Taking Care of Business
Edgar Whitehead's own life during this period was strenuous. He retained from Witchwood and West Africa the habit of waking early in the morning and felt the need to exercise acutely.
On fine summers mornings he left the flat before six, walked through St. James Park to Hyde Park Corner, then right round the Serpentine into Kensington Gardens and back via Marble Arch. These early mornings, almost completely free from traffic, were delightful. Most of his companions in the parks were dog lovers exercising their pets before going to work.
He would return in time to change into office clothes and have breakfast before reaching Rhodesia House at nine. Brief conferences of Heads of Departments were made before the public were admitted at ten. He ruled there were to be no interviews before eleven so that he could deal with the day's mail and routine work without interruption.
He found that the Rhodesian Departments such as Education and Health had been sending repeat orders for many years for the same items to the same British firms which had provided satisfactory quality. Competitors were never invited to tender. He insisted tenders be called on all orders of any substance. This upset the buyers profoundly. They were terrified the departments in Rhodesia would complain about any change in quality. They were not sufficiently expert to judge whether the lowest tenders were offering goods of the same quality. He forced these changes against their opposition and was rewarded by finding many of the old suppliers had found it possible to shade their prices.
Official or business lunches took place almost every day. The majority were in the city given by firms with Rhodesian interests, but he was quite often asked to speak at Rotary and other clubs on Rhodesia. He also returned hospitality and arranged lunches for visitors from Rhodesia to meet people who could further Rhodesia's interests. Business lunches seldom finished before three and frequently made him unable to finish in the office before six.
Fortunately the war severely limited evening entertainments so he could usually spend the rest of the evening taking the current batch of Servicemen to see the sights of London. Some were particularly interested in visiting places like dockland and other parts of the East End and talking to people in pubs there. Baggott lived in constant fear the press would find out and publish something on the High Commissioner to be found most evenings in East End public bars. They generally got back to the flat about half past eleven to have a nightcap. The Greek Archbishop living in the flat beneath complained several times about the noise they made at midnight.
The historical novel Whitewashed Jacarandas and its sequel Full of Possibilities are both available on Amazon as paperbacks and eBooks.
These books are inspired by Diana's family's experiences in small town Southern Rhodesia after WWII.
Dr. Sunny Rubenstein and his Gentile wife, Mavourneen, along with various town characters lay bare the racial arrogance of the times, paternalistic idealism, Zionist fervor and anti-Semitism, the proper place of a wife, modernization versus hard-won ways of doing things, and treatment of endemic disease versus investment in public health. It's a roller coaster read.
- References:
- Sir Edgar Whitehead's Unpublished Memoirs, Rhodes House, Bodleian Library, Oxford, by permission.
- Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Source: National Library of New Zealand. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:King,_Churchill,_Fraser,_Eisenhower,_Huggins_and_Smuts_going_to_inspect_Allied_troops,_1944.jpg
