, editor of Westminster Gazette, writer on India, uncle to Spender children

Uncle George Ernest Schuster, finance minister of India, uncle to Spender children

Granny Schuster, guardian of Spender children

Erika Haarmann, Michael Spenders German first wife

Margaret Marshall, John Audens analyst and first wife

Nationalists and Communists, Die Hards and Conservatives

Mohandas Gandhi, leader of the Civil Disobedience campaigns of 192022, the 1930 Salt March, the 1942 Quit India Uprising, and the Indian National Congress

Motilal Nehru, leader of the Indian National Congress, father of Jawaharlal

Jawaharlal Nehru, leader of the Indian National Congress

Subhas Chandra Bose, Bengali revolutionary, wayward member of Congress

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the All India Muslim League

P. C. Joshi, first general secretary of the Communist Party of India

M. N. Roy, founder of the Mexican Communist Party, the Communist Party of India, member of the Comintern

Ben Bradley, secretary, League Against Imperialism, leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain, convicted in Meerut Conspiracy Case

S. S. Mirajkar, member of the Communist Party of India, convicted in Meerut Conspiracy Case

Winston Churchill, former subaltern, Die Hard, prime minister of wartime Britain

Lady Poppy Houston, Die Hard, aviation patroness

Sir John Anderson, governor of Bengal, minister of civil defense of London, member of War Cabinet

Victor Alexander John Hope, 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow, longest-serving viceroy of India, 193643

Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India during the war

I first came across the papers of John Bicknell Auden while looking for a way to write about India during World War II. Very few books had looked at the war and the decade that preceded it from the point of view of those for whom the Second World War meant finally getting out from under British rule. From 1926 until 1953 John Auden was a geologist with the Geological Survey of India. Among his papers I found a number of letters from his circle of Bengali friends in Calcutta, as well as from his fellow Himalayan explorers. There were also decades of letters from his younger brother, Wystan. W. H. Auden is so closely identified with the English writers who came of age between the wars that they have come to be known as the Auden generation.