Ian Goonetileke’s PREFACE to THOSE LONG AFTERNOONS
Source:Thuppahis
HAI Gonnetileke, Preface to the booklet THOSE LONG AFTERNOONS. CHILDHOOD IN COLONIAL CEYLON, Colombo, Lake House Bookshop, 1989 … reproduction made possible by the work of Oliver Guruge in Lanka.
Evelyn Fredrick Charles Ludowyk Jnr was born on 16th October 1906 in Galle, Ceylon and died on 1st June 1985 in Colchester, England. He became the Professor of English at the age of thirty and chose early retirement in 1956. He settled in England with his Hungarian wife Edith whom he had married in 1941. His death brought to an end a long and fruitful partnership in which their professional talents, artistic gifts, social commitment and political beliefs made common cause. Edith died on 11th February 1987.
The Burgher Tennis Club withn the Fort of Galle in the 1930s
I first set eyes on Lyn [as he was known to his friends] as a young schoolboy at Richmond College, Galle when he had returned fresh from his laurels at Cambridge University in 1932. Seven years later he was to become my teacher at Ceylon University College; then I was his colleague at the University of Ceylon. Finally, in the best of all relationships, he remained a concerned, understanding, and generous friend till the end of his life.
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In the year before he died my wife and I met him on three occasions in his lovely cottage. At the first such meeting, after a relaxed weekend, he handed over in the quiet of his lined study the manuscript of what is published here. It was the sequel to a promise he had extracted from me, in an exchange of letters earlier in that year, that I should oversee the posthumous publication of his last offering, “Those Long Afternoons, Childhood in Colonial Ceylon”.
It is relevant to give here the relevant passages from two letters of 23rd February and 9th March 1984, as they shed a particular light on the context in which the idea of the book emerged, and his own impressions of it.
“I write to ask you a favour. But I’d better explain. After the death of my brother Vyvil, followed as it was so closely by the death of Mavis and Rene,** I was thinking of the past, and coming back to it again and again and again as my memory seemed to dredge up all sorts of reminiscences of my childhood. I wrote something about 4 years ago and sent it to Fabre, UK – only because I still knew one or two people there. They were – as usual – complimentary etc, but they thought the whole was too deeply bound up with a small part of the world, and so they turned it down.”
“I haven’t looked at it since then, but now with time getting on and with it the growing feeling that there is very little of it left, I want to know if I may send the terribly badly-typed and extensively corrected script to you, asking you to hold it till I am dead and then if you think there’s something in it, try to publish it there. I do not think there is very much in it except as one person’s observations of life as it was lived in a small group in Galle. Of course, one’s memory is the most unreliable of all guides. Still, it may have some interest as fallible recollections of 1909-1920.
“Please let me know if you will be kind enough to accept the burden. I cannot think of think of anyone else there to whom I could entrust it.” [23rd February 1984]
The premonitions were clear and compelling. I could not refuse, though the elation was tinged with sadness. I suggested that the book be published while he was still alive. But there was no denying his insistence.
“As for what I wrote on Galle I’d like you to do something about it post meum obitum. It will be better that way – certainly I would prefer it so. Most of the older generation living in 1908-1919, all of them in fact have gone. There are some of my contempories still alive. But we shall soon have shuffled off, and then it will seem an even distant past”. [9th March 1984].
NOTES From IAN
I must thank Percy Collin-Thome, my friend from schooldays and Lyn’s close friend as well, for acceeding to contribute the brief memoir.
To Srima de Soysa for providing the photograph for the frontispiece – it was one of the last pictures taken of Lyn. The illustration of the Galle Fort on the cover came from Nihal Fernando, the doyen of Sri Lankan photographers and I thank him for his assistance.
Lake House Book Shop readily accepted the manuscript for publication. I wish to place on record my appreciation for their professional advice, and particularly the generous concern shown by Mr. Earle Abayasekera and Mr. Victor Walatara in the course of production.
The entire proceeds from transfer of the copyright to the publisher are being donated to the University of Peradeniya for the institution of an annual Professor E.F.C. Ludowyk Memorial Award.
I am privileged, beyond words, to have been given the opportunity of helping in the publication of Lyn’s final contribution to the world of letters. The fulfilment of this labour of love became for me both a tribute to a remarkable man and a concluding act of homage to his memory.
