Violet

By Dianne Barr

'Violet' is based on the life of Violet Constance Guy, who in her 90’s was just another quiet elderly person in a New Zealand rest home, her story partly known by a few and soon to be forgotten by all.

From a life on a rubber plantation in the times of the early European settlement of Malaysia, boarding school in Singapore and a voyage on a Japanese freighter into war time England, Violet is a story of strength, sadness, courage and determination. It is a vivid illustration of how a positive attitude to life can overcome adversity.

It is also an account of servitude, suffrage and strength of women in the early 1900's. It serves as a reminder for us to applaud the efforts of the people who came before us and appreciate the difficulties they faced as well as the inventions and discoveries of the things that we now take for granted.

Family history is a tangle of half remembered events. 'Violet' is recorded as a historical narrative with family stories interwoven with characters and events that existed in the times. 'Violet' will touch your heart and inspire you to ask questions of the ones you love and to keep their stories alive for future generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dianne Barr
• Release date: Dec 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310195792

Dianne Barr

Dianne Barr was born in England and emigrated to New Zealand while young. For some years Dianne used pottery and sculpture as her creative outlet, selling and exhibiting her work in Auckland and around the country. Now living in Melbourne she is finding time to follow her love of the written word.Her first book, Beam Me Back To Venus was the result of years of writing humorous poetry for friends and family events. Her inspiration was from English poet Pam Ayers, whose work she had enjoyed for many years. Being a busy mother, the topic of parenting was a natural source of material.Dianne's first novel, Violet, is a labour of love, aimed at preserving the memory of her husbands grandmother and to serve as a reminder of the strength and courage of generations past that mould the people we are today.

Book preview

Violet

THE PAST SHAPES OUR FUTURE

Based on a true story

DIANNE BARR

Copyright 2012 Dianne Barr

Smashwords Edition

First self published in Australia 2012

Cover design Dianne Barr

First printed by Albumworks 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Disclaimer:

All historical characters and events have been represented as close to the researched details available and no connection to the mentioned family may have occurred. Some licence has been taken in the timing of events but care taken to be as accurate as possible. No disrespect is meant to any of the living members of family represented in this work and all care has been taken to portray a balanced account.

Special thanks to Trevor for his patience while I have been engrossed in this project.

To Christina, Alex and Libby who bravely fended off potential starvation while I was otherwise distracted.

My wonderful friends Sharon and Alex, thank you for your editing help and advice, supply of good wine and a space to think.

This book is written so we do not forget the sacrifices and struggles of the past which helped to make us the people we are today.

In Memory of

Violet Constance Guy

1907-1999

The more I live, the more I realise the impact of attitude on life.

It is more important than education, than money, than circumstance, than failures, than successes, than whatever anyone might say or do.

It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.

The remarkable thing is that we have the choice to create the attitude we have for that day.

We cannot change the past. We cannot change the way people act. We cannot change the inevitable.

The one thing we can change is the only thing we have control over, and that is our attitude.

I'm convinced that life is 10% what actually happens to us and 90% how we react to it.

Charles Swindal

Table of Contents

Violet Singapore 1917

Walter Kuala Lumpur 1898

NADIRA The Plantation 1898

The Plantation House Malaya 1898

Between the Trees Kuala Lumpur 1900

Constance Kuala Lumpur 1901

Walter Port Swettenham 1901

Walter and Constance Kuala Lumpur 1902

Constance and Violet Kuala Lumpur 1907

Violet and Nadira Kuala Lumpur 1910

Ethel Kuala Lumpur 1911

Raffels Girl's School Singapore 1913

Violet Kuala Lumpur 1916

Violet The Kamo Maru 1917

Violet England 1917

Violet 1921

Violet Kingswood 1925-1929

Violet and Arthur Surrey 1929-1931

The Guy Family Surrey 1931-1939

Nadira Malaya 1939

Acknowledgements

Violet

Singapore

1917

The lifeless eyes stared up from the folds of her floral dress, her perfect porcelain skin, unmarked and cared for. She was loved and the small hand that clutched at her would not be pried loose. They made a strange picture that day. A small girl sitting on a steamer trunk twice her size, the china doll held tightly in her lap. The girl's eyes were squeezed shut, oblivious to the chaos that swept around her.

She would not let anything in, not the stench of the fishing trawlers, the shouts from the stevedores or the screams of the gathering gulls. The clanging of chains against the docks would not disturb her from her task. Her dark hair was now damp with sweat as the temperature climbed and the humidity made her petticoats cling to her legs.

Still she would not be distracted. If she tried hard enough she could conjure up his face, maybe the smell of his clothes and the musty air of the study where she had sat on his knee while he smoked his pipe. Each passing day it seemed to become harder to remember. Today, here on the dock, it was even more important to her that she call up the face of her father once more before she left this place forever.

Violet, she heard him whisper, and he was back.

Walter

Kuala Lumpur

1898

Walter's heart was pounding as he walked down the slippery gang-plank to the crowded dock below. The port of Kelang swarmed in front of him. The air was so humid that the shirt on his back clung to him, sending rivulets of sweat running to the belt of his trousers where they pooled to form a damp ring around his waist. He breathed the dank air deep into his lungs and stepped off the final wooden board into his new life.

The activity of the docks heaved around the young man who was struggling to take in all the new sights and smells which assailed him. Men of all shades, except white, pulled wooden carts loaded down with sacks, their contents bulging alarmingly over the sides. Chinese, with pointed straw hats, balanced poles across their backs, carrying loads as they had done for centuries in their native homeland. Turbaned Indians pulled rickshaws, their thin arms corded with straining muscles.

Weaving his way through the crowds, he didn't really know what to do next. Frantically he scanned the seething masses for the familiar face of the man who was supposed to meet him. At just twenty, he had never experienced anything like this.

A small dirt-encrusted boy tugged on his coat tails, begging for some money. His imploring eyes looked up at Walter as he promised, in broken English, that in return he would find his luggage for him. Unable to refuse the offer of this insistent child, he fished in his coat pocket and found a small collection of coins.

Swift as a fox the boy grabbed them from him and disappeared into the crowd. Walter tried to follow, but the realisation dawned on him that he had been deceived. The boy was nowhere to be seen. There were many like him, scruffy and barefooted, carrying loads that seemed more than their small frames could handle.

Finally he found his small pile of trunks stacked haphazardly on the wharf, their contents neatly packed many weeks earlier by his teary-eyed mother, Emilla. Slumping down on the largest one, he thought of her and her endless lists as she tried to organise him for his departure.

England had been too confining for Walter, who craved excitement and adventure. He sought this out by joining the ranks of the police force where he had the opportunity see how other people lived outside the cosy confines of the genteel middle classes. Secretly he envied those who lived the raw life on the streets, the roughness of the working classes. When turning brawling drunkards out of the taverns he breathed in the smell of the stale beer and cheap wine and it made him feel alive. He joked with the barmaids and prostitutes who added colour to the grey streets of Portsea.

This behaviour did not necessarily endear him to his superiors, but the people of the alleyways and brothels treated him with respect. His father was wary of his son's adventurous spirit and was worried that he would drift through his life and never make anything of himself. The police force was a respectable enough occupation to belong to, but when his uniform smelt of cheap perfume and ale as he returned home after an evening's work, he suspected that Walter might easily be lead astray.

On a particularly cold, damp night, Walter was patrolling the back streets of Portsea. The area was full of houses of ill repute, seedy bars and dark alleyways. It was a night of pea soup fog, which made it hard to see his hand in front of his face. The flickering gas lights puddled pools of gold on the wet cobbled streets.

Suddenly, he heard a scuffling in a nearby lane, and pulling out his batten, he ran to see what the disturbance was.

Outlined in the lamplight, was the large figure of a man struggling with a much smaller, scrawny youth. They were pulling at a small suitcase in a bizarre scene of tug of war. Walter immediately judged the smaller man to be the antagonist and raised his batten, charged forward and hit him with a sickening thud, across his narrow back. The pain and surprise sent the thief to his knees onto the wet ground. Pushing him onto his stomach with his boot, Walter pulled out his handcuffs and locked them securely around the thin wrists of the prostrate, moaning man. Now that he was in control, Walter blew three long blasts on his whistle to summon help from the patrolman on duty nearby.

It was only then that he turned his attention to the gentleman who was now leaning heavily against a lamp post, hat in hand and breathing hard with the exertion and shock. Establishing that the would-be thief was in no condition to go anywhere he walked over to the exhausted man, retrieving the case which had scattered some of its contents onto the street.

Picking up a damp paper, Walter could see that it was a beautifully detailed pen and ink drawing of a tropical bird. Although it was now smudged and mud-stained, it attracted Walter immediately. As he gathered up other pages, he could tell that this man must be a scientist or collector of birds and insects and other curiosities. The clattering of boots on the cobbles announced the arrival of two patrolmen. Pulling the thief from the ground, Walter instructed the panting policemen to take him to the police station while he took a statement from the victim. The two dragged the still groaning man to his feet and while he protested loudly, hauled him off into the fog.

When Walter began to question the older man, his hunch was confirmed. Henry Ridley was indeed a scientist. He had been on his way to give a lecture to a group of amateur botanist's about his latest travels, when he had lost his way. He had left his carriage, but found that he was at the wrong address. Deciding to walk back to the other end of the street, he was confronted by the thief, who had thought that his leather bag would surely contain money. These scattered papers however, were of incalculable value as they represented years of research.

Walter could tell that the older man was very shaken by his ordeal and as he was closer to his own residence than the police station, he decided against all rules, to take him home where he could get warm and have some tea while he took a statement. Gratefully, Henry Ridley accepted this offer, and his lecture forgotten, followed the kind young policeman to the more respectable part of Portsea.

As they made their way to his home, Walter asked many questions of the thankful stranger who, he discovered, was hard to stop talking once he had started. He quickly heard a good deal of Henry's life story. As an avid botanist, Henry had spent many years of his life studying and collecting plants from around the world. He had been a bright child and, while he was still attending school he had written his first paper on the subject of birds and insects and developed a passion for tropical zoology. He studied at Oxford University and had tried to obtain a place at the British Museum as a tropical zoologist. When that dream was dashed, he took a position there as a botanist instead. The years following saw him travelling widely and publishing many scientific papers, writing prolifically not only about botany, but also geology, birds and insects.

By the time they had reached the end of Walter's street, Henry had progressed onto the latest of his exploits. About ten years ago the talented botanist had been appointed Director of Gardens and Forests for the Straits Settlements and had moved to Singapore. The director of Kew Gardens in London had asked him to investigate the rubber tree plantations of Ceylon. This sent him on an expedition to the famous tea growing island off the tip of India after which he became passionate about the potential of producing rubber commercially in Singapore and Malaya. Asian rubber trees were already growing in Malaya but Henry was sure he could make the country a rubber exporter of huge capacity by introducing the higher yielding Ceylonese tree to the area.

At this time there was not enough rubber being produced to meet the growing world demand. As soon as he managed to import rubber seeds from Ceylon into Singapore, Henry had devoted his time to researching the most efficient ways to grow and harvest rubber in the region. Now he was about to plant the first commercial rubber plantation in Malaya.

Henry never forgot the actions and kindness that Walter displayed that night in the alleyway and over the years he and the Woodroffe family became close friends. When he returned to England to visit, he always contacted them. The Woodroffe's were a welcoming family and the unmarried botanist was regularly entertained at their home at lively dinner parties, where he held the guests spellbound with tales of collecting adventures in countries most had never heard of.

His favourite stories to tell were of ones of his first adventure, when he had travelled to the convict islands of Fernando de Noronha. This small archipelago of twenty one islands in the South Atlantic had a chequered history including a brief visit by Charles Darwin on his famous voyage of The Beagle. Darwin had described in his journal the thick, tangled forests, scented by magnolia and laurel flowers.

It was here on these remote and isolated islands with their steep cliffs, spectacular rocky pinnacles rising from the forest and towering above startling white sandy beaches, that Henry spent time documenting the declining wildlife. Most of the trees and undergrowth were being removed to prevent the desperate convict inmates from hiding out and constructing rafts to escape. The loss of the trees meant that many of the native species would soon also disappear. Henry was one of the first scientists to take an interest in the impact of human activity on the environment.

He was also a compassionate man who was deeply affected by the desperation of the men imprisoned on Fernando de Noronha. Their days wearied by hard labour and confinement in cells that were sometimes too small to turn around in, they found little rest on beds hewn from the same stone they crushed for building roads. Their sorry lives so full of misery that they would consider braving the seas of the South Atlantic for hundreds of miles, on makeshift timber rafts to escape to a better life, even if the risk was so high that it meant almost certain death.

The older explorer intuitively saw in young Walter the same adventurous spirit that he had himself. The young man obviously would not easily be squeezed into the common mould of decent society. Walter was absorbed by the stories Henry had to tell and could listen for hours as he described the places he had been and the people which he had met along the way.

One of Walter's uncles was also concerned about the way that his nephew was becoming absorbed by the life on the streets. Worried about the family reputation, he told his brother that he thought it would be a good idea to send his spirited son off to the Naval School at Greenwich where Walter would receive naval discipline and a decent set of role models, just as he had done. In fact, his meddlesome Uncle went as far to suggest that his other nephew, Basil, should also be