| Description | Interview with Mrs. Helen Bruce recorded on 14 January 2003 by Roddy Begg.
Transcript of Interview :
RB Good-morning Mrs. Bruce. Would you like to start by telling us about yourself, where you were born, when and so on.
HB I was born in Keith on the 7th September, 1912, and my parents were Robert Cram and his wife Elsie. My father had been in the army for a number of years, India, Ireland, The Channel Islands, so that was quite really part of my childhood. I think I could count in Hindustani before I could count in English and he became a postman, and remained a postman in Keith. A rural postman in Grange and in another part, which I have forgotten the name of, and my mother was, before he married her, was a dressmaker, living with her mother in Keith. She trained in a dressmaking establishment at the corner of Crown Street I think, in the days when people arrived with carriages, to have their dresses made.
RB And were your parents both from Keith?
HB No, my mother was from Morayshire. My father was born in Gartly, the son of a farmer, and his family is really rather interesting. They originated in the Fyvie area and in the 15th century I believe one of them was a bishop there. The Bishop of Formartin, and Vicar of Fyvie. Which meant I think that he looked after the spiritual life of the Fyvie Castle family.
RB Very interesting.
HB I have a distant cousin who is researching these things always, so we are always finding out more about it. The immediate ancestor was John Cran, who lived at Rhynie.
RB And did you have brothers and sisters?
HB Yes, I had a brother, who was not a graduate. He became a pharmacist.
RB So you were born and brought up in Keith. Did you go to school locally?
HB I went to Keith Grammar School. That is where I received my original education. One of my teachers became 100 years old. She was an Aberdeen graduate, Miss Alice Slater.
RB Miss Alice Slater. We can look her up. When did she die?
HB She is still alive in Portnockie! Living in her grandfather's house and she wrote me … I wrote to her when I realised that she had become 100 last year and received a beautiful letter from her in due course.
RB Well that is one for the Alumni Relations Office to look up!
HB Absolutely.
RB So did the University come automatically to you or was it a big decision that you were going to become a student?
HB I think everyone always assumed that I was going to the university. I wasn't given much choice about it. My parents assumed. My teachers assumed. So I was headed for the university whether I wanted to or not.
RB How many of your contemporaries at Keith Grammar School went to the university, in your year?
HB Out of my primary year? Because of course at the end of school, we were all headed for university or teaching training college or something like that.
RB How many then were in what I think we call the upper sixth, the university class?
HB I think about 20, but I am just guessing. I would have to sit down and think about that.
RB So you decided to come to university. How old were you when you first became a student?
HB Eighteen.
RB And did you stay with relatives, or in lodgings?
HB No, in lodgings with friends.
RB And what courses did you study?
HB First year was English, French and German. And second year Logic and Latin and Zoology. Third year started the con-joint. I put it off as long as possible. That was Natural Philosophy, Mathematics and did another year of French, and then graduated, late, because of the con-joint.
RB So what year was it that you became a student?
HB 1930.
RB 1930 and we know that you graduated in 1934. What are your memories of the University and the Faculty of Arts at that time?
HB Oh, very happy memories. You see the University was small, about 1,200 students, I think, then. We knew people in all the faculties, which made it very interesting. I should imagine nowadays it is more difficult to get outside ones large faculty. It was fun and it was interesting. It was the days when the library was at King's College and we all went there to study. In the evenings very often, because we were in digs and they were rather cold sometimes, it was the custom to go to the Reference Library in Aberdeen and study there. Not necessarily taking out a book, but Mrs. Beaton's Cookery Book was rather in demand!
RB Did you remain in lodgings all your student days?
HB Yes, all the time.
RB Do you remember your landlady?
HB Oh yes, I remember both my landladies. Three of them in fact!
RB Where were your lodgings?
HB Crown Street, my first landlady. A very severe lady. It was much stricter than even being at home. I thought my mother was strict, but our landladies were very strict with us indeed. We were well protected.
RB And you had to be back by 10.00 o'clock had you?
HB Oh yes, indeed. Or answer for it.
RB What was the social life of students in those days? Did you have a student's union ?
HB Yes, there was a student's union. There was a women's union and a men's union, and almost everyone went to the Debater on a Friday evening. That was one of the big events. And there were hops as we called them. It was Vernon Eddie playing in the band. I think you know his name?
RB I think I have heard the name.
HB They were fun. Sometimes in the men's union and sometimes in the women's union and there were societies of course, and I used to go to elocution classes, outside the university. I don't quite know why. I think I knew someone who went and I thought this is something I ought to do. I think it might have been a mistake.
RB I too went to elocution classes with someone who was a student of the University, called Tom Murdoch, who also I think wasted a lot of his years in the student show, when he was a student. Were you tempted into a show at all?
HB Jimmy Stephen, The Rev. Jimmy Stephen as he became, was very keen that I should join the Aberdeen Theatre show. I was very nervous about that and the students in my digs said "well go on a concert party instead", so that is what I did to get away from the theatre. I did sing quite well in those days and I joined the Varsity Vagrants and we toured round the villages for two weeks and then came back to Aberdeen, and I think for about a week we did our show in the Capitol Cinema, which was good fun.
RB The Capitol was used for that?
HB Yes. Well we were there for about a week and for ever after when I went in the Capitol café Mr Blomberg in the band would bow and start up the Blue Danube, which was one of my songs!
RB That's wonderful. Were you involved in the Chapel Choir at all?
HB No. I lived on Crown Street, and in those days you went by tram, and Iam afraid I was lazy. We did go to church.
RB Five days a week at King's, enough.
HB Now I regret that I didn't live in Old Aberdeen. That came much later.
RB But you did live in digs with other students?
HB Oh yes.
RB Are there other memories of your student days, before we move on, that you would like to record?
HB Not really any more than I have told you, I think. It was a happy time and I wish I had been a better student. I do regret that!
RB So you graduated in 1934 and were then having to decide what to do with the rest of your life.
HB Indeed and during the few months before I graduated I went to Webster's College to learn to do some shorthand, because I though skills are useful. I believed that all my life. You should always have as many skills as possible. So I did that and went off to London, where I had an uncle and aunt and twin cousins and I stayed with them and worked in London, doing various things. Mostly office work and I kept on doing that.
RB And you had met your husband to be when you were a student. When were you married?
HB We were married in 1940, March 1940, and we went to live in Inverness, where he was working for censorship and I joined censorship later too.
RB So this was as it were his "war work". He had commenced an academic career before then?
HB Oh indeed yes. He had First Class Honours in Economics, under Professor Gray, whose name I am sure you will know, and he was accepted for the Malayan Civil Service after he graduated. Went to Malaya, worked for about 6 months in Singapore and was then sent to Canton to study Cantonese and after about two years he passed all his exams I think and then discovered he was going blind. And he had to give up.
RB This was all in the period between 1934 and 1940?
HB He graduated… he was a year older than myself.
RB Right. We should perhaps record his name.
HB Yes. It was Robert Bruce.
RB Robert Bruce. That takes us now to 1940 and your marriage and your move to Inverness. What was your life there during the war?
HB Well we didn't stay there so very long, because Robert joined the British Council and we moved to Aberdeen, where he was the Regional Officer. And that really was a fascinating time. We thought when he was told that he was going to have an office in Aberdeen and that the British Council was mostly concerned with foreigners, we thought there wouldn't be any foreigners in Aberdeen! A few sailors, and people like that from perhaps from Norway, but not many others. But it was just amazing how many foreigners there were. Newfoundlanders, who couldn't read or write and we had to prepare a programme for them and the teachers all around the West of Scotland, where they were stationed cutting down trees, responded, even during the war. It was quite wonderful. Blackout and using bicycles, I suppose, they got to these Newfoundlanders huts and taught them to read and write and they were brought down to Aberdeen to visit the Lord Provost and to see how local government was conducted. Because people hoped that they would go back to Newfoundland after the war and become more self sufficient than they had been before.
RB In this period, where did you live in Aberdeen?
HB Various places. We finished up in the Chanonry, next to the Vice-Chancellor's Lodge.
RB What number?
HB I have forgotten the number, but the house was occupied by Sheriff MacDonald and his wife, they heard that we were going to become homeless, and there was a scheme under the local government, the local council, where houses were converted for the use of people who were coming back from the war. So the MacDonalds very kindly had the top floor, the attic floor, converted for us. It didn't need much conversion. Some bathroom installation and kitchen equipment and there we were.
RB I think from the description that was 14 The Chanonry and later I remember that became a University flat and was let for a long time by the Professor of Economic History, Professor Peter Payne.
HB I think you are right.
RB That was in my student days and later.
HB Sheriff MacDonald died and so I suppose at that point his widow left. But it was a lovely place to live. Looking out over St. Machar Cathedral and cemetery, the quietest neighbours we have ever had! Lovely.
RB I am told that my predecessor, Colonel Butchart, was a great buyer of property in Old Aberdeen in his days as Secretary.
HB Wonderful man!
RB And that anything that came on the market he snapped it up.
HB Yes. I think the University owes him a huge debt of gratitude.
RB So that was what you did during the war. Your husband stayed with the British Council, did he?
HB Yes. In 1948 he was posted to Hong Kong.
RB So shall we take the story on to Hong Kong. What was your life there like?
HB Well first of all it was almost three months to get there, because we were put on a Glen Line ship and it just tramped around, The Panama Canal, and everywhere really. We were even able to visit Robert's sister in Canada, while it was taking on paper, somewhere in Canada. Then a 17 days across the Pacific. It was a fascinating journey. I call it my three months before the mast! It was quite hard.
RB I am never sure about these things, but that surely was the long way to Hong Kong wasn't it?
HB It certainly was.
RB The further routing is across the Pacific, the nearer one across the Indian Ocean.
HB The Indian Ocean, we ran by the Suez Canal, but you see all the ships had been sunk and there was nothing going that way and this was the first thing they picked up for us. And I don't think they realised that it was going to be three months, but a tramp steamer picks up cargo wherever it can. So we just went tramping on. We even went to Shanghai before we got to Hong Kong!
RB Well that must have been a fascinating, but frustrating time, but still fascinating.
HB Well to look back on! Yes, at the time it was absolutely appalling!
RB Were you the only passengers?
HB No, no. Crossing the Atlantic to Canada we had immigrants for Canada, and they had just been released from wartime conditions. Having proper food for the first time for years. They were just ….. the lid had blown off. They were leaving and they were going to a new country. I must say it was a much quieter ship after they had gone!
RB After they had parted company! So how was Hong Kong in 1948?
HB There wasn't very much of it left. I have photographs of it showing I think a one, two or three-storey, block of flats on the peak, taken from the harbour as we came in, and that was about what was left, just burnt out shells of buildings. It was incredible when I look at it now.
RB This was three years after the war had ended but it was still in ruins.
HB We lived in a hotel for 8 months and then someone, one of the Taipans was going home for the first time. He had come out of the prison camp and started his business up and he had been able to slightly rehabilitate the house, and made it very habitable actually, on the Peak, and he suggested that we might like to live in the house whilst he was away and look after it. So that was another 8 months and by that time flats were being built and we were able to get a 1-bedroomed flat. Very nice. Douglas Apartments, and we had another 8 months there. But Robert wasn't very fit then, he kept getting hay-fever, all the time we were in Hong Kong, so we didn't go back, not immediately anyway.
RB How big was the British Council operation in Hong Kong? How many staff did Robert have? Or did he have staff?
HB Well we started in our bedroom and it is very difficult doing books on a coffee-table! They do tend to spill over the sides and I inevitably became Robert's secretary because we just didn't have room for another person. A book-keeper, a man, had arrived from England, so we had to fit him into our bedroom, as well as everything else. Students were pouring out of China, hoping to get to England before the Communists came down. They were threatening all the time. They would turn up at any hour of the day or night and as the bathroom was next to the lobby door of our bedroom, you could hardly have a bath as students were always coming to the door, saying "I have just arrived from China". Finally the hotel manager took pity on us and gave us a suite. Which did help a bit, because we had a sitting-room and a bedroom and we were able to conduct the office there and finally we got very inadequate accommodation on Statue Square, as it was called, Queen Victoria's statue used to be there. We shared that with the press people, the Hong Kong press people. It was very hot in summer and very cold in winter. I kept on being Robert's secretary for quite a while until he found one, because it wasn't easy.
RB And was the British Council's main role in Hong Kong to send students to the UK?
HB They did that too, but all the societies were starting up after the war, you know, photographic societies, music societies, opera and all sorts of things were starting up, and they all found their way to us, and so they all asked us to help them with material from England sometimes, music scores, that sort of thing and just moral support sometimes. We mostly spent our Sundays tramping up and down stairs looking at Chinese exhibitions. Because you can't expect people to look at your exhibitions if you don't go and look at theirs! It really was quite fascinating. All beginning, a new beginning.
RB How long were you in Hong Kong altogether?
HB 2 years at that time. Yes. We left in 1950 and came back here and Robert was posted to Edinburgh and we bought a flat there and that became our home.
RB And Robert was the Scottish representative then in charge…
HB No, he was never in charge. No a man called Harvey Wood was the representative. He was one of the people responsible for starting the Festival. You will hear his name in connection with that.
RB Yes. Yes.
HB No, Robert was never the Scottish representative.
RB And was the British Council based on the Pleasance then, I think that is where their office is at present.
HB Now where in the world were they? No, they were where the old International House was, somewhere around Castle Street. I think International House closed down, but they somewhere round Castle Street, I think.
RB So where did you live when you moved to Edinburgh?
HB Merchiston Crescent. Very nice flat.
RB And was this a long posting or were you off on your travels again quickly?
HB No. He was there for, I can't remember for how long, perhaps 1 year or something like that in the Edinburgh office and then he was sent to Glasgow to be in charge of the office there, and then the Malayan emergency started. And Oliver Lyttleton went out to see what was really going on and discovered that they were very short of Chinese speakers, so Robert was called back because they wanted to start a school in the Cameron Highlands in Malaya to teach government officers, that meant really government officers from the Secretariat and other places, and policemen and one or two other odd people. They wanted more Chinese speakers but the Secretariat had become bereft, some had already been shot by the Communists throughout Malaya, and they had lost quite a number through the Japanese war. So they were very thin on the ground and they just couldn't spare one of them to go and run the school. So Robert went back on a secondment from the British Council and at that time the Council was very hard up for money so they were delighted to get rid of one salary for a few years.
RB Was that in 1952?
HB Yes that was 1952.
RB And you went to Malaya?
HB We went to Malaya. It was quite serious. The Governor had just been shot at Fraser's Hill People here just said to us "Well if you really want to commit suicide, off you go!" But we were going anyway, and I must say it was an experience, because we were meeting totally different sort of people. Jungle bashers! And I may tell you that I have been made an Honorary member of the Royal Malaysia Police Former Officers' Association UK and I attended one of their lunches last year and met people I hadn't seen since 1952. Robert's students. They came for 6 months and in that time they learned enough Chinese to start them off. They could go off then and speak to people……
HB The Government Officer's Language School, as it was officially called. They were able to go back to their posts, jungle posts, villages, and whatever they were doing and hear something of what was going on, which had never been the case before and it was invaluable. I think the Government Officers' Language School played a very big part in finishing the Emergency in Malaya.
RB And did you find that you had to move around with guards protecting you all the time?
HB No! When we arrived, we were driven from Kuala Lumpur by a chap called Roland Oakley, who was from the Secretariat, a Chinese speaker, and had an interest in the School, and we were driven by him to a place called Tanah Rata, which was at the foot of the hills that go up to Cameron Highlands. A very twisting road goes up there… and there we really first understood what we had undertaken because there was a convoy forming up and there was a big tank sort of thing with a long gun sticking out of it. Soldiers everywhere. Planters with cars, embedded in wire netting, so that people couldn't shoot at them. I thought "What have we come to?" Then we started up the hill and the rain and it was so depressing and this gun trained itself to both sides of the very narrow jungle road and we finally got to Cameron Highlands to a hotel, where the School was functioning already under an American, who had to go back to his job in America.
RB And how big was the School? How many students did you have?
HB I can't think how many would have been on each course. A course lasted 6 months and then finally people were chosen out of the various dialects to do two years. Before that only people from the Secretariat had gone on two year courses either in Hong Kong or Macao and before the war to Canton as Robert did, but now they were choosing people from the Police or anyone who was really capable of going on and doing two years.
RB And was the course just instructing in Chinese, or were there other elements?
HB No, no. There were four Chinese languages taught in the School. Cantonese, Hokkien, Guoyu, which is Mandarin, and Hakka and there were various teachers of these and students were apportioned, you will do Cantonese, etc. I think they would have been tested on tones and chosen accordingly.
RB So each student specialised in one of the Chinese languages?
HB Yes, for 6 months and Robert gave them lectures on Chinese History, Philosophy and that sort of thing, just to make it more interesting for them.
RB What was life like for you in this time?
HB There is a book coming out called "The Sharp End", I think it is already with the printers and they asked me to write an article on that very subject for the book. It is about the Emergency and mostly about the Police Lieutenants and the part they played in the Emergency and I did submit an article for that and I believe it is being published and it is very light hearted I may say compared with the other articles which are all about ambushes and things like that. No, it was quite difficult at times. We were in the Cameron Highlands for about a year I think after we went there, and then the School moved to Kuala Lumpur, which was much easier, because I could go and teach in a school, and I did, and lead my own life. It was just very difficult in Cameron Highlands.
RB We are now 1953, I guess, and you moved to Kuala Lumpur? Did your husband's job change or was he still the Head of the School?
HB No, he was still the Head of the School and the students lived in houses, shared houses and we were given accommodation.
RB Was it in the city?
HB Yes, in the city.
RB Kuala Lumpur seems to go on forever, and more and more suburbs. And how long did you stay in Kuala Lumpur?
HB Well, Robert, in 1955, it was time to go back to … the Emergency was beginning to go over. In fact it was one of his star pupils of Cantonese, he was a natural, and he was really finally responsible for ending the Emergency. So we can say that the School did play a very important part in that. I don't know how much I would be, even now, allowed to say about that, but it was a big operation in the Seremban Johore area, and police, airforce, army, everybody was involved, and he was the leading person in that, just through his Chinese contacts really. And being able to speak Cantonese so well and he was given the George Medal for his part. So it was important.
RB Yes, that was obviously for personal valour.
HB Yes, of course.
RB Well that's good. So now 1955 and you are on the move again.
HB Yes we had to go back to the Counciland he was posted to Thailand. And we went round the bookshops in London and found exactly one book, called "The Pearl of Asia" which was written in the late 1890's by the first American Ambassador to Thailand and we couldn't find a single other book. Now you could fill a library!
RB Thailand is a great holiday destination now.
HB And the Americans of course have written books … and books …libraries of books.
RB And you were going to Bangkok, were you?
HB Yes, indeed and he was going as the … no in the first place he was the Associate Representative, because the previous Representative was giving up and going to teach at Chulalongkorn University, as Professor of English, but he didn't want to give up his job at the Council for a year. It was a silly arrangement, so he suggested that Robert should become Associate Representative. Robert was a very nice person in a lot of ways. I would have said "No. Get lost"! But I wasn't consulted. I think I would have said that. That arrangement lasted for about a year and we were therefore 8 years altogether.
RB Postings were stretching then? Was that in one posting or did the British Council renew your posting every two years?
HB Yes, about 2. The first time we were there about 3 years and then after that was 2 years and then 1½, because the climate is very trying. Robert was bringing out teachers of English, from Britain, some of them were Scottish, therefore he was sort of in the middle of a thing that he wanted to do. To see that established. So it just went on and on.
RB And where was the British Council Office in Bangkok?
HB Beside a big bridge, I can't remember now the district, what it was called. A big bridge, over the Menam, the Chao Praya, to give it its correct title, and the Council office was there, but they have changed since that time. They've moved. Now they are inside Chulalongkorn University.
RB Was Bangkok as bad with traffic congestion as it is now?
HB Well it was, but then in a different way. They kept saying that they would have to widen the streets and everyone said it will be like Tokyo, the wider the streets, the more traffic. Which is exactly what is going to happen in London. Or widen the motorways and you just bring more cars. It does not solve the problem and that is what happened and it is now gridlocked. Bangkok is awful.
RB They have created a sort of roads on stilts system that takes you over the traffic sometimes, but it is still very bad.
HB Yes, we were back there. I just couldn't find my way around at all. Couldn't recognise anything.
RB And again what was your personal life like in your 8 years in Bangkok?
HB I broadcast English lessons which was quite interesting and I had students…. people were dying to be instructed by a native speaker, who were going to America and England on scholarships and so on. So I did have pupils all the time, if I wanted to. Then three years before we left the Queen's Educational Adviser went to see Robert and asked if I would go and tutor the King's oldest daughter, in English.
RB Which daughter was that?
HB Ubon Ratana
RB I think it was her younger sister who is the Honorary Graduate?
HB It was the middle sister, who was given a degree at Aberdeen, Srindhorn. And there is a younger one still.
RB Well that was very interesting. Tell us more about that?
HB Yes it was and I did that for three years.
RB And was that a one to one?
HB Absolutely, one to one.
RB And did the princess have other tutors?
HB Oh, there was a school. There was a palace school, which was made up of the Royal children and some of their friends and I think children of the staff. Gardener's children and any one like that. Chauffeur's children as well. I think they all went to this palace school. It was just built up. It started up with Ubon Ratana. She was the oldest one and there was one class and then the boy came and then there was another class and they just built the school up with their four children. She came back from school and I was waiting and we started our lessons and we had to work for two hours and in holidays we had to work everyday. They were very strictly brought up. The Queen always said "Please discipline my children". And the other tutor, who was a chap called Malcolm Hossack, who was a Cambridge graduate but came from Dundee. So we were two Scottish tutors.
RB Yes the Royal family in Thailand is quite a model, isn't it? Not like anything else.
HB They were very gentle. I remember the King asking Hossack and myself to go with the children and himself into the Palace grounds and he had some Thai press people there. The gardeners were there to do something too, and all this was because it was a festival and it was the blessing the rice and it all had to take place about three o'clock in the afternoon. He stood there in his beautiful suit, perspiring madly, explaining, in his slightly halting English, about the ceremony to Hossack and myself, who would have gladly gone indoors, as we knew all about it! But it was rather nice. Very gentle in that way. He had cows there too in the palace grounds.
RB Yes. I am told that he converted later a lot of the Palace grounds into a model farm.
HB Yes, and the rice was important. He knew that when he went around the country he had to give rice to the temples and he wanted to improve the quality of rice throughout the country and the way he did it was to give this special rice to the country people in the temple and he knew that they would plant it afterwards and that way he improved the quality of the rice. I think that is very nice that he made this effort. Very gentle and kind.
RB So you have very happy memories of Thailand ?
HB Yes, very happy memories of Thailand indeed.
RB So what brought it to an end? You say that the climate ….
HB Well 8 years was a long time. I don't think anyone has every been that long, in the British Council there. But, we just seemed to fit in there and as I say Robert was carrying out this programme of bringing out English teachers and the Thais paid but the British Government made up the salaries, tax and so on to encourage them to go there and stay there. And then we had the VSOs as well, coming out at that time.
RB So by the end of your time it was 1963, if I am calculating correctly and I guess you were both 50? Or a little more?
HB Over 50.
RB Over 50. So what was your thoughts about the next move? Or did the Council give you much choice?
HB I never learnt to speak Thai, because Robert did and when Robert spoke a language, he spoke it, and there really wasn't much opportunity for "hangers-on", so I just gave up on that. I could speak a little bit of course, but I didn't speak the language and I didn't require to …better, not for my Palace work really. She had to understand me and I would have had to learn Royal Thai in any case. Market Thai would not have been any good there! So 8 years in Thailand, all right I did not speak the language. I don't apologise for that! But I did say to Robert when he said well we are going to be posted and I said, "Any idea where?" and he said "No". and I said, "Well I don't care wherever it is. I don't care if it is Japan, I am going to learn the language, let that be understood before we go". All right - it was Hungary!
RB Hungary! Right. You like to learn difficult languages!
HB It was wonderful. I loved Hungarian. I still love Hungarian. I still teach myself Hungarian. It is a beautiful language, I think, and a challenge.
RB Was there any gap? Did you have to go back to the UK for a few months?
HB Yes. We did. Robert was very ill as we left Thailand and therefore he needed some time to recover and we left Thailand in June, I think, and we went to Hungary in December. So we had quite a long time, in which we were supposed to be learning Hungarian, but we didn't get very far with it in London.
RB So you knew you were going to Hungary as soon as you came back. Where did you go to in Hungary? To the capital?
HB Yes, To Budapest. We stayed in a hotel for a few months and then another hotel, because our house was occupied by someone who wasn't ready to go and we just had to wait. Then we found ourselves in this extraordinary house. Medieval pratically. Barrel-vaulting downstairs. Georgeous! What the Hungarians called a Petit-Palais. The only drawback was that there weren't many servants around! Only me!
RB What was the role of the British Council in a country like Hungary in the 1960's?
HB Well of course the word British Council was never mentioned because there was a big trial and they were lucky not to be put in prison, I think, but the Council was finished. They were sent home. This was in the really bad days you know after the revolution and Robert went as the first British Council person. The previous man was from the Foreign Office, and they were called Cultural Attachés. The dirty word "British Council" was never mentioned. So we were under the wing of the Embassy, which is not the best way to do that sort of job, because you have got to conform to Foreign Office ways entirely and it was just not suitable when you are dealing with the local population. Because they don't you know.
RB What were you organising? Concerts, lectures or what?
HB Yes, we had numbers of visitors from home. Doctors and people like that and yes, there were some people who came from this country to study Music, for example, in Hungary. Robert was responsible for them and I can't remember if Hungarians were sent on Scholarships. I just don't remember that.
RB I think it was quite difficult for a student to get out of any of the Communist countries at that time for fear that they would not come back.
HB And a funny off-shoot of his work was that the Hungarians brought in Africans as students, and there you had these poor Nigerians and people like that. Our former colonists were there in numbers, and very miserable, because they were trying to study medicine in Hungarian without knowing any Hungarian, so they used to come to the Embassy, where we had a library, and they came to read their subject up in English! But that was not very popular, they didn't like us having these contacts at all, so we didn't play that up.
RB So how did you cope with having a social life in such a country? Did you socialise only with the other ex-patriots?
HB No. People were allowed to visit. They were allowed, but they had to ask permission. We sent them invitations. They had to go to their Foreign Office or whoever was in charge, and ask if they might accept the Bruce's invitation and they were permitted … or not permitted as the case might be.
RB And you know there were some who didn't come.
HB We knew there were some who didn't come and we knew why others came and the house, of course, was bugged, we knew that too. It was not very nice. Constant strain.
RB So between that and the fact that you weren't comfortable having to work with the Foreign Office, was this an unhappy time or just a difficult time?
HB You know, wherever you go, you share the life of the local people, that is inevitable. You could bring in food from Denmark if you wish, and you still may eat better. You still share their lives. You can't help it. You are meeting them all the time and they will insist on telling you their sad stories, if they think a suitable noise is going on, so that a bug will not pickup their conversation. They will tell you. And if they came to the Embassy to visit Robert, he just had so many sad stories sometimes in one week, you know. Then we couldn't speak to each other freely in the house, because we knew it was bugged. We didn't know where the bugs were. The Embassy used to close on Wednesday afternoonand Saturday afternoon and then we took the car, we had a driver because Robert couldn't see to drive, and Feri drove us up to Buda woods and left him there with the car and we set off. We knew the Buda Woods just like the back of our hands before we left there. And there we could talk, and so all the week I would think I must remember to tell Robert that on Wednesday afternoon. We had our own language. We had lived in so many different places, we had borrowed words from here, there and everywhere. So we always spoke in bits of Cantonese, Malay, French, German, whatever.
RB You talk very fondly of your memories of Hungary and the friendships there.
HB Yes, they went very deep.
RB How long were you in Hungary at that time, from 1963?
HB Well we were two years. It would have been unusual to have stayed longer.
RB And was this another posting, or back to the UK or another country?
HB No, to Hong Kong!
RB To Hong Kong again. How long had the gap been? You had left in 1951?
HB 1950.
RB And this was now 1965.
HB And as I told you, we came back to the same situation. Brian Wong, who was one of our staff from the early days was still in the Council, came to meet us at the ship, and said, "Sorry to tell you, there is rioting going on all over Hon Kong". So we went straight into it.
RB And how many months did the journey take you this time?
HB Oh not so long. We went through the Suez Canal.
RB So it was returning to Hong Kong in riot mode. How long did that period of unrest last?
HB It was still there when we left really and many people left, as they have done ever since.
RB And were you and Robert going back to a similar job with the Council?
HB With the Council, which had expanded enormously. Hong Kong had grown and there was a big library on the Kowloon side and the whole thing had expanded enormously. But Robert never liked that job. The first time we were starting up, that was fascinating.
RB You preferred it in your living room!
HB Yes. You see he always took the view that the Education Department did his work in Hong Kong. They were always there. They were always big and they were handling the education and he always felt that he was pointless, but that might not have been the case. Now, when the Communists are in, perhaps all the work they did will be more important now.
RB Were there still large numbers of students wanting to get into UK universities?
HB Yes, yes. A good lot here.
RB Certainly by .. well a decade later, I was visiting Hong Kong to recruit large numbers of students.
HB No I think it was probably wise policy to keep the office going all those years, but Robert just couldn't take to it, he wasn't happy there, so he decided to go to America.
RB So did you serve 2 years in Hong Kong, or less than that?
HB 2 years.
RB So on then to 1967 and America? When you said he decided, that was still with the Council but he had asked to be posted to America?
HB Yes. We landed in San Francisco. We went by Japan, by Taiwan and Japan and that was very interesting, and we landed in San Francisco and I had the 'flu. So it was a bad beginning. We had arranged to do one of these 90 day tours on a Greyhound bus, well a ninety-day ticket, and in San Francisco first I had the 'flu and I think pneumonia really, and then Robert went down with it. So forget the Greyhound bus! We were both pretty weak by that time, but we flew on to Arizona, where he had an interview with Prescott College, an interesting new college, out in the desert almost, but there was no opening at that time, but they had their eye on him, they wanted him when he could come back. So we went on to.., we flew from Arizona to New Mexico and spent a perfectly wonderful week with the students in St. John's College. I don't know if you know that. It is the hundred books. They study what they call the hundred books. How much they learned from the hundred books I know not!. But it was a very pleasant time for us in this marvellous mountain air. We both became very fit inside of a week doing nothing but talking to students, breathing wonderful air and so we were able then to pick up the bus and be on our way and we trekked right through America, all the way from New Mexico to Maine in the end. It was absolutely wonderful. Picking up a job meanwhile for Robert at Eastern Kentucky University where someone was having a sabbatical. So we spent the next year there and that was interesting. There were students from the mountains of Kentucky. Different sort of people. "Yesterday's" people they have often been called.
RB Did you have to learn the language! It was very deep!
HB Indeed! Very "Kaintuck" talk! No I loved Kentucky. Very nice and I always wanted to visit Kentucky and I enjoyed that. Then at the end of the year the other job was ready for him in Arizona.
RB And did you live "on campus" as they say? Or were you elsewhere?
HB More or less. We had university accommodation in Kentucky but not in Arizona. We had to find our own.
RB And was Prescott College a small college?
HB Very small. Exclusive sort of college. A lot of wealthy children, from the Eastern part of America. I don't know just how to explain it to you, but I never totally understood it, but it was nothing like Aberdeen University! First of all they began by being alone in a Canyon for a week. Boys, girls, everyone. Self-sufficiency was the point of it there and they had to stick it out in the canyon alone and one little Japanese girl told me she had never been so terrified! You will never be so terrified again either. Imagine it! However, that is the sort of place it was.
RB Education by ordeal!
HB By ordeal indeed and they specialised in archaeology because they were out there amongst the old Indian settlements, you know. But it was lovely country and a very fascinating State, Arizona, but it didn't seem to be for the Bruce's, because we crashed there and I came back here. Back to Edinburgh and left Robert.
RB He stayed there did he?
HB He stayed there for ever. He became almost an American. He was there for the next 20 years and not always in Arizona, because he started lecturing on ships and trudged about on these "love-boats" I call them.
RB Yes, the cruise liner with a bit of education.
HB Yes, and we just parted company. We divorced and finally he met Eleanor and married her. An American lady, from Cape Maine, New Jersey and he lived in Cape Maine for a time, becoming more and more blind as time went on. Losing the sight of one eye altogether and then they came back here, bought this house and she died in 1993 and it was after that we got together again! But I don't think I would be here now if he hadn't become blind. I would be honest about that.
RB Perhaps we can pick that part up having covered the seventies and eighties and what happened to you. So you came back to Edinburgh.
HB So I came back to Edinburgh and found myself a job with the National Playing Fields Association and I was with them for three years. But unfortunately there was a change of Secretary there, and I didn't really care to work with this second Secretary, but I stayed for a year. Then I went to the National Association of Scottish Woollen Manufacturers, which was very interesting for me because I had been brought up in a town that subsisted on wool, in Keith, which had two woollen mills. So it was like going back to ones childhood almost being associated with wool.
RB What was your job with the Woollen Manufacturers?
HB I was the Assistant Secretary. I could sign cheques and that sort of thing. There was always a man around at that time.
RB Still in Edinburgh?
HB Yes.
RB Where did you live in Edinburgh?
HB I lived in the flat which we had bought in 1950. Still there.
RB So how long did you stay in Edinburgh?
HB I stayed there … I worked until I was about 65 and then I decided perhaps it was about time to give it up. As I never approved of women working beyond 60, I thought I had done enough. I stayed in the flat another couple of years and then I bought a little house up in Keith. Back to my beginnings. And there I made a garden from scratch. Which was quite a challenge and I loved doing that.
RB Was this a house in the town?
HB Just on the edge of the town. Lovely views. Ben Rhinnes. I could see the sea from the top of my lane.
RB This was when 1979 or into the 1980's?
HB 1978 I went up there I think. But you know my American friends always said about me that I needed a challenge and after five years the garden was made and the challenge had gone! And I thought, there is not really very much here! Aberdeen was just too far away without driving. Going in the bus you had to come back. You couldn't go the theatre or anything like that. So I said "this is not right".
RB Had any of your family stayed in the Keith area?
HB I had a cousin, Alice, who was very dear to me and so I felt it was nice having her in our old-age. So I upped stakes and went to Godalming, which I had got to know because I had American friends who lived .. a Professor and his wife from Eastern Kentucky, had gone to live in Florida because of her family and they came to visit me every other year and they insisted that I go for a trip to them, after I retired, for about 6 weeks every winter which was lovely. And so I had to come through Gatwick Airport. I had friends who lived in Godalming, and they used to pick me up at Gatwick and dust me off and keep me for a week then take me back to Gatwick and send me back to Scotland. So I got to know Godalming and I decided that was where I was going.
RB Now you will have to help me with where exactly Godalming is.
HB Surrey, near Guildford. Five miles from Guildford. I stayed there for 14 years in a block of flats. The block of flats was run by a company, many of these places are run by tenants associations, but this one was run by a properly constituted company which was responsible to Companies House. I became a director of the company after a few years. I was a director for two years when they made me the Chairman and I was still the Chairman when I came to live here.
RB By which time you were into your eighties.
HB Indeed, I was almost eighty when I became Chairman. They didn't know what they were doing! And that was really very interesting as I didn't know anything about Company Law, so I frequently found myself in the library looking up Company Law. It was an interesting side-line.
RB So you came to St. Andrews in 1993?
HB What happened was that Robert decided to have a cataract operation in 1996 and it was to take place in the end of May 1996 and alas it went wrong. The operation was successful, but they managed to get an infection into him and he was, well he was very lucky to be alive, but he was totally blind, because of the infection. The little bit of sight he had left, gone!
RB He had already lost one eye so it was trying to save the remaining one?
HB Well he only had about one-quarter vision in the eye that was left and this cataract was coming over, so he would have become blind anyway, but I said that I would come and look after him from Godalming, if he decided to do the operation. I kept insisting to him it was his decision and no one else's if he did it, because the dangers were obvious. But I said that I would come and put the drops in his eyes and make sure that was properly done and done to time after he came out of hospital you see. So that's why I was here. Well he was in Ninewells Hospital for a month and sometimes crazy, because of this infection. It was a dreadful thing. So his mind was never quite as good again and eyesight had completely gone. So I stayed on here getting him to know the house and getting people who could look after him as well, a sort of nurse-housekeeper, so I stayed on and got him really on his feet again by September. Then I thought it was time I went back to my Chairmanship and my flat and all the rest of it. Having only a few clothes with me during all this time. But he didn't want me to go so we got married again in November 1996! And here I am holding the baby.
RB And when did Robert die?
HB He died in 1999. Very, very ill.
RB That is a full-circle story isn't it?
HB Yes it is.
RB And have you come back to Aberdeen often… or rarely… in your long life?
HB Well when I was living in Keith yes, and then … Oh yes, Robert had relations there so we were always back to visit. Never lost the contact.
RB I don't think I ever met him.
HB Probably not. (Produces photographs) That's him when he was at Oxford. And that one was when he was in Canton, when he was young. Well they are both young. This one was before that one and of course before he became blind, and that is his brother George … The University has had … you have got his library now I hear?
RB I believe so. Delighted to hear about that.
HB I was very pleased about that too.
RB My friend Ian Olson is a great fan of George Bruce.
HB Oh, I know. He wrote an obituary. Poor Robert was left out of some of the obituaries, as they said George was an only son. He was George Robert and he said at one time .. My father-in-law had a son, called him George Robert. Had another son, happily went up and called him Robert. I think men registered births in those days. Didn't consult their wives and he just had forgotten and then George discovered that he was George Robert said he would change his name but whether he ever did …and someone discovered he was George Robert. He never used it, so Robert sort of got lost.
RB Well it has been a wonderful story and thank you very much for telling us about it. Is there anything more that you would like … the tape can run on for a little longer?
HB I don't think so.
RB Well thank you very much indeed.
HB Not at all. Thank you for inviting me to do it.
END OF INTERVIEW
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