Shakespeare in the guest room at Lakmahal
Hope Todd is also inextricably linked to another place where I read joyfully, with happy memories of what I devoured. This was at Lakmahal, and initially I had not thought to include what I read there, for this was the place I learnt to read and where a vast range of books was read, in the sixties and then from the eighties on.
Nevertheless there are particular places in Lakmahal which I associate with particular books, and having enjoyed those memories and what they meant to me, I thought I should record them as well.
My own room at Lakmahal was a dark one, and one could not read there at any time, day as well as night, without a light on. That is why, unlike the others who lived there, I roamed the house to find a suitable place to read, often the lounge upstairs but, when there was noise there, since it was the main living area for all generations, the large and usually deserted downstairs too.
But from the mid-sixties the big guest-room downstairs was far from deserted, for that was where Hope Todd stayed when he started working in Colombo. He was there for three years, from the latter part of 1965 when he joined the newly constituted Ceylon Tourist Board until the end of 1968 when he married Kaly Rajasuriya who was the Secretary at the Girl Guides Association where my mother spent much of most days.
On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, Hope slept, with the radio on though he barely heard Radio Ceylon’s ‘Holiday Choice’ to which it was tuned. And on weekends when my Uncle Leo from Kurunagala was not staying with us, I would take over the other bed in the room, my head at the foot of the bed to benefit from the light from the windows.
These were days in which I had discovered the pleasures of Pop Music too, so I much enjoyed the songs that were played, stopping occasionally to listen. But my main occupation was reading, and in 1967, if I remember right, I had set myself the task of reading all of Shakespeare.
We had two sets of Shakespeare in the library downstairs, a beautiful edition belonging to my grandfather which I think dated from the 19th century, four plays in each vellum bound volume. And then there were the individual texts of the Yale Shakespeare which my father had acquired when he was studying in Canada.
Between them they explained all the difficult bits, though sometimes I had to puzzle things out for a bit before I quite understood, particularly with the poems. But with their help reading was not too slow, and I usually managed to finish one play on the afternoons when I read there, two every weekend, so that I was able to achieve my target.
Of course my tastes were not too well developed then, so I particularly relished the early History plays, rejoicing in the rise of the House of York – for I also supported Yorkshire in the English County Championship which I would follow along with Uncle Leo – though shattered when Richard III threw it all away. But I did also enjoy the good stuff, both the elegant comedies and the grand tragedies, and felt close to some of the characters though I recall now only Mercutio and Brutus.
It was good discipline, but I never felt it as such, and I still look back on those long afternoons with affection for the place, for Hope, and also for the little boy reading so conscientiously but happily.
The pictures are the frontispieces to that splendid edition of my grandfather, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, Cymbeline and Twelfth Night.