Rehan Kularatne, presenting an original essay which has received its title and had highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
My grandmother Hilda Muriel Westbrook was born in Dulwich on 28 November 1895. She was the daughter of Walter Francis Westbrook, later Chief Registrar of the Colonial Office, and Jessie Duncan, a Scottish poet and scholar, the sister of noted (and absolutely dreadful) Celtic Revival painter John Duncan RSA. Jessie Duncan Westbrook was to publish a number of verse renditions of Persian, Sufi and Hindu poetry in the 1910s. She and my great-grandfather, being Theosophists, were both extremely interested in ‘Eastern’ religions.
Hilda was educated at the progressive James Allen’s Girls’ School (JAGS) in Dulwich. Having excelled in modern languages (French and German) as well as in team sports like hockey (in addition to having Gustav Holst as her music master), she went on to Newnham in Cambridge to do a degree in Modern Languages in 1914, just after WWI broke out. (Though she completed the degree in 1917, she had to wait 30 years to be actually awarded her MA, as Cambridge was the last university in England to accept female graduates.)
Hilda with her parents at 65 Calton Avenue, Dulwich …………… & Hilda in the JAGS hockey team, standing second left
After returning to JAGS to train as a teacher, she applied and was accepted for a position as English teacher for Ānanda College in Colombo, Ceylon, that had been advertised in The Theosophist. However, arriving in Ceylon in early 1920, she was co-opted instead as Principal of the Buddhist Girls’ College, later Visākha Vidyālaya,
But that same year she met my grandfather P de S Kularatne who, after getting three degrees in four years in London, had been appointed principal of Ānanda and was a visionary educationist. Within the year they had married, she in an “Indian” sari and he in the newly-created Arya Sinhala ‘national dress,’ which were becoming popular among progressive nationalists. In accordance with the rules of the time, as a married woman she had to resign her principalship.
My grandparents on their wedding day, 20 December 1920, Hilda seated because she was the taller.
However, she was able to continue teaching ‘post-seniors’ at Ananda, as well as taking on a variety of teaching positions at tertiary level, while also bringing up a family of three children (one of them my father). In addition to becoming able to make public speeches in Sinhala by the mid-1920s, in later years she went on to be the founder of four Buddhist girls’ colleges: Ānanda Bālika in Colombo, Sri Sumangala (girls’) in Pānadura, Māliyadeva Bālika in Kurunegala, and Pushpadana Bālika in Kandy. She had also been the principal of Visākha Vidyālaya in Colombo, and was the founding principal of Mahamaya College, Kandy.
She had to face a number of setbacks in her life, most notably the death of her eldest child Andy (Ananda), a bomber pilot, in a raid in 1944. She and my grandfather eventually separated (her best friend from Newnham, Lucy Vinson, replaced her in my grandfather’s affections), and she split her time between Ceylon and the UK in later years. She was awarded an MBE for her services to education in 1953, when she was the Principal of the Girls’ Senior School in Bandārawela. Soon afterwards she moved back to London, where she took her own life in January 1956.
In Hikkaduwa with, possibly, my father – in which case it would be c1925
*****************
ALSO NOTE
P. De S Kularatne was interviewed by Michael Roberts on 23 June 1967 as one event in the Roberts Oral History Project and this taped record can now be accessed in its modern digital mode at either the Special Collections in the Barr Smith Library, Adelaide University …. or …. the ROHP Collection housed in the National Library Services Board in Colombo.
P. de S. Kularatne
... AND …
- Michael Roberts: “Nationalisms in Ceylon: Origins, Stimulants, and Ingredients,” 30 April 2022, ….. https://thuppahis.com/2022/04/30/nationalisms-in-ceylon-origins-stimulants-and-ingredients/
- Thuppahi: …………………………………………………………. https://thuppahis.com/2017/01/22/jayasekeras-critical-study-of-the-british-colonial-dispensation-in-ceylon
Is this not the mother of Maya, Mrs Stanley Senanayake?
YES.
I was very interested to read about Hilda Muriel Kularatne as I am currently preparing an article about suffragette activity in Dulwich, London. Hilda’s mother Jessie Duncan Westbrook was, in addition to being a scholar and translator, the honorary secretary of the Dulwich branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union. I should like to incorporate the charming photo of Hilda, Walter and Jessie within the article and would be grateful for your permission. Please email me if you’d like more details.