Lady Barbara Pitts

Gran

 

Barbara spent the first half of her long life in India. Her father, a lawyer for the British Raj and her mother, a medical missionary from highborn family, were part of the fabric of British India. She was educated in a girls’ boarding school in England, that was perhaps more of a finishing school than a real education. She once told me, that for a woman of her era and social class, there was only one really free choice she had to make. Initially her parents were not keen on her choice of husband, a man from poor background albeit of exceptional ability. But in this, as in all matters of judgment, Barbara proved more discerning than most. In another time, her intuitive understanding of people, her ability to engage and influence them, and her captivating gift to entertain, and her penchant or organizing, would have stood her in good stead in many respected professions. As it was, she devoted these gifts to the success of her husband’s career and to those of us lucky enough to have been in her life. Her story, which covers the last 25 years of British rule in India, partition and independence, and then a return to England in middle age for a very different life, is very much the story of the partnership and success that Barbara and Cyril build together on a love that burnt strong and enduring for 66 years.

 

Born as the weaker of twin girls, there was some concern that Barbara would not survive the night after her birth. Her mother had returned from India after having lost twin boys at birth, who were stillborn during a terrible storm with very limited medical support. Barbara proved tougher than she looked of course; her 98 years and many tennis titles a testament to her under-estimated strength.

 

Once the girls were strong enough, her mother took them home to India, where Hazel and Barbara spent their early years with their parents and their older brother David. One of Barbara’s many talents was her gift of storytelling, something I am told she inherited from her Grandfather Canon Edward Sell, who she loved. One of my favourite of Barbara’s stories is from this period of her childhood in India. At the end of the family garden, lived their gardener and his family. One day the gardener came to the house to invite her family to visit to see his firstborn child. On arriving at the gardener’s cottage for this joyful introduction, Barbara and Hazel noticed a little girl, about 5, shyly peering out from behind the gardener’s wife’s sari. When they asked the gardener who she was, he replied that she was nobody. It turned out that this girl was infact his firstborn, not the newborn son he proudly presented. Barbara and Hazel, who were only a few years older than the girl, persisted with their questions. They discovered that the girl would never attend school. They agreed to pool their pocket money to send the girl, despite her father’s reluctance. Many years later, when Barbara was in charge of a large house of her own, a visitor came. She was preparing for one of her legendary parties, but welcomed the unknown visitor. It was the gardener, now old and blind with cateract, supported by his wife. After 35 years, he had tracked her down. He had come to thank her. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he described his gratitude. He was no longer able to work. His son had grown up, become a mechanic and had a family of his own to support. His daughter had become a doctor, and had refused to marry. She was the one to support the family and the one who had brought great pride to her ageing father.

 

Barbara and Hazel returned to England to boarding school, Beehive in Bexhill. I remember that Barbara used to joke that the only thing she learnt was terrible French that no French person could understand. The school had a rule that the girls could only speak to each other in French, which led to a whole new anglo-french dialect emerging; only comprehensible to the residents of Beehive themselves. With Hazel at her side, Barbara was never lonely at school, and despite only seeing her mother once a year, and her father, once every four years, the girls seemed to thrive. Both girls were accomplished dancers and sportswomen, playing both hockey and tennis for Sussex County.

 

By 1939 however, Barbara’s father Wilfred could see the storm clouds looming over Europe. He got his beloved twins on one of the last peace-time liners out to India. He went to pick them up at the wharf searching, so Barbara described it, for his two little twins (he had last seen them 4 years earlier) and completely failed to recognise the two stylish young women at 17 desperately waiving and shouting to attract his attention.

 

For Barbara and Hazel, the drama and emancipation that made up their war time experience, made this in some ways the most interesting time of their lives. Barbara worked in a hospital for Indian mothers and babies as a nursing assistant. And both twins worked as dancers with a military theatrical company sent out to entertain the troops – unimaginable for two upper class young colonial women with close ties to the Madras cathedral, were it not for the war.

 

Dancing of course, was what brought her to Cyril. Standing in for one of her friends who was ill, she found herself partnered with one Cyril Pitts, already commissioned in the Indian Navy. They were married in 1943 and moved to Cochin where they lived in scruffy military quarters and had a fine time. This is where the cobra story comes from – a favourite of many of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren alike. Their quarters had an outhouse as a bathroom, and Barbara was using the facilities one day, when, to her horror, she saw a king cobra rising up a few feet in front of her. She was always a good shot, and so she carefully took her knickers off, threw them on the cobra’s head and bolted out the door. Cyril was dispatched with his pistol to shoot it dead shortly after her escape.

 

Katie was born in Madras in 1944, and once Cyril returned from the Indian Navy to ICI, the family moved to Bombay (Mumbai) where Tony was born in 1946, followed by Jonny in 1950. Barbara was a tremendous actress as well as being an accomplished dancer and athlete. There were plays, and reviews, dances, and tennis tournaments. It is hard to imagine this life from my desk looking out at rainy and locked down pandemic-ridden New York City where I sit, but Barbara made it sound full of light, colour and laughter. Her children describe hearing Cyril’s beautiful tenor voice floating on the breeze as he sang her love songs in the evenings.

 

This of course was also the period of India’s independence and partition. Cyril was a believer in India’s independence, and Barbara used her evocative story-telling to conjure impressions of the important leaders of that time that they met such as Gandhi, Nehru (who she greatly admired), and Mountbatten (who she described as exceedingly vain). She lived through the violence of partition, and described the madness of sectarianism.

 

Cyril wanted to contribute to India’s success as an independent nation. Talented, magnetic and ambitious, he moved rapidly through the layers of management in ICI and in 1955 the family moved to Calcutta where the ICI headquarters was located. The move to Calcutta meant a place on the board of directors and eventually the chairmanship of ICI India, the chair of the first Bengal and then the All Indian Associated Chambers of Commerce and a knighthood for Cyril. All this meant big changes for Barbara, now a big (bara) memsahib, with a house of 29 staff to run, hostess and organizer of important events, seats on the boards of important charities. Elegant, charming, perceptive Barbara was in her element. She still made time for her love of the stage and dancing, and her daughter Katie fondly remembers performing alongside her mother in the Calcutta Club House in the Christmas reviewed (that Cyril directed every year). They tap-danced Tea for Two, with a tray of tea carefully balanced on their outstretched hands. On the last beat of the piece, they turned their trays upside down to reveal their props were in fact stuck to the tray, to much hilarity and applause.

 

In was in this period of her life, that Barbara went to work with Mother Theresa in her orphanage in Calcutta to look after the babies. She always had a way with little children, and this experience clearly left its mark on her. Even in her last years, she kept a picture of Mother Theresa on her wall. She used to tell me Mother Theresa would speak to her often, even though by that stage, she could no longer remember who she was.

 

One of my favourite stories of this period, was Barbara’s tale of the Thanksgiving dinner she hosted for some important Canadian guests. Her Canadian visitor has asked her chef to find a turkey, but he searched and searched and was unable to find anything resembling a turkey in the local market. The Canadian guest was insistent there must be a turkey-like bird for the celebration. On his third attempt the chef returned very pleased with a ‘very big bird’ for the occasion. The bird was duly cooked and proudly produced. As the bird sat in the centre of her dining table, Barbara realized to her horror that the chef had served her guests a vulture.

 

Around 1968/9, Cyril and Barbara said their farewells to India and returned to England. They lived in St John’s Wood in London. Cyril was coming home, he was born and raised within the sound of Bow bells, and anyway had a big, demanding, international job at the ICI headquarters in Millbank, but Barbara was a long way from her Indian home in a time that history had radically changed. She missed the warmth of the people and the society she had known.

 

Moving back to England brought some benefits. Barbara was now much closer to much of her family. She was once again in the same place as her beloved twin sister, and able to be a huge part of her older grandchildren’s lives (Mark and Cleone first, and then Emily, Laura and Tim). When Katie moved back to England, Cleone, aged 5, spent a happy year living with Barbara and Cyril during the working week whilst Katie went back to school. She remembers making potions out of Barbara’s Chanel No.5 and the incredible characters she would play in their games. It was about this time that Barbara had cataract operations and could not see well at all. She told Cleo that she trusted her to be her eyes, and so they would walk to school the little girl guiding her grandmother across the roads.

 

By the time Emily, Laura and Tim arrived in the early 1980s, Barbara and Cyril had bought a beautiful house in Dorset called Lynch DairyMead which, for me and the other grandkids, is the source of many wonderful childhood memories. My Grandfather once told me that the house was where it was because as a boy he had come on a scouts’ trip to West Bay. It was the first time he had seen the sea, and had fallen in love with it. He had promised he would return, and so they did to Lynch DairyMead. I could never do justice to the stories Barbara would tell us each night as we went to bed, but it was always a highlight of our many visits.

 

By the mid-80s, Barbara and Cyril had sold their London house and moved to Farnham. Barbara taught herself to paint beautifully with water-colours, and in her 70s, learnt the piano. I will always remember her playing the old classics, and Cyril and I would sing at her side. Farnham was not a very eventful place, but I was always eager to stay with them for the world of imagination and fun they created in that house. Barbara was never quite as ready a customer as Cyril for the hair salon Emily and I set up, but she was always a wonderful dance partner, piano player, story-teller and game-player. Eduardo and Naima, Kai, Taran and Tia all experienced some of the magic that she could create.

 

Barbara led a fascinating life, full of love and adventure. With love of course also comes loss. The loss of her much-loved brother David to cancer in middle age left its mark. Living to such a great age as Barbara did, you have to bear the loss of many of those you love. She struggled to come to terms with the loss of her twin Hazel at 81, a full 17 years before she herself passed away. She always thought they would live out their final days together. But it was Cyril’s death that she did not really recover from. Theirs was a story intertwined together and it couldn’t be undone. We will miss her everyday, but it brings me some peace to know that she is once again with him and he with her. Perhaps she can now hear his lovely tenor voice once again singing ‘When I fall in Love, it will be forever.’