The author must be lauded for writing about a part of history well known but gently veiled. But on the other hand, her perspective about India, which she focuses much on from a strictly empire point of view of a colonial ruler, is very shallow and limited, perhaps unavoidably so. What's more, she makes factual mistakes, repeatedly, that are easy enough to correct, but for - presumably - a deep disdain, for anything related to India. The title is a tad misleading. It's a lot more about India as seen by Brits, then and now.
Most damning evidence of the ignorant and racist denigrating, disparaging attitude is in the epilogue, summing up the typical racist point of view, when the author quotes one of those Brits that lived in India, and wondered if - after Brits had left - there would be no trace of their ever having been there, or would there be a civilisation flowering as a signpost of their having been there. She mentions too a claim that British gave a common language to India, which is as stupid and ignorant an arrogance as it can get, but explaining the rich unity in diversity of the culture, languages, cuisine and coutureof India should be a topic for a separate encyclopaedia rather than a review correcting mistakes of a race as drunk on its reign as a tick having just bitten a human and replete with the blood.
"Most prescient, perhaps, was Anne Wilson, writing (at the end of her camping tour) in 1895, in sentiments that expressed not only her realisation of the possible impermanence of British rule but also the idealism that inspired the best of the Raj: ‘When a century or two have gone, will all traces of those tents and their occupants have disappeared? . . . Or will our rule in India be permanent, if not in its present form, at least in its effects? Will it gradually confer on this immense population, numbering a quarter of the inhabitants of the globe, not only greater material prosperity and greater knowledge but a higher intellectual, moral and religious standard, and so permanently raise a mighty people in the scale of humanity?"
This isn't, of course, a surprise to anyone who knows India and West both - The complete ignorance on part of the latter related to any real acquaintance with the deep and infinite treasure of knowledge that is ancient civilisation of India, the ignorance despite over three centuries of having invaded and looted India, can only be a result of a very arrogant racism that believes conquest equals superiority. This isn't that different from the generic male attitude of superiority vis-a-vis every woman, based on a smug knowledge of an ability to rape, assault and humiliate, equating that with superiority.
But men rarely stop to think whether, on the same basis, a human male is inferior to a wild buffalo, boar, jackals, or even a mosquito carrying a deadly virus that could annihilate a human male with one sting. Needless to say human weapons against those are equally effective if used by a human female against the man, so the parallel is true.
And so is the parallel between a male blind to his being not necessarily intellectually or spiritually superior to a female even if he could and did rape, assault or humiliate her, and an invading looter doing the similar to a colonial culture of the indigenous. In short, Hitler wasnt superior to Einstein or any other person of either gender who achieved anything in an intellectual or artistic or spiritual realm, even if - as per his own argument - he coud have their heads cracked with a baton.
Europe did recognise, with an awe, the tremendous culture of India, and the fact of that ancient - and still living continuously since antiquity and flourishing, not fossilized or dead but continuously growing and blossoming with exponential leaps - a culture being the ancient source of culture of Europe that hadn't lost touch with its roots as Europe had, in earlier years of the then new acquaintance. Macaulay policy turned it around by instructing the colonial reign to smash and humiliate India with false propaganda about everything that was great about India. Had that not been so, the association would have been a fruitful marriage to benefit of both, rather than that of a bully being forced to leave and breaking a few body parts in a malicious last act.
The author does mention the women of the British reign, but her attention to the background - India - engrossed her far more, if only due to a desperate need of hers to recount everything awful ever felt, seen or experienced by anyone of the colonial rule eta. When she does get to the matches arrangement, travails of brides living in India, and the homesickness of English children when sent to England, much of it can remind one of similar experiences undergone by expat Indians living in West.
It isn't only about the analysis related to why young women were shipped out to find husbands, the general status of women and their education or any prospect of a good life if they didn't catch one, but much more that the author writes about that's generally tacitly known but not discussed.
For instance she mentions the laws brought into effect by colonial British rule to increasingly create a specific caste system in the colonies including India that - of course - had not only nothing to do with the culture of India, was rather intent on putting the boot of the masters on the throat of subjects if anything, but had every other element of all other caste systems included in it, in an integral way - so it was not only comprised of the European caste system with royals topping aristocracy and nobility of titles and possessions and so on, but racism inherent too.
The English who had in initial era married Indians and sent their children to England for schooling, were later not only forbidden to thus send their children, but such relatives were not allowed to be part of the ruling strata, so the Englishmen avoided marrying Indians, not wishing their offspring to be subjected to this. There was thus a whole series of castes topped by British royalty and nobility, with other Europeans next, Anglo Indians after that and then all other Eurasians, and next converted Indian members of churches; needless to say all Hindus were officially treated as last, with special care given to humiliation of Brahmins who are equivalent of priests, teachers, doctors and advisors, unlike the western misunderstanding placing them on par with top castes of other caste system who are invariably the rich, most often traders if not royals and nobility.
This deliberate humiliation of Hindus in general and Brahmin community in particular was the essence of Macaulay policy intended to smash the spine and the spirit of India, by deliberate lies against everything that was good and great about India. Of that policy, implemented thoroughly since, such humiliation and lies were only a part.
Small wonder, then, that Hitler's persecution of Jews did not evoke any reaction in any country elsewhere, until the thorough character thereof was discovered. This was a mirror magnifying their own atrocities against their "other" subjects, shaming and horrifying, but also abhorrent due to recognition therein of themselves - British against India, U.S. as related to their slaves and descendents of those slaves, ....
In case numbers seem an argument, no, they are close; so is timeline. British policies in India, during the wars, had millions starve to death in Bengal alone, with media censorship in place. Their harvests had been taken to feed the British. In WWII, FDR sent ships filled with grains to save the Indians dying of starvation. Churchill didn't allow them to proceed further after Australia, declaring explicitly that Indians starving to death was of no consequence.
Hence The necessity of Nuremberg trials, to remind themselves about not becoming that which horrified them, since it was a slightly magnified image of themselves.
"In the 1930s, the army officer in India was allowed two months’ privileged leave, to give him a break from working in the hot weather, when the plains were an inferno until the monsoon broke. The heat took a toll on almost everyone."
"All this was in the sweltering, draining heat. Partly to offset it, there were also three ‘casual’ leaves a year of up to ten days, spent by many on shooting or fishing expeditions. Once every three years there was home leave for eight months, to include the journey (flying, which began just before the war, took three days). ‘Not always enough time,’ remarked one, ‘to find a wife.’"
Wonder if they ever realised that physical differences between Indian people vs Europeans were due precisely to the heat they found difficult to take - which Indians had been through for millennia! Which doesn't make it easier for the human physiology, but on the other hand knowledge of Aayurveda is gathered through the same millennia that includes dealing with this and other questions related to life. Which goes beyond treating diseases and injuries, and goes into building a healthy system through food and lifestyle.
""After soldiers in the social pecking order came railway engineers, businessmen, other civil servants, missionaries, police superintendents and tea, jute or indigo planters."
Caste system of European colonies, integrated with the European caste system of course - the upper strata of positions in any field were more or less reserved for those born in upper castes of Europe, in this case England, which was aristocracy and nobility topped by royalty.
Unlike the Indian caste system, in European and other caste systems men could change to a profession different from that of their forefathers'; but there were always glass ceilings, unlike Indian caste system - those born above started above and those not born to the manor had almost no possibility of reaching there; this was so even in churches, even some convents. Indian caste system on the other hand had no hierarchy within a caste; royal blood was never holy, nor was a king superior to any other man whose profession was protection of people, and rich weren't above poor, nor those with property above those mendicant for any reason.
"Some found it hard to wait until custom and their financial state allowed marriage and set up irregular ménages with local women, known as ‘polls’. Said Waring: ‘It wasn’t exactly done but it was accepted – as long as you didn’t produce children. You didn’t mess around with your own staff or labour force – you got your poll from somewhere completely different. The girls knew the men wouldn’t marry them but they also knew they would be looked after. The man would give the girl or her family a nice little house somewhere – and if she did produce a child that would be looked after too. A lot of the cleverer half-castes, who became lawyers, doctors and teachers, went to Australia, because they could produce proof of white ancestry.’"
Australian caste system, there.
"Export was the backbone of the business then, with wheat in particular; this came down in train after train from the Punjab, to be unloaded, sampled and generally passed through the cleaning machine to remove dust, barley and other seeds, then rebagged ready for shipment."
Wouldn't it be honest to end the pretence that the empire benefited colonies, and admit honestly that Europe looted other continents, India more than any other colony?
"There were three presidencies: Madras, Bengal and Bombay, and seven provinces;*Punjab, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (now Uttar Pradesh), the North-West Frontier Province, the Central Provinces (now Madhya Bharat and Maharashtra), Bihar and Orissa, Assam and Burma."
Maharashtra has some parts from Central Provinces, as it does from Bombay Province and other regions, including some of the states that merged with India. Burma was considered a Province of India by British, good to know. Author doesn't mention its original Sanskrit name! Probably doesn't know.
"The new girl would have been struck at once by the formality of much of life and the protocols that governed it. In the Raj, as with royalty, attitudes and behaviour were well behind contemporary custom and usage, with everything from etiquette to medical theories preserved in a kind of social formaldehyde. This sprang from the hierarchical nature of the governing institutions: the ICS and the Army. When junior members of either arrived in India, they naturally took their lead from the top; by the time they in turn had reached this exalted position, they carried with them the customs and habits imprinted on them in their youth.
"Thus the iron rule of precedence regulated social intercourse, from whom you called on to whom you sat next to at dinner. As the position of every official and military officer was detailed in a graded list known as the ‘Warrant of Precedence’, published by the Government of India, it was possible not only to seat people according to seniority but for a new arrival to deduce everyone’s place in the pecking order. There were sixty-six categories in the Warrant; at the top, of course, was the Viceroy, at the bottom, sub-deputy opium agents.
"Businessmen did not figure on the Warrant of Precedence but were nonetheless graded according to equally arcane rules. The broadest division among them was that between ‘commerce’ and ‘trade’ – the management of plantations was the former, and higher; selling something directly to the public was the latter. Other markers were education – a good public school and university elevated, as did long familiarity with horse, gun or rod – a decent address and a car. Even clothes came into the equation, with the wrong ones an immediate one-down mark: Owain Jenkins, a young man working in the Calcutta office of Balmer Lawrie, was quickly told by a colleague to buy a ‘better hat’. His topi had been bought in Port Said and was covered in cheap cotton cloth, with a chinstrap resembling cardboard. ‘Acceptable hats . . . were covered in gabardine and had chinstraps of suede,’ he was told.
"Women were ranked according to the status and seniority of their husband or father, the senior ladies having ‘their’ seat on a favoured club sofa reserved for them, first shuttlecock in a game of badminton served to them and getting first use of the loos after dinner; nor could anyone leave a dinner party before the most senior lady there. (When the Hon. Margaret Ashton married Hugh Whistler of the Indian Police in 1924 there was much scratching of heads: did Margaret’s status as the daughter of a lord raise that of Whistler – or did his lower hers?)"
Amazing, with so detailed and intricate a caste system of their own, they still almost reserved the word caste for India and identified India with it, denying they had any, ceiling it with other labels and a pretense that theirs was but natural, only proper, a must for civilisation - while truth is exactly the opposite.
Amazingly stupid mistake here, more due to arrogance than naive ignorance, unless it's deliberately political stance against India:-
"‘The Punjab [then in the north-west of India, now in Pakistan] has a bad climate,’ wrote Bethea Field."
The mistake is factual, in that Punjab is not - never was - "in Pakistan"! When India was divided and a part of India was given to form a new nation for those muslims who couldn't live in a democracy with everyone else, but had to have Islamic supremacy over all others and Islamic law to boot, two provinces of India were divided - Punjab was one, and Bengal the other. Western part of Punjab was lost to democratic, secular India, as was East Bengal, which later was massacred by its western brethren until helped by India to survive and become what it aspired to be - an independent Bangladesh - in 1971.
The author goes on - and on and on and on .... - about the heat of India and it's effect on the Brits.
"In the time of the Raj, long before air conditioning had been invented, the hot weather was an appalling strain for Europeans unused to its intensity – the heat, the flies, the dampness, the general discomfort, the glare. It was dreaded by everyone; some felt the northern part of India (except the north-west, which did not get the monsoon rains), where the temperature rose to great heights, was the worst, others that the damp heat of Bengal or Karachi, where the humidity was often 90 per cent or more and clothes had to be changed several times a day, was intolerable."
And yet, didn't occur to them that an ancient civilisation of humans, with a far greater knowledge, coped with the same weather via their cuisine and couture, despite the weather hitting them just as much. After all, being used to cold doesn't immunise Europeans enough to live outdoors in winter, does it? When short on heating, Europeans do suffer. Nor does centuries of heat of India immunise Indians.
But of course, learning from those they were there to loot would have broken the looting relationship! So the Brits wore flannel next to skin, corsets, and more, as the author describes at length in midst of going on about heat! Not to mention the diet that was completely unsuitable for the climate, but kept on as a matter of being British.
"Those who could left for hill stations like Simla, Mussoorie, Darjeeling; Srinagar, Gulmarg and Sonmarg in Jammu and Kashmir; Manali, Naini Tal, Gangtok and Kalimpong in the east of India, and Munnar, Ootacamund (Ooty) and Mahabaleshwar."
Ignorance or arrogant disregard? It isn't clear if there is an order intended, or it's the author's general disregard for India, when she describes them in that way. Anyone bothering to take a minute to look up Google maps can see that Simla and Manali are comparatively close together in North in Himaalayan regions while Mussoorie and Nainital are similarly close in main Himaalayan regions in U.P.; Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Gangtok are comparatively close in Eastern Himaalayan regions of Bengal and Sikkim; Mahabaleshwar if in Western mountain range of Sahyaadri, and Udagamandalam (which British deformed to Ootacamund, and further shortened to Ooty) is in the southern central mountain ranges.
It would be ok if she named them in no particular order, but no, she had to pretend she was giving them in orderly way and then give it completely jumbled.
"Today, it seems extraordinary that an impassable gulf existed between the two races; and that sophisticated, intelligent, well-educated Indians, descended from a civilisation far older than that of their overlords, should have been so snubbed. At the same time, advantage was taken of their innate good manners: if some grand personage – a governor, a viceroy – wanted a tiger shoot, it was expected that the chosen maharaja would lay one on.
"Long gone was the time when it was accepted that many East India Company men and soldiers took Indian wives; with the Raj came the barrier most forcibly expressed by Kipling in Plain Tales from the Hills: ‘A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed.’ It was an elitism fostered by what was seen as the need to emphasise the difference between the rulers and the ruled, underlining what was then the sincerely held belief that belonging to the British Empire – which then held sway over three-fifths of the earth’s surface – was the best possible fate for any nation, race or creed.
"Men in the ICS did, of course, work with Indians to a certain extent and were well aware that posts filled by Indians would increase. But, as Edward Wakefield wrote ironically: ‘It was unthinkable that European women should have to receive medical attention from an Indian doctor.’ It was the same socially, no matter how grand the Indian. When Beatrice Baker became a friend of a good-looking, charming Indian prince her mother quickly saw him off."
"The fashion-conscious Ruby Madden, youthful, blooming and determined that she would not remain in India (its effect on her complexion was already being noted), ..."
The said effect is quite visible on Indian complexion as well, in majority of the population. Most change colour several shades when affected by northern winters or summers, or exposed to southern heat. This change is even more strikingly clear when a bride of an NRI resident of Northwest or central Europe, or Northeast U.S., visits home after a couple of years.
"Here, civet cats rustled in the thatch of bungalows and hyenas howled at night and Urdu – the ‘language of the camp’ invented by the Moghuls for their multi-racial armies – was still the speech."
Urdu wasn't invented by moghuls, so misnamed by Brits themselves. The name Mughal is Persian for Mongol, and was only applicable to male lineage of Chingis Khan, misnamed Genghis by Brits. Babar didn't call himself Mughal, since he was descended from a son in law of the Khan and his male ancestry derived from the Tatar marauder and killer of millions, Taimur.
Urdu was the result of imposition of a foreign rule on India by the invaders whose court languages were Persian, Turkic, Mongol, Arabic, while their higher echelon in court consisted of those, not of Indians; this was no different from the later British rule. The lowly soldiers and others employed from India spoke their language increasingly peppered with vocabulary of the foreign rulers, and Urdu is the result. The word Urdu relates to a Persian word literally meaning hordes, and the word hordes was in fact derived from this Persian word.
Urad is a kind of lentil much favoured in the north, and looks black outside, white within. Calling the language Urdu is the graphic evidence of racism of the invaders who came before British and other Europeans.
"Delhi had replaced Calcutta as the capital in 1911* ..."
"The Government felt that administration would be easier from Delhi, a northern city, rather than from the coastal city of Calcutta."
It wasn't "felt" by the British, and had nothing whatsoever to do with ease of administration. It had everything to do with establishment of an empire and getting Indians to accept British rule over India as all supreme, rather than something temporary in several pockets. Brits were informed by some of their Indian advisors that India would never accept them as rulers of India unless they ruled from Delhi.
"Although British India was ruled from Calcutta up to 1911, all of the three important durbars were held in Delhi. With its 3,000-year-old history and ancient buildings and its past as capital of the Moghul empire, it was the obvious choice for these later imperialists.
"The first durbar, held over a fortnight during December 1876, marked the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India (on New Year’s Day 1877), and was largely an official occasion, although attended by about 100,000 people, all eager for spectacle."
"Twenty years later, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee was celebrated in Simla, where the Viceroy, now Lord Elgin and his family, had moved during the hot weather (the actual Jubilee Day was Tuesday 22 June 1897)."
"The third grand durbar was the Coronation Durbar of 1911, attended by the newly crowned King George V and his Queen, Mary – the only one at which a ruling Sovereign was present."
Anyone unfamiliar with geography, reading the above in good faith, would assume that Simla was a suburb of Delhi, or was at least in the neighbourhood. Which would be roughly as correct as assuming Zermat was in close proximity of Rome, or Edinburgh a suburb of London.
"The princely states had remained loyal to Britain throughout the Mutiny and, in return for this steadfastness, the various maharajas, rajahs, ranas, nizams, gaekwars and nawabs continued as rulers under the paramountcy of the British Crown."
The author is only remotely partially correct: partially, because at least two of the Indian rulers and empires, along with the Mughal ruler of Delhi who was old and had not been effective even when young, were intrinsic in this 1857 war that was for all purposes the war of independence by india as a whole against british rule; Maratha empire, topped by descendents of Shivaji and represented by the Peshwa administration of Pune for most purposes, was one large part; Jhansi which was related to the Maratha empire and was headed by the Queen Laxmibai was and is famous for its part due chiefly to the personal valour of this queen, who refused to surrender her kingdom when demanded by the Brits.
Remotely, because no ruler in India was loyal as such to the British. It was quite the opposite, in that they mostly saw it as 'someone rules remotely from somewhere and collects taxes, mughal or Brits, equally foreign, as long as it's convenient and we are not troubled over much'; a few who did prefer Brits to Muslims were instrumental in bringing Brits back after they had been routed in 1857. Those were less than a handful in number.
There are quite a lot of such mistakes, such as "Urdu was invented by Mughals", or assuming that heat affects British but not Indians. Mostly it's the author's disdain for India that's behind the careless mistakes.
"For all but the last few years of its duration the Raj was a patriarchy, as were the indigenous cultures over which it held sway."
Only true if one ignored most of India, that is, Hindus. It isn't only that in several parts of India the old established communities have been, were, are matriarchies, but far more than that - its thst the very concept of Divine isnt limited to male form, and Goddesses aren't only accompanying Deities but supremely important on their own, woth their own festivals of worship and celebration that have not just women but male devotees, worshippers and priests, and they aren't there as a matter of protest but as a traditional element. After all, the major Goddesses represent Wisdom, Power, Wealth and Learning, and there are more.
Another careless mistake:-
"Sauga is 112 miles north-east of the state capital, Bhopal, in the United Provinces (as they were then)."
No it isn't. Bhopal is shown in pretty much centre of Central Provinces as they were then, and so is Sagar, which was presumably deformed by Brits to Sauga. This is so, even in the map of India as it was then, in this very book by this author.
"Some things were permitted that would be frowned on at home – in India, for example, it was quite permissible for young ladies to have a chota peg as a sundowner (indeed, it was medically advised), whereas in England a young woman downing whisky would have been very mal vu."
The author fails to make it clear that she's referring only to Europeans, and in particular to British, in the above; the young ladies referred to in the paragraph above are most certainly not Indian. Anglo-Indian, possibly, if the father was a Brit and could afford it, but no other Indian then fitted the description above.
"For Indians, domestic service carried no stigma but rather conferred status. Servants, like soldiers, were drawn from the highest strata of village society, their regular wage a wealth normally undreamt of."
Elsewhere the author expresses incredulity about the caste related behaviour of Indians, and she does not bother to connect the above with that in any way, which shows how little she knows about India and how little she thinks.
What ought to be perfectly obvious is that most domestic or otherwise servants employed by the British were only performing those services that they would otherwise elsewhere outside their own home, unless they were performing services for Brits that were a level higher than allowed for them by their caste elsewhere. This remains true in most cases in working for anyone, Indian or otherwise.
"Iris and her mother went to apologise to the Hindu family – who were very nice about Phra, and explained that the ashes were being taken down to be scattered on the Ganges."
Hindus do not 'scatter' ashes, ever, as westerners usually do if cremation of theirs takes place; ashes are immersed, carefully, preferably in Gangaa, but if that isn't possible, in a river near, or the ocean. In the last case, care is taken to immerse them beyond the tidal waves so they don't return.
"The Bishop, who had spent most of his life in the jungle as a missionary to the Gonds (the ancient tribal peoples of Central India), was not used to soldiers and refused to allow Squire to wear a ‘lungee’ (the regulation parade dress turban worn by all Indian cavalry) in church. Both Iris and Squire found it impossible to get him to understand that the Indian officers from the regiment, some of whom had come from as far away as Poona, would be horrified and shocked at what they would regard as an indecency – a bare head in uniform."
There the author reaches new low of ridiculous. Lungi is approximately equivalent of a kilt from waist to foot that's a white dhoti (usually worn in most places by pleading at front and tucking up at centre so there are two legs separated) knotted at waist and without pleats or tucking up. It's NOT a headgear. Headgear is usually called pagadi, or also Pagotey in Marathi. Lungi worn by Hindus is always white cotton, while dhoti is usually white cotton but not for temple worship or similar purposes, including any religious rituals; those are silk and often particular colours other than white. Sunshine yellow or plum, raspberry are usually acceptable shades.
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"The year was 1822 ... Trade with India, the jewel in Britain’s burgeoning the fishing fleet commercial Empire, was vast and the promise of wealth and success – if they survived disease and peril – beckoned the young men of the Company. Once, they had formed marriages or liaisons with Indian beauties but by Corbett’s time these days were past – and most British girls stayed at home. So, for both parties, marriage was not so much about passion and romance as a matter-of-fact life choice, sealed by a contract, that had to be arrived at briskly or the prize would be lost to someone who was quicker off the mark."
"In the days of sail, the men who worked for the Company seldom got leave as the only possible route to the subcontinent was via the Cape of Good Hope, a voyage that took several months, sometimes a year. With these travel difficulties, Company employees could expect to return home perhaps only once before retirement, so that finding a British bride was difficult.
"To make this quest easier for their employees, from time to time the Company paid the passage out to India of a number of willing women; the first record is of twenty women sent out to Bombay in 1671. Such husbands were desirable as the Company provided an allowance of £300 a year – wealth indeed in those days – for girls who made a Company-approved match and this payment continued for life even if the woman was widowed.
"Each shipload of prospective brides was divided into ‘gentle-women’ and ‘others’; the Company gave them one set of clothing each and maintained them in India for a year, during which time they were expected to have found a mate. They were warned that if they misbehaved they would be put on a diet of bread and water, and shipped back to England. Women who were rejected by even the most desperate Company men also had to return home, and were known as ‘Returned Empties’.
"In those early Fishing Fleet days, marriage was often undertaken with the sort of rapidity usually confined to spotting a business opportunity and pouncing on it, a kind of matrimonial bran tub where it was in the interests of both parties to make up their minds quickly – the girls because they did not wish to go home to probable spinsterhood and the men in case someone else seized the prize."
"Fortunes could be made by those serving the Company in either a civilian or military capacity – if they survived India’s difficult climate and the diseases that could strike from nowhere, rendering a man who was healthy at breakfast dead by midnight. Those who did survive frequently became very rich; and most of these young men were in need of a wife.
"By the nineteenth century, India was seen as a marriage market for girls neither pretty nor rich enough to make at home what was known as ‘a good match’, the aim of all respectable young women – indeed, perhaps not to make one at all. In India, where European men greatly outnumbered European women, they would be besieged by suitors, many of whom would be richer or have more prospects than anyone they could meet in England.
"As the century progressed and with it India’s economic importance to Britain, so did the country’s desirability as a marital hunting ground. No longer did the East India Company send out and maintain young women; instead, they charged a premium to those wishing to go out. This ‘bond’ of £200* allowed passage (would-be travellers also had to pay their fare) on an Indiaman, as the Company’s ships were called, and ensured that the young woman would not be a charge on the Company once she arrived. In a sense, the bond became an affidavit of the girl’s social standing and, by extension, behaviour: if her parents could afford its cost, they were likely to be of a class that made their daughter a suitable bride for a high-up Company official."
"The arrival of a cargo of marriageable females was of intense interest to the numerous bachelors on the lookout for a wife and ready to snap one up at the first opportunity. There was, however, an established ritual for this instant selection. The captain of the ship and well-known ladies whose social credentials were beyond reproach would organise large parties at which the girls who hoped for a husband ‘sat up’, as it was called, for three or four nights in succession while the eligible bachelors, young and old, rushed there to look the cargo over and make an approach to the one who took their fancy. The church on Sundays was also a recognised venue for young men to try their luck.
"What was left of the Fishing Fleet moved on to the mofussil (outlying districts) to scoop up husbands from the bunch of unmarried officials, soldiers, planters and businessmen who lived far from the great centres and, with less opportunity to find brides, were likely to be less choosy. With such a multitude of wife-seekers, a young woman had to be very plain or over-particular not to acquire a mate.
"The demand for wives was so great that a woman who lost her husband had no difficulty in replacing him. There are accounts of widows being proposed to on the steps of the church after the burial of husbands. Marriage was undertaken at such speed, and illnesses were so often fatal that, according to one authority, there were even cases where a wife would affiance herself to a suitor as her husband lay desperately sick."
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"The origins of the ‘Fishing Fleet’ go back to the days when the Honourable East India Company was establishing its trading domain. Sometimes these girls were adventuresses, sometimes they were sent out by the East India Company, sometimes they were gently born but without family or financial support; an example is the sixteen-year-old Margaret Maskelyne, born in October 1735, one of the orphaned children of Edmund and Elizabeth Maskelyne. One of her brothers,* Edmund, in the East India Company, was stationed at Madras, and when he showed his close friend Robert Clive a miniature of Margaret, Clive became so enamoured of her beauty that Edmund urged her to come out to Madras. She did so, sailing with several other young women on the tiny Godolphin, a ship of less than 500 tons. By the time she arrived, Clive (later Lord Clive of Plassey or, as he was more popularly known, Clive of India) had become a military hero and amassed a fortune. After a six-month courtship, the couple were married at Madras on 18 February 1753.
"As the reputation of India as a place where even the plainest could find a mate grew, so did the number of young women travelling out there. By the middle of the nineteenth century the Fishing Fleet no longer consisted only of girls sent out by the East India Company but of others as well, sent by their families (sometimes against their will) in the hope of making a good match. In England, a land where women outnumbered marriageable men, a girl without beauty, money or grand relations had little hope of this; in India, she was showered with immediate proposals."
"An Indian Civil Service was installed, for which entrants had initially to pass the same examinations as the Home Civil Service, followed by further education in the laws and customs of the country they were going to govern. Regiments of the British Army were sent out on tours of duty; the Indian regiments originally raised by the East India Company now swore their loyalty to the Crown – as did the planters and businessmen who had settled in India, Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka) and Burma.
"With the founding of the Raj, the number of single young women making their way out to India began to increase steadily. When the Suez Canal was opened in November 1869 by the Empress Eugenie (it had been built by the French), the journey time from London to Bombay was cut from months to weeks. The gateway to India was open – and women flooded through, usually at the beginning of the cold weather.
"Although the practice of despatching young women to India for the benefit of men working there had ceased, the name Fishing Fleet stuck, attaching itself to the young girls and women who continued to go out to India in sizeable numbers – as a glance at the passenger list of the Kaiser I Hind, sailing from London to Calcutta on 12 October 1893, confirms."
"There were compelling demographic and social reasons for a girl to try her luck in this huge, exotic country.
"It was an era when for a woman marriage was the desired and only goal, giving her status, financial security, children, a household and a pleasant life among her peers. Without marriage, pointed out the academic Rita Kranidis, a woman’s life and her future prospects were as nothing.
"If she did not marry, she became (unless very rich) that sad figure: the Victorian spinster, living on the charity of some relation or earning a pittance and despised both by those she worked for and their servants. For middle-class women, the only occupations that were socially acceptable were acting as a companion to some rich, lonely and usually difficult elderly woman, or teaching, usually as a governess (in the 1850s there were over 25,000 governesses in employment). For such women, on an annual salary of only £10– £40, there was no possibility of saving for old age, and of course no pension. And by the late 1860s, even this unrewarding profession was under threat: the new secondary schools for women were turning out young women much better qualified for teaching than those with the superficial education that was all the average young ‘gentlewoman’ received.
"Yet though social life, indeed the whole fabric of society, was based on the assumption that all women would marry, many did not. From 1851 to 1911 approximately one in three of all women aged twenty-five to thirty-five was unmarried; and between fifteen and 19 per cent of women aged thirty-five to forty-five were unmarried. The 1851 census made clear that in a population of around eighteen million roughly 750,000 women would remain single, a number that by the time of the 1861 census had roughly doubled.
"Suddenly, it seemed, there were spinsters everywhere. Adding to their difficulties was the then general belief that a girl had to marry or at least become engaged by the time she was twenty or so. The dread words ‘old maid’ could be applied as early as twenty-five.
"These women came to be referred to as ‘superfluous women’ or ‘redundant women’ and concern for them was widespread. Society after society was formed for the purpose of assisting them to emigrate to the newly founded colonies, where there was a corresponding shortage of women – but of women prepared to buckle down to the hardships and exigencies of pioneer life, which few with any pretensions to gentility were willing or able to do.
"Some tried to help themselves through the increasing number of lonely-hearts columns. ‘A young lady, aged 22, the orphan daughter of a country gentleman, of old family, would like to marry. She is a capital housekeeper; can ride and drive a pair; is musical and dresses exquisitely; and wants someone awfully jolly. No clergymen, doctors or learned men need apply, but an easy-going kind of fellow, with a fairish amount of brains, would suit admirably.’* Advertisements like these appeared in the rash of ‘marriage’ journals that were launched in the 1880s,† but they did not address the central problem of too few men to go round.
"The plight of the gently born, softly brought up middle-class woman, in particular, exercised both the Government and the popular imagination: because of her class, most forms of labour were ‘banned’; because of her lack of education she was ill-equipped to support herself; because of her lack of independence she could not, like her brothers, seek her fortune overseas – and because so many of these brothers did, her pool of potential husbands was correspondingly smaller.
"In 1890 one study by Clara Collett compared the numbers of unmarried women between thirty-five and forty-six (i.e., those considered to be irredeemably single) in Kensington with those in Hackney. Among the Kensingtonian ‘servant-keeping classes’ (those with an income of £150 or more) there were thirty-six unmarried women to thirty married ones in this age group, but only nine to seventy-six among the working class of Hackney. Small wonder that the enterprising decided to chance it in India, where men outnumbered women by roughly four to one.
"One reason for these unmarried women was the attitude of Victorian society. Women had few rights: they could not vote, sue, own property, take charge of their own money or have a job. Indeed, should this have been possible, they would not have been equipped for it. The Victorian young lady learned only the accomplishments considered suitable for her position – dancing, singing, sketching and how to sit up straight, with needlework to fill in the endless evening hours. Education,* as such, was the province of the male – as, indeed, was virtually everything of importance.
"The man who married this sheltered, cosseted creature was expected to provide her with a household – house, furniture, clothing, servants, carriage and, of course, the food and drink necessary to maintain her, the other adults in the house and the numerous children she was expected to bear.
"For the men these young women would hope to marry, this burden was often impossible. Younger sons with no prospects, or the sons of parents in straitened circumstances, simply could not afford the expense of a wife. Some of them sailed to Britain’s expanding Empire (thus further depleting the pool of available men at home) because here, with luck, they would make their fortunes or at the least be able to live at a standard they could not possibly afford in England. The case of the seven sons (out of thirteen children born between 1860 and 1883) of the Reverend James Du Boulay and his wife Alice is typical. ‘The eldest boy became a surgeon,’ wrote the Reverend James’s grandson, Professor Robin Du Boulay, ‘but, at a time of poor prospects at home and widening opportunities in the empire, the others looked overseas.’
"Other young men with an income too low for marriage stayed at home, living as bachelors. Filling the gap left by their lack of access to one of the obvious benefits of matrimony were numerous prostitutes. There were so many that it was considered inadvisable for a respectable woman to walk alone even by day in Piccadilly, Regent Street, the Strand or Leicester Square: if she did, she risked not only being scandalised by streetwalkers but also mistaken for one herself and accosted. One leading authority claims that there were about 55,000 prostitutes (in a population of around two million) working London’s streets, bars and theatres in 1841 – or to put it another way, there was one prostitute for every twelve adult males."
The author gives a succinct exploration of reasons for this high ratio, apart from the question of so very many unmarried wipomen and men of the country due to caste considerations of what were thought necessities and the economic realities due to the same caste considerations.
"Although diaries and letters of the period have shown, in contradiction to the general view of the era, that many Victorian women had similar attitudes to sexual enjoyment as women today, these documents were necessarily private. Then, such matters were never discussed. Thus most women, it was thought, were not troubled by sexual feeling of any kind, suffering sex only as a prelude to the sizeable family that they were expected to bear, an example set by the Queen herself. What no one would have known was the gusto with which the Queen approached her own marriage bed, disclosed only years later in her own diaries. It was not until the dawn of the twentieth century that sexual pleasure became ‘acceptable’ for women as for men, and then only within the context of conjugal love – Marie Stopes’s explosive book that tackled the subject, published in 1918, was entitled Married Love; indeed, until the Second World War many young women went to their marriage beds in complete ignorance."
"The origins of the ‘Fishing Fleet’ go back to the days when the Honourable East India Company was establishing its trading domain. Sometimes these girls were adventuresses, sometimes they were sent out by the East India Company, sometimes they were gently born but without family or financial support; an example is the sixteen-year-old Margaret Maskelyne, born in October 1735, one of the orphaned children of Edmund and Elizabeth Maskelyne. One of her brothers,* Edmund, in the East India Company, was stationed at Madras, and when he showed his close friend Robert Clive a miniature of Margaret, Clive became so enamoured of her beauty that Edmund urged her to come out to Madras. She did so, sailing with several other young women on the tiny Godolphin, a ship of less than 500 tons. By the time she arrived, Clive (later Lord Clive of Plassey or, as he was more popularly known, Clive of India) had become a military hero and amassed a fortune. After a six-month courtship, the couple were married at Madras on 18 February 1753.
"As the reputation of India as a place where even the plainest could find a mate grew, so did the number of young women travelling out there. By the middle of the nineteenth century the Fishing Fleet no longer consisted only of girls sent out by the East India Company but of others as well, sent by their families (sometimes against their will) in the hope of making a good match. In England, a land where women outnumbered marriageable men, a girl without beauty, money or grand relations had little hope of this; in India, she was showered with immediate proposals."
"An Indian Civil Service was installed, for which entrants had initially to pass the same examinations as the Home Civil Service, followed by further education in the laws and customs of the country they were going to govern. Regiments of the British Army were sent out on tours of duty; the Indian regiments originally raised by the East India Company now swore their loyalty to the Crown – as did the planters and businessmen who had settled in India, Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka) and Burma.
"With the founding of the Raj, the number of single young women making their way out to India began to increase steadily. When the Suez Canal was opened in November 1869 by the Empress Eugenie (it had been built by the French), the journey time from London to Bombay was cut from months to weeks. The gateway to India was open – and women flooded through, usually at the beginning of the cold weather.
"Although the practice of despatching young women to India for the benefit of men working there had ceased, the name Fishing Fleet stuck, attaching itself to the young girls and women who continued to go out to India in sizeable numbers – as a glance at the passenger list of the Kaiser I Hind, sailing from London to Calcutta on 12 October 1893, confirms."
................................................................................................
"There were compelling demographic and social reasons for a girl to try her luck in this huge, exotic country.
"It was an era when for a woman marriage was the desired and only goal, giving her status, financial security, children, a household and a pleasant life among her peers. Without marriage, pointed out the academic Rita Kranidis, a woman’s life and her future prospects were as nothing.
"If she did not marry, she became (unless very rich) that sad figure: the Victorian spinster, living on the charity of some relation or earning a pittance and despised both by those she worked for and their servants. For middle-class women, the only occupations that were socially acceptable were acting as a companion to some rich, lonely and usually difficult elderly woman, or teaching, usually as a governess (in the 1850s there were over 25,000 governesses in employment). For such women, on an annual salary of only £10– £40, there was no possibility of saving for old age, and of course no pension. And by the late 1860s, even this unrewarding profession was under threat: the new secondary schools for women were turning out young women much better qualified for teaching than those with the superficial education that was all the average young ‘gentlewoman’ received.
"Yet though social life, indeed the whole fabric of society, was based on the assumption that all women would marry, many did not. From 1851 to 1911 approximately one in three of all women aged twenty-five to thirty-five was unmarried; and between fifteen and 19 per cent of women aged thirty-five to forty-five were unmarried. The 1851 census made clear that in a population of around eighteen million roughly 750,000 women would remain single, a number that by the time of the 1861 census had roughly doubled.
"Suddenly, it seemed, there were spinsters everywhere. Adding to their difficulties was the then general belief that a girl had to marry or at least become engaged by the time she was twenty or so. The dread words ‘old maid’ could be applied as early as twenty-five.
"These women came to be referred to as ‘superfluous women’ or ‘redundant women’ and concern for them was widespread. Society after society was formed for the purpose of assisting them to emigrate to the newly founded colonies, where there was a corresponding shortage of women – but of women prepared to buckle down to the hardships and exigencies of pioneer life, which few with any pretensions to gentility were willing or able to do.
"Some tried to help themselves through the increasing number of lonely-hearts columns. ‘A young lady, aged 22, the orphan daughter of a country gentleman, of old family, would like to marry. She is a capital housekeeper; can ride and drive a pair; is musical and dresses exquisitely; and wants someone awfully jolly. No clergymen, doctors or learned men need apply, but an easy-going kind of fellow, with a fairish amount of brains, would suit admirably.’* Advertisements like these appeared in the rash of ‘marriage’ journals that were launched in the 1880s,† but they did not address the central problem of too few men to go round.
"The plight of the gently born, softly brought up middle-class woman, in particular, exercised both the Government and the popular imagination: because of her class, most forms of labour were ‘banned’; because of her lack of education she was ill-equipped to support herself; because of her lack of independence she could not, like her brothers, seek her fortune overseas – and because so many of these brothers did, her pool of potential husbands was correspondingly smaller.
"In 1890 one study by Clara Collett compared the numbers of unmarried women between thirty-five and forty-six (i.e., those considered to be irredeemably single) in Kensington with those in Hackney. Among the Kensingtonian ‘servant-keeping classes’ (those with an income of £150 or more) there were thirty-six unmarried women to thirty married ones in this age group, but only nine to seventy-six among the working class of Hackney. Small wonder that the enterprising decided to chance it in India, where men outnumbered women by roughly four to one.
"One reason for these unmarried women was the attitude of Victorian society. Women had few rights: they could not vote, sue, own property, take charge of their own money or have a job. Indeed, should this have been possible, they would not have been equipped for it. The Victorian young lady learned only the accomplishments considered suitable for her position – dancing, singing, sketching and how to sit up straight, with needlework to fill in the endless evening hours. Education,* as such, was the province of the male – as, indeed, was virtually everything of importance.
"The man who married this sheltered, cosseted creature was expected to provide her with a household – house, furniture, clothing, servants, carriage and, of course, the food and drink necessary to maintain her, the other adults in the house and the numerous children she was expected to bear.
"For the men these young women would hope to marry, this burden was often impossible. Younger sons with no prospects, or the sons of parents in straitened circumstances, simply could not afford the expense of a wife. Some of them sailed to Britain’s expanding Empire (thus further depleting the pool of available men at home) because here, with luck, they would make their fortunes or at the least be able to live at a standard they could not possibly afford in England. The case of the seven sons (out of thirteen children born between 1860 and 1883) of the Reverend James Du Boulay and his wife Alice is typical. ‘The eldest boy became a surgeon,’ wrote the Reverend James’s grandson, Professor Robin Du Boulay, ‘but, at a time of poor prospects at home and widening opportunities in the empire, the others looked overseas.’
"Other young men with an income too low for marriage stayed at home, living as bachelors. Filling the gap left by their lack of access to one of the obvious benefits of matrimony were numerous prostitutes. There were so many that it was considered inadvisable for a respectable woman to walk alone even by day in Piccadilly, Regent Street, the Strand or Leicester Square: if she did, she risked not only being scandalised by streetwalkers but also mistaken for one herself and accosted. One leading authority claims that there were about 55,000 prostitutes (in a population of around two million) working London’s streets, bars and theatres in 1841 – or to put it another way, there was one prostitute for every twelve adult males."
The author gives a succinct exploration of reasons for this high ratio, apart from the question of so very many unmarried wipomen and men of the country due to caste considerations of what were thought necessities and the economic realities due to the same caste considerations.
"Although diaries and letters of the period have shown, in contradiction to the general view of the era, that many Victorian women had similar attitudes to sexual enjoyment as women today, these documents were necessarily private. Then, such matters were never discussed. Thus most women, it was thought, were not troubled by sexual feeling of any kind, suffering sex only as a prelude to the sizeable family that they were expected to bear, an example set by the Queen herself. What no one would have known was the gusto with which the Queen approached her own marriage bed, disclosed only years later in her own diaries. It was not until the dawn of the twentieth century that sexual pleasure became ‘acceptable’ for women as for men, and then only within the context of conjugal love – Marie Stopes’s explosive book that tackled the subject, published in 1918, was entitled Married Love; indeed, until the Second World War many young women went to their marriage beds in complete ignorance."
................................................................................................
"As the nineteenth century progressed, more and more men turned their faces outward and soon the words ‘Empire builder’ passed into the language. Originating with the trading posts and overseas colonies established in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, these possessions expanded to become, at its height, the largest empire in history. By the time of the Raj, Britain controlled colonies, was unchallenged and unchallengeable at sea and held a dominant position in world trade. To run this empire of around 10,000,000 square miles, more and more settlers, merchants, lawgivers, soldiers and administrators were needed.
"India in particular was a goal: schools like the United Services College, Westward Ho! (on which Kipling based Stalky & Co.), sprang up, their alumni as a matter of course joining some branch of Government service – the Indian Civil Service, the Forestry Service, the Police – or, with Kipling’s Great Game at its height in the 1880s and 1890s, the Army. By the time the Raj ended, on 15 August 1947, many English families had lived in India for generations, with brothers, sons and grandsons conceiving of no other life."
"... islands gold, turquoise and amethyst in the misty early sunlight of the harbour of Bombay,’ reminisced Veronica Bamfield in the 1930s."
"Until the beginning of the eighteenth century the leisurely sea route round Africa had been quite sufficient for the needs of the expanding Empire – one of the reasons Britain established colonies along the coast of Africa was to protect the shipping that carried her trade.* But now her mills needed India’s raw materials, and fast transport was urgent. The eighteen months or even two years that might elapse before communications from the Company’s executive board in London could reach their employees in India and an answer be returned were no longer acceptable. An alternative to the Cape route had to be found."
"By Pa and Ma I’m daily told
"To marry now’s my time,
"For though I’m very far from old,
"I’m rather in my prime.
"They say while we have any sun
"We ought to make our hay—
"And India has so hot an one,
"I’m going to Bombay!
. . . . . . . . . . . .
"My heart is full—my trunks as well;
"My mind and caps made up,
"My corsets, shap’d by Mrs Bell,
"Are promised ere I sup;
"With boots and shoes, Rivarta’s best,
"And dresses by Ducé,
"And a special licence in my chest—
"I’m going to Bombay!"
"As the nineteenth century progressed, more and more men turned their faces outward and soon the words ‘Empire builder’ passed into the language. Originating with the trading posts and overseas colonies established in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, these possessions expanded to become, at its height, the largest empire in history. By the time of the Raj, Britain controlled colonies, was unchallenged and unchallengeable at sea and held a dominant position in world trade. To run this empire of around 10,000,000 square miles, more and more settlers, merchants, lawgivers, soldiers and administrators were needed.
"India in particular was a goal: schools like the United Services College, Westward Ho! (on which Kipling based Stalky & Co.), sprang up, their alumni as a matter of course joining some branch of Government service – the Indian Civil Service, the Forestry Service, the Police – or, with Kipling’s Great Game at its height in the 1880s and 1890s, the Army. By the time the Raj ended, on 15 August 1947, many English families had lived in India for generations, with brothers, sons and grandsons conceiving of no other life."
"... islands gold, turquoise and amethyst in the misty early sunlight of the harbour of Bombay,’ reminisced Veronica Bamfield in the 1930s."
"Until the beginning of the eighteenth century the leisurely sea route round Africa had been quite sufficient for the needs of the expanding Empire – one of the reasons Britain established colonies along the coast of Africa was to protect the shipping that carried her trade.* But now her mills needed India’s raw materials, and fast transport was urgent. The eighteen months or even two years that might elapse before communications from the Company’s executive board in London could reach their employees in India and an answer be returned were no longer acceptable. An alternative to the Cape route had to be found."
................................................................................................
"By Pa and Ma I’m daily told
"To marry now’s my time,
"For though I’m very far from old,
"I’m rather in my prime.
"They say while we have any sun
"We ought to make our hay—
"And India has so hot an one,
"I’m going to Bombay!
. . . . . . . . . . . .
"My heart is full—my trunks as well;
"My mind and caps made up,
"My corsets, shap’d by Mrs Bell,
"Are promised ere I sup;
"With boots and shoes, Rivarta’s best,
"And dresses by Ducé,
"And a special licence in my chest—
"I’m going to Bombay!"
................................................................................................
"By the time of the Raj, sail had given way almost entirely to steam, although troops were still sometimes carried in sailing ships, which took the Cape route. To judge by the letters sent home by Minnie Blane, the bride of Archie Wood, a handsome captain in the army of the soon-to-be-disbanded East India Company, it could be a nightmare journey.
"In these early journeys round the Cape all the cabins had to be furnished by the passengers themselves – what they bought was simply an empty space, to be filled at their expense and according to their means. This involved, at the least, a bed or sofa on which to sleep; sheets, looking glass, washstand, chair, candles and a chest for clothes."
"In 1830 the East India Company pioneered the Red Sea route with a small steamer, built in India, called the Hugh Lindsay. As sail gave way to steam – though the early steamships were often sail-assisted in suitable conditions – and with it the end of the perilous journey round the Cape of Good Hope, the journey time shortened dramatically.
"Small steamers began to run across the Indian Ocean between Suez and Bombay. Passengers would leave their ship at Alexandria and, after changing to a Nile boat – even smaller – travel to Cairo via a canal forty-eight miles long that had been built a few years earlier by the Pasha of Egypt, using 200,000 slaves. From Cairo those hardy early travellers were sent off in parties of six in wagons, each with two wooden wheels of the immense strength needed to survive the lumps of stone and small boulders on some parts of the road. Each wagon was pulled by four or six horses (drawn from a stud of 400) that were changed every ten miles or so, when there would be a meal for the passengers; halfway, there was a hotel with bedrooms where the passengers could catch up on sleep for a few hours, for the start of the eighty-four-mile land journey to Port Suez."
"At Suez they would catch the steamer that would take them on the last leg of their journey, to Bombay. The coal for this had to come out from England; and was humped across the desert by a herd of 3,000 camels kept for the purpose. By now ships’ cabins were furnished, although the minimum wardrobe recommended seems enormous. ‘Take with you only six dozen shirts. . . two dozen pairs of white pantaloons, three dozen pairs of long drawers, a forage cap, a straw hat . . .’. Women were advised to take no less than six dozen chemises, four dozen night chemises, four dozen each of drawers, thin cotton stockings, towels and three pairs of stays.
"These ships also transported the mail, letters and newspapers packed in boxes about 18 inches by 12, colour-coded in red, blue and black according to destination – enough, said one observer, to fill two large luggage vans. (The mail itself started its journey by going over the Channel and France to Marseilles, from Marseilles to Port Said, then over the desert to Suez and thence by paddle steamer to India.)
"When the Suez Canal opened in 1869 passengers were able to remain on the same vessel they had boarded in England, doing away with the dirt and discomfort of the desert route and heralding the luxury of the later ocean-going liners."
................................................................................................
"The Bay of Biscay was still so dreaded in the twentieth century that those who could afford it often travelled overland to join their ship at Marseilles in order to avoid it."
"After Marseilles, Aden was the next port for coaling, a long process during which passengers were sent ashore, to amuse themselves in various ways. Some drove the few miles to the botanical gardens; Fishing Fleet girl Marian Atkins and her mother went to see a well, known for one extraordinary property. Those who looked into the water in its depths, even at midday, could see the stars reflected, even though they were invisible in the clear blue sky overhead."
................................................................................................
"August Week, which began in 1890, was the great social week of the year for the tea and coffee planters with estates in Ceylon; at the beginning of August, it fitted neatly between the end of the southwest and the start of the north-east monsoons. The girls who came to try their luck with the eligible bachelors who had come down to Colombo for the annual festivities were the more adventurous contingent of the Fishing Fleet, if only because marriage to one of these men generally meant a life spent on an isolated plantation."
"Others of the Fishing Fleet were simply returning to their families after an English education. In the eyes of those who served the Raj, there were compelling reasons for sending their offspring home to England."
Doctors of the time, well into 1930s, apparently were firm about inadvisibility of children over five years of age being brought up in India without 'physical and moral deterioration', although it was children under five who were more in danger as evident by graves of little ones in english cemeteries in India.
"There were also pressing social reasons. By the twentieth century, there were excellent boarding schools in India – but in English eyes, they had one fatal flaw: the accent of their alumni. Many of the pupils at these establishments were Eurasian, the children of Eurasian planters or of the railway community, who spoke with the sing-song Eurasian accent, commonly and derogatorily known as ‘chi-chi’. The fear that a British child might pick up the accent of – or become too friendly with – Eurasians was very real in the India of the Raj."
"The Bay of Biscay was still so dreaded in the twentieth century that those who could afford it often travelled overland to join their ship at Marseilles in order to avoid it."
"After Marseilles, Aden was the next port for coaling, a long process during which passengers were sent ashore, to amuse themselves in various ways. Some drove the few miles to the botanical gardens; Fishing Fleet girl Marian Atkins and her mother went to see a well, known for one extraordinary property. Those who looked into the water in its depths, even at midday, could see the stars reflected, even though they were invisible in the clear blue sky overhead."
................................................................................................
"August Week, which began in 1890, was the great social week of the year for the tea and coffee planters with estates in Ceylon; at the beginning of August, it fitted neatly between the end of the southwest and the start of the north-east monsoons. The girls who came to try their luck with the eligible bachelors who had come down to Colombo for the annual festivities were the more adventurous contingent of the Fishing Fleet, if only because marriage to one of these men generally meant a life spent on an isolated plantation."
"Others of the Fishing Fleet were simply returning to their families after an English education. In the eyes of those who served the Raj, there were compelling reasons for sending their offspring home to England."
Doctors of the time, well into 1930s, apparently were firm about inadvisibility of children over five years of age being brought up in India without 'physical and moral deterioration', although it was children under five who were more in danger as evident by graves of little ones in english cemeteries in India.
"There were also pressing social reasons. By the twentieth century, there were excellent boarding schools in India – but in English eyes, they had one fatal flaw: the accent of their alumni. Many of the pupils at these establishments were Eurasian, the children of Eurasian planters or of the railway community, who spoke with the sing-song Eurasian accent, commonly and derogatorily known as ‘chi-chi’. The fear that a British child might pick up the accent of – or become too friendly with – Eurasians was very real in the India of the Raj."
................................................................................................
"Such apartheid had not always existed. In this hot climate where life expectancy was low and to which few white women travelled, what Robert Clive’s great rival Joseph Dupleix* called ‘la rage de la culotte’ meant that marrying or cohabiting with Indian women was accepted as perfectly natural for men who were likely to spend their entire lives in India. Many of their offspring were sent back to Britain to be educated, often marrying there.†"
"Then came the Regulating Act of 1773, which created the post of Governor-General of Bengal with administrative powers over all of British India. When Lord Cornwallis – the man who surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown in 1781 – was chosen for the post in 1786, these powers were enlarged and he immediately began a programme of edicts that would eventually result in the impassable barrier between British and Indians during the Raj.
"The first of these diktats, issued almost at once, banned the children of British men and Indian wives from jobs with the East India Company. At the same time, it was forbidden to send such mixed-race children home to be educated. Five years later, an order was issued that no one with an Indian parent could be employed in the civil, military or marine branches of the Company (though at this point, as ‘Indian’ rested largely in the eye of the beholder, the light-skinned still slipped through) Finally, all jobs paying more than £500 a year were reserved for British men born and hired in Britain.*
"The thinking behind these earlier laws was rammed home with a vengeance when, in 1800, Lord Wellesley (the successor to Cornwallis), banned Indians, and Britons born in India, from all Government social functions in Calcutta, a practice that spread steadily to the other parts of India under British domination. The machinery for separation, and the creation of an Anglo-Indian society that could fill only the lower and less lucrative posts in India, was now in place.
"Such apartheid had not always existed. In this hot climate where life expectancy was low and to which few white women travelled, what Robert Clive’s great rival Joseph Dupleix* called ‘la rage de la culotte’ meant that marrying or cohabiting with Indian women was accepted as perfectly natural for men who were likely to spend their entire lives in India. Many of their offspring were sent back to Britain to be educated, often marrying there.†"
"Then came the Regulating Act of 1773, which created the post of Governor-General of Bengal with administrative powers over all of British India. When Lord Cornwallis – the man who surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown in 1781 – was chosen for the post in 1786, these powers were enlarged and he immediately began a programme of edicts that would eventually result in the impassable barrier between British and Indians during the Raj.
"The first of these diktats, issued almost at once, banned the children of British men and Indian wives from jobs with the East India Company. At the same time, it was forbidden to send such mixed-race children home to be educated. Five years later, an order was issued that no one with an Indian parent could be employed in the civil, military or marine branches of the Company (though at this point, as ‘Indian’ rested largely in the eye of the beholder, the light-skinned still slipped through) Finally, all jobs paying more than £500 a year were reserved for British men born and hired in Britain.*
"The thinking behind these earlier laws was rammed home with a vengeance when, in 1800, Lord Wellesley (the successor to Cornwallis), banned Indians, and Britons born in India, from all Government social functions in Calcutta, a practice that spread steadily to the other parts of India under British domination. The machinery for separation, and the creation of an Anglo-Indian society that could fill only the lower and less lucrative posts in India, was now in place.
................................................................................................
"As these laws hit home, Indian wives and mistresses began to disappear. No man wanted to see his children penalised because their mother was the wrong colour or to see his wife viewed as a social outcast. At the same time, despite the difficulties, more British women began to travel to India.
"To the general public, as to Queen Victoria herself, India had always been a land of compelling fascination. Its silks and muslins, its spices, jewels, ivory and tiger skins breathed an exotic glamour with overtones of romance and danger that must have been irresistible to an adventurous young woman. These early members of the Fishing Fleet were put off by neither the discomforts and dangers of the journey nor the high mortality rate among Britons working in India. What lay ahead was the Holy Grail of the Victorian miss: a pool of eligible, financially secure bachelors.
"By the time the Raj was installed in 1858 the ‘us and them’ attitude was part of the British mindset, as was an unquestioning acceptance of the need to maintain purity of blood and links with the motherland.
"So home – as England was always called, even by fifth-generation Anglo-Indian families – went the small boys and girls born to the servants of the Raj, sometimes as young as five, sometimes to see parents only once or twice during those years. Some were lucky enough to stay with loving aunts, cousins or grand parents, others could find themselves lodged somewhere that lacked all love, warmth and laughter; yet others had to remain at school during the holidays while everyone else left to join their families, enduring years of separation and misery."
"That most of these girls did marry was unsurprising. Until the Second World War, the whole emphasis of their upbringing was on becoming wives and mothers;* any thought of a career was usually discouraged, with arguments ranging from ‘Don’t be silly, your husband will support you,’ to ‘You will be taking the bread out of the mouth of someone who really needs it.’ Thus whether or not they actively planned to look for a husband, the subliminal quest for a mate was necessarily there from an early age.
"As far as the Army was concerned, girls from Army families often regarded a spell in India as the equivalent of a debutante Season. They ‘sailed joyfully away by P&O liner to join the “Fishing Fleet”, see the Rock, the Grand Harbour, the Taj by moonlight and find a husband,’ wrote Veronica Bamfield, herself the daughter and granddaughter of soldiers who had served in India. ‘This practice was well established long before it became part of army ritual and had been a fruitful source of supply of wives for the Honourable East India Company.’"
"As these laws hit home, Indian wives and mistresses began to disappear. No man wanted to see his children penalised because their mother was the wrong colour or to see his wife viewed as a social outcast. At the same time, despite the difficulties, more British women began to travel to India.
"To the general public, as to Queen Victoria herself, India had always been a land of compelling fascination. Its silks and muslins, its spices, jewels, ivory and tiger skins breathed an exotic glamour with overtones of romance and danger that must have been irresistible to an adventurous young woman. These early members of the Fishing Fleet were put off by neither the discomforts and dangers of the journey nor the high mortality rate among Britons working in India. What lay ahead was the Holy Grail of the Victorian miss: a pool of eligible, financially secure bachelors.
"By the time the Raj was installed in 1858 the ‘us and them’ attitude was part of the British mindset, as was an unquestioning acceptance of the need to maintain purity of blood and links with the motherland.
"So home – as England was always called, even by fifth-generation Anglo-Indian families – went the small boys and girls born to the servants of the Raj, sometimes as young as five, sometimes to see parents only once or twice during those years. Some were lucky enough to stay with loving aunts, cousins or grand parents, others could find themselves lodged somewhere that lacked all love, warmth and laughter; yet others had to remain at school during the holidays while everyone else left to join their families, enduring years of separation and misery."
................................................................................................
"That most of these girls did marry was unsurprising. Until the Second World War, the whole emphasis of their upbringing was on becoming wives and mothers;* any thought of a career was usually discouraged, with arguments ranging from ‘Don’t be silly, your husband will support you,’ to ‘You will be taking the bread out of the mouth of someone who really needs it.’ Thus whether or not they actively planned to look for a husband, the subliminal quest for a mate was necessarily there from an early age.
"As far as the Army was concerned, girls from Army families often regarded a spell in India as the equivalent of a debutante Season. They ‘sailed joyfully away by P&O liner to join the “Fishing Fleet”, see the Rock, the Grand Harbour, the Taj by moonlight and find a husband,’ wrote Veronica Bamfield, herself the daughter and granddaughter of soldiers who had served in India. ‘This practice was well established long before it became part of army ritual and had been a fruitful source of supply of wives for the Honourable East India Company.’"
................................................................................................
"For those in love the sea in peacetime – when calm – was a perfect setting. ‘There was the excitement of sleeping on deck which we did if the nights were excessively hot as the tiny cabins were like ovens after the day’s heat,’ wrote Violet Hanson in 1920. ‘It was a lovely experience to lie under those brilliant stars and watch the tall mast gently swaying against the marvellously clear dark sky. The pleasure of the little wafts of air after the heat was wonderful.’
"Romances that had been tentative bloomed in the perfect temperature and tranquillity of the Indian Ocean. ‘Here, the water looked like brilliant sapphire blue jelly,’ wrote Violet, ‘and the flying fish skimmed in flocks over the scarcely moving sea. At night phosphorescence glowed over the ocean, it was cool again and there was the excitement of nearing the end of the voyage. Shipboard romances were coming to an end with a great exchange of names and addresses and promises to meet.’ These, she wrote with a touch of cynicism, were seldom to be fulfilled.
"But for the sophisticated Edwina Ashley, one of the Fishing Fleet of late 1921, the dances and fancy dress balls were just so many humdrum episodes in a boring three weeks. In love with Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was accompanying his cousin David, the Prince of Wales, on a royal tour of India and Japan in 1921, she had decided to cut short their separation by securing an invitation to visit the Viceroy.
"As a young unmarried girl, socially prominent, Edwina could not travel alone without giving rise to scandal: a chaperone was essential. She found one by the simple method of going to Thomas Cook’s office and asking to look at the passenger list. The name she landed on was Olwen Carey Evans, Lloyd George’s daughter, eight years older than Edwina and, as was essential, married. Edwina scarcely knew Olwen but Olwen’s husband, Thomas Carey Evans, of the Indian Medical Service, was personal physician to the Viceroy, Lord Reading, with whom Edwina was going to stay.
"Whatever her feelings, Mrs Carey Evans was not likely to refuse a girl who was going out to stay with the Viceroy during the visit of the Prince of Wales; in practice, she found Edwina difficult and self-willed, and was constantly worried that there would be some troubling episode on board the ship that would cause scandal. For most, though – in the words of Joan Henry, an eighteen-year-old Fishing Fleet girl returning to India after years of boarding school – ‘kisses on the boat deck with the moon making a silver path over a smooth sea was as far as it went or was even expected [to go]’.
"When Kathleen Wilkes travelled out in 1922 to take up a post as a governess, warm weather and romance arrived together. ‘In a few days under a full moon on the Red Sea we became engaged, much to the delight and interest of many people on board ship.’ Her fiancé was a returning ICS man; as the older, rather snobbish woman with whom Kathleen was sharing a cabin remarked: ‘You’ve done well for yourself, haven’t you? He’s one of the heaven-born.’"
Does remind one of the nameless heroine of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca and her being subjected to acidic attacks of the employer when told of the engagement of the young companion.
"Unsurprisingly, many of the Fishing Fleet found husbands even before arriving at Bombay, Calcutta, Colombo or Rangoon. There was a pretty good chance on the ship itself, filled as it was with a number of bachelors, some of whom had tried unsuccessfully to find a bride during their months of leave and were delighted to be offered another chance. Thus many romances started on the voyage out, as warm starlit nights succeeded the fogs of a British November, waltzes from the ship’s band echoing faintly in the air as the couple gazed dreamily at the glimmering phosphorescence in the ship’s wake.
"Sometimes the engagement lasted only a matter of days, with a wedding the moment they arrived. Bombay, Calcutta and Rangoon were full of churches to facilitate this: the authorities very much disliked the idea of unattached European women in India; they had to be there as someone’s wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt or niece and the man to whom they were related or who was their host was responsible for them (women teachers, governesses, missionaries or doctors were the responsibility of their employers). But for a member of the Fishing Fleet and the bachelor who had struck lucky on his return voyage this plethora of churches was often an answer to prayer – if only because both sides were anxious that the other should not change his or her mind."
"Owing to constant, daily proximity, marriages between viceregal daughters and their fathers’ ADCs were common; and to the outside world these gilded young men were regarded, in some subliminal sense, as viceregal property. So if one of them looked elsewhere it caused a mild frisson – as when Mary Tribe, the daughter of a clergyman (then, as now, paid little) secured as a husband a young man destined to become one of the richest dukes in England.
"Mary du Caurroy Tribe, born in 1865, was the younger daughter of the Reverend Walter Tribe, a parson who had come out to India with his wife Sophie in 1867, largely for financial reasons – he felt that in India he could earn more, live at a higher standard and also save. Their two daughters, Mary aged two and her older sister Zoe, four, were left behind with a beloved aunt. They were educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College (then becoming so famous for its emphasis on proper education that it elicited complaints from many parents who believed that too much education in a girl was a serious handicap to her matrimonial chances). Mary loved school but was longing to leave and go to India, not so much to see her parents – whom she hardly knew – but for the thrill and excitement of what awaited her there. She loved an outdoor life: there would be tennis, riding, parties, friends of her own age and, for the first time, of the opposite sex."
"Early in 1886 her father was appointed Archdeacon of Lahore. From then on there were summers at Simla with regular invitations to dance at Viceregal Lodge. On 15 September that year she was recording in her diary of one of these: ‘Very jolly dance. Danced 4 with Lord H.’ Soon Mary’s dance cards were filled with ‘Lord H’, her diary with appointments to ride with him; and he was deeply in love with her.
"Lord Herbrand Russell, a Grenadier Guards officer, was then twenty-seven to Mary’s twenty-one, and the second son of the 9th Duke of Bedford; he had been personally selected as one of his ADCs by the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin – who had two unmarried daughters, aged twenty-two and eighteen.
"Herbrand was under no illusions as to why the Viceroy had chosen him as an ADC. After he and Mary were engaged, he wrote to her to explain the need for dealing delicately and tactfully with the Dufferins. ‘Because . . . Lord and Lady Dufferin always meant me to marry someone else and not your own dear little self at all. This parental plan you have entirely upset. It was this idea that kept me on the staff, otherwise, being the worst of ADCs, I should have been sent away with several fleas in my ear long ago.’ As it was, the Duke’s permission was eventually extracted, Mary and her Herbrand were married on 30 January 1888 and – on the death of Herbrand’s elder brother George in 1893 – she found herself a duchess.*"
"For those in love the sea in peacetime – when calm – was a perfect setting. ‘There was the excitement of sleeping on deck which we did if the nights were excessively hot as the tiny cabins were like ovens after the day’s heat,’ wrote Violet Hanson in 1920. ‘It was a lovely experience to lie under those brilliant stars and watch the tall mast gently swaying against the marvellously clear dark sky. The pleasure of the little wafts of air after the heat was wonderful.’
"Romances that had been tentative bloomed in the perfect temperature and tranquillity of the Indian Ocean. ‘Here, the water looked like brilliant sapphire blue jelly,’ wrote Violet, ‘and the flying fish skimmed in flocks over the scarcely moving sea. At night phosphorescence glowed over the ocean, it was cool again and there was the excitement of nearing the end of the voyage. Shipboard romances were coming to an end with a great exchange of names and addresses and promises to meet.’ These, she wrote with a touch of cynicism, were seldom to be fulfilled.
"But for the sophisticated Edwina Ashley, one of the Fishing Fleet of late 1921, the dances and fancy dress balls were just so many humdrum episodes in a boring three weeks. In love with Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was accompanying his cousin David, the Prince of Wales, on a royal tour of India and Japan in 1921, she had decided to cut short their separation by securing an invitation to visit the Viceroy.
"As a young unmarried girl, socially prominent, Edwina could not travel alone without giving rise to scandal: a chaperone was essential. She found one by the simple method of going to Thomas Cook’s office and asking to look at the passenger list. The name she landed on was Olwen Carey Evans, Lloyd George’s daughter, eight years older than Edwina and, as was essential, married. Edwina scarcely knew Olwen but Olwen’s husband, Thomas Carey Evans, of the Indian Medical Service, was personal physician to the Viceroy, Lord Reading, with whom Edwina was going to stay.
"Whatever her feelings, Mrs Carey Evans was not likely to refuse a girl who was going out to stay with the Viceroy during the visit of the Prince of Wales; in practice, she found Edwina difficult and self-willed, and was constantly worried that there would be some troubling episode on board the ship that would cause scandal. For most, though – in the words of Joan Henry, an eighteen-year-old Fishing Fleet girl returning to India after years of boarding school – ‘kisses on the boat deck with the moon making a silver path over a smooth sea was as far as it went or was even expected [to go]’.
"When Kathleen Wilkes travelled out in 1922 to take up a post as a governess, warm weather and romance arrived together. ‘In a few days under a full moon on the Red Sea we became engaged, much to the delight and interest of many people on board ship.’ Her fiancé was a returning ICS man; as the older, rather snobbish woman with whom Kathleen was sharing a cabin remarked: ‘You’ve done well for yourself, haven’t you? He’s one of the heaven-born.’"
Does remind one of the nameless heroine of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca and her being subjected to acidic attacks of the employer when told of the engagement of the young companion.
"Unsurprisingly, many of the Fishing Fleet found husbands even before arriving at Bombay, Calcutta, Colombo or Rangoon. There was a pretty good chance on the ship itself, filled as it was with a number of bachelors, some of whom had tried unsuccessfully to find a bride during their months of leave and were delighted to be offered another chance. Thus many romances started on the voyage out, as warm starlit nights succeeded the fogs of a British November, waltzes from the ship’s band echoing faintly in the air as the couple gazed dreamily at the glimmering phosphorescence in the ship’s wake.
"Sometimes the engagement lasted only a matter of days, with a wedding the moment they arrived. Bombay, Calcutta and Rangoon were full of churches to facilitate this: the authorities very much disliked the idea of unattached European women in India; they had to be there as someone’s wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt or niece and the man to whom they were related or who was their host was responsible for them (women teachers, governesses, missionaries or doctors were the responsibility of their employers). But for a member of the Fishing Fleet and the bachelor who had struck lucky on his return voyage this plethora of churches was often an answer to prayer – if only because both sides were anxious that the other should not change his or her mind."
................................................................................................
"Owing to constant, daily proximity, marriages between viceregal daughters and their fathers’ ADCs were common; and to the outside world these gilded young men were regarded, in some subliminal sense, as viceregal property. So if one of them looked elsewhere it caused a mild frisson – as when Mary Tribe, the daughter of a clergyman (then, as now, paid little) secured as a husband a young man destined to become one of the richest dukes in England.
"Mary du Caurroy Tribe, born in 1865, was the younger daughter of the Reverend Walter Tribe, a parson who had come out to India with his wife Sophie in 1867, largely for financial reasons – he felt that in India he could earn more, live at a higher standard and also save. Their two daughters, Mary aged two and her older sister Zoe, four, were left behind with a beloved aunt. They were educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College (then becoming so famous for its emphasis on proper education that it elicited complaints from many parents who believed that too much education in a girl was a serious handicap to her matrimonial chances). Mary loved school but was longing to leave and go to India, not so much to see her parents – whom she hardly knew – but for the thrill and excitement of what awaited her there. She loved an outdoor life: there would be tennis, riding, parties, friends of her own age and, for the first time, of the opposite sex."
"Early in 1886 her father was appointed Archdeacon of Lahore. From then on there were summers at Simla with regular invitations to dance at Viceregal Lodge. On 15 September that year she was recording in her diary of one of these: ‘Very jolly dance. Danced 4 with Lord H.’ Soon Mary’s dance cards were filled with ‘Lord H’, her diary with appointments to ride with him; and he was deeply in love with her.
"Lord Herbrand Russell, a Grenadier Guards officer, was then twenty-seven to Mary’s twenty-one, and the second son of the 9th Duke of Bedford; he had been personally selected as one of his ADCs by the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin – who had two unmarried daughters, aged twenty-two and eighteen.
"Herbrand was under no illusions as to why the Viceroy had chosen him as an ADC. After he and Mary were engaged, he wrote to her to explain the need for dealing delicately and tactfully with the Dufferins. ‘Because . . . Lord and Lady Dufferin always meant me to marry someone else and not your own dear little self at all. This parental plan you have entirely upset. It was this idea that kept me on the staff, otherwise, being the worst of ADCs, I should have been sent away with several fleas in my ear long ago.’ As it was, the Duke’s permission was eventually extracted, Mary and her Herbrand were married on 30 January 1888 and – on the death of Herbrand’s elder brother George in 1893 – she found herself a duchess.*"
................................................................................................
"In the 1930s, the army officer in India was allowed two months’ privileged leave, to give him a break from working in the hot weather, when the plains were an inferno until the monsoon broke. The heat took a toll on almost everyone."
"All this was in the sweltering, draining heat. Partly to offset it, there were also three ‘casual’ leaves a year of up to ten days, spent by many on shooting or fishing expeditions. Once every three years there was home leave for eight months, to include the journey (flying, which began just before the war, took three days). ‘Not always enough time,’ remarked one, ‘to find a wife.’"
Wonder if they ever realised that physical differences between Indian people vs Europeans were due precisely to the heat they found difficult to take - which Indians had been through for millennia! Which doesn't make it easier for the human physiology, but on the other hand knowledge of Aayurveda is gathered through the same millennia that includes dealing with this and other questions related to life. Which goes beyond treating diseases and injuries, and goes into building a healthy system through food and lifestyle.
"After soldiers in the social pecking order came railway engineers, businessmen, other civil servants, missionaries, police superintendents and tea, jute or indigo planters."
Caste system of European colonies, integrated with the European caste system of course - the upper strata of positions in any field were more or less reserved for those born in upper castes of Europe, in this case England, which was aristocracy and nobility topped by royalty.
Unlike the Indian caste system, in European and other caste systems men could change to a profession different from that of their forefathers'; but there were always glass ceilings, unlike Indian caste system - those born above started above and those not born to the manor had almost no possibility of reaching there; this was so even in churches, even some convents. Indian caste system on the other hand had no hierarchy within a caste; royal blood was never holy, nor was a king superior to any other man whose profession was protection of people, and rich weren't above poor, nor those with property above those mendicant for any reason.
"In the 1930s, the army officer in India was allowed two months’ privileged leave, to give him a break from working in the hot weather, when the plains were an inferno until the monsoon broke. The heat took a toll on almost everyone."
"All this was in the sweltering, draining heat. Partly to offset it, there were also three ‘casual’ leaves a year of up to ten days, spent by many on shooting or fishing expeditions. Once every three years there was home leave for eight months, to include the journey (flying, which began just before the war, took three days). ‘Not always enough time,’ remarked one, ‘to find a wife.’"
Wonder if they ever realised that physical differences between Indian people vs Europeans were due precisely to the heat they found difficult to take - which Indians had been through for millennia! Which doesn't make it easier for the human physiology, but on the other hand knowledge of Aayurveda is gathered through the same millennia that includes dealing with this and other questions related to life. Which goes beyond treating diseases and injuries, and goes into building a healthy system through food and lifestyle.
................................................................................................
"After soldiers in the social pecking order came railway engineers, businessmen, other civil servants, missionaries, police superintendents and tea, jute or indigo planters."
Caste system of European colonies, integrated with the European caste system of course - the upper strata of positions in any field were more or less reserved for those born in upper castes of Europe, in this case England, which was aristocracy and nobility topped by royalty.
Unlike the Indian caste system, in European and other caste systems men could change to a profession different from that of their forefathers'; but there were always glass ceilings, unlike Indian caste system - those born above started above and those not born to the manor had almost no possibility of reaching there; this was so even in churches, even some convents. Indian caste system on the other hand had no hierarchy within a caste; royal blood was never holy, nor was a king superior to any other man whose profession was protection of people, and rich weren't above poor, nor those with property above those mendicant for any reason.
................................................................................................
"Some found it hard to wait until custom and their financial state allowed marriage and set up irregular ménages with local women, known as ‘polls’. Said Waring: ‘It wasn’t exactly done but it was accepted – as long as you didn’t produce children. You didn’t mess around with your own staff or labour force – you got your poll from somewhere completely different. The girls knew the men wouldn’t marry them but they also knew they would be looked after. The man would give the girl or her family a nice little house somewhere – and if she did produce a child that would be looked after too. A lot of the cleverer half-castes, who became lawyers, doctors and teachers, went to Australia, because they could produce proof of white ancestry.’"
Australian caste system, there.
................................................................................................
"Export was the backbone of the business then, with wheat in particular; this came down in train after train from the Punjab, to be unloaded, sampled and generally passed through the cleaning machine to remove dust, barley and other seeds, then rebagged ready for shipment."
Wouldn't it be honest to end the pretence that the empire benefited colonies, and admit honestly that Europe looted other continents, India more than any other colony?
"Some found it hard to wait until custom and their financial state allowed marriage and set up irregular ménages with local women, known as ‘polls’. Said Waring: ‘It wasn’t exactly done but it was accepted – as long as you didn’t produce children. You didn’t mess around with your own staff or labour force – you got your poll from somewhere completely different. The girls knew the men wouldn’t marry them but they also knew they would be looked after. The man would give the girl or her family a nice little house somewhere – and if she did produce a child that would be looked after too. A lot of the cleverer half-castes, who became lawyers, doctors and teachers, went to Australia, because they could produce proof of white ancestry.’"
Australian caste system, there.
................................................................................................
"Export was the backbone of the business then, with wheat in particular; this came down in train after train from the Punjab, to be unloaded, sampled and generally passed through the cleaning machine to remove dust, barley and other seeds, then rebagged ready for shipment."
Wouldn't it be honest to end the pretence that the empire benefited colonies, and admit honestly that Europe looted other continents, India more than any other colony?
................................................................................................
"There were three presidencies: Madras, Bengal and Bombay, and seven provinces;*Punjab, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (now Uttar Pradesh), the North-West Frontier Province, the Central Provinces (now Madhya Bharat and Maharashtra), Bihar and Orissa, Assam and Burma."
Maharashtra has some parts from Central Provinces, as it does from Bombay Province and other regions, including some of the states that merged with India. Burma was considered a Province of India by British, good to know. Author doesn't mention its original Sanskrit name! Probably doesn't know.
"Some carried travel comforts to extremes. Sixty servants were thought necessary to look after Lord Reading, Viceroy from 1921 to 1926, when he, Lady Reading, their assistants and their guest Edwina Ashley paid a three-day visit to the Maharaja of Alwar, a state known as one of the hottest parts of India (here India’s highest-ever temperature, 50.6°C, was recorded on 10 May 1956). They travelled in the Viceroy’s personal narrow gauge train; on arrival they were met by a fleet of Rolls-Royces; four lorries for the luggage and an omnibus for the servants."
"Girls who had been invited out by relations or friends usually arrived at a reasonably sizeable destination. They could expect to find themselves in a station or cantonment, with a club or Gymkhana as its social heart. The club could be anything from a few rooms where you could read old newspapers, buy drinks and meet the (often lamentably few) other Europeans in the station, to much grander affairs with tennis courts and golf links, a library and Saturday dances. Its rules were much the same as English clubs, with the addition that almost all excluded Indians, even as guests. Women were kept in their place, often a special annexe, and generally not allowed near the bar.* Sometimes segregation was such that if a husband was in the club and his wife was in the hen house, as the ladies’ annexe was familiarly known, the couple had to send each other notes by a servant if they wanted to leave together."
"In the Madras Club, Humphrey Trevelyan records that women were not even allowed to watch the men playing tennis."
"The new girl would have been struck at once by the formality of much of life and the protocols that governed it. In the Raj, as with royalty, attitudes and behaviour were well behind contemporary custom and usage, with everything from etiquette to medical theories preserved in a kind of social formaldehyde. This sprang from the hierarchical nature of the governing institutions: the ICS and the Army. When junior members of either arrived in India, they naturally took their lead from the top; by the time they in turn had reached this exalted position, they carried with them the customs and habits imprinted on them in their youth.
"Thus the iron rule of precedence regulated social intercourse, from whom you called on to whom you sat next to at dinner. As the position of every official and military officer was detailed in a graded list known as the ‘Warrant of Precedence’, published by the Government of India, it was possible not only to seat people according to seniority but for a new arrival to deduce everyone’s place in the pecking order. There were sixty-six categories in the Warrant; at the top, of course, was the Viceroy, at the bottom, sub-deputy opium agents.
"Businessmen did not figure on the Warrant of Precedence but were nonetheless graded according to equally arcane rules. The broadest division among them was that between ‘commerce’ and ‘trade’ – the management of plantations was the former, and higher; selling something directly to the public was the latter. Other markers were education – a good public school and university elevated, as did long familiarity with horse, gun or rod – a decent address and a car. Even clothes came into the equation, with the wrong ones an immediate one-down mark: Owain Jenkins, a young man working in the Calcutta office of Balmer Lawrie, was quickly told by a colleague to buy a ‘better hat’. His topi had been bought in Port Said and was covered in cheap cotton cloth, with a chinstrap resembling cardboard. ‘Acceptable hats . . . were covered in gabardine and had chinstraps of suede,’ he was told.
"Women were ranked according to the status and seniority of their husband or father, the senior ladies having ‘their’ seat on a favoured club sofa reserved for them, first shuttlecock in a game of badminton served to them and getting first use of the loos after dinner; nor could anyone leave a dinner party before the most senior lady there. (When the Hon. Margaret Ashton married Hugh Whistler of the Indian Police in 1924 there was much scratching of heads: did Margaret’s status as the daughter of a lord raise that of Whistler – or did his lower hers?)"
Amazing, with so detailed and intricate a caste system of their own, they still almost reserved the word caste for India and identified India with it, denying they had any, ceiling it with other labels and a pretense that theirs was but natural, only proper, a must for civilisation - while truth is exactly the opposite.
Amazingly stupid mistake here, more due to arrogance than naive ignorance, unless it's deliberately political stance against India:-
"‘The Punjab [then in the north-west of India, now in Pakistan] has a bad climate,’ wrote Bethea Field."
The mistake is factual, in that Punjab is not - never was - "in Pakistan"! When India was divided and a part of India was given to form a new nation for those muslims who couldn't live in a democracy with everyone else, but had to have Islamic supremacy over all others and Islamic law to boot, two provinces of India were divided - Punjab was one, and Bengal the other. Western part of Punjab was lost to democratic, secular India, as was East Bengal, which later was massacred by its western brethren until helped by India to survive and become what it aspired to be - an independent Bangladesh - in 1971.
"There were three presidencies: Madras, Bengal and Bombay, and seven provinces;*Punjab, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (now Uttar Pradesh), the North-West Frontier Province, the Central Provinces (now Madhya Bharat and Maharashtra), Bihar and Orissa, Assam and Burma."
Maharashtra has some parts from Central Provinces, as it does from Bombay Province and other regions, including some of the states that merged with India. Burma was considered a Province of India by British, good to know. Author doesn't mention its original Sanskrit name! Probably doesn't know.
................................................................................................
"Some carried travel comforts to extremes. Sixty servants were thought necessary to look after Lord Reading, Viceroy from 1921 to 1926, when he, Lady Reading, their assistants and their guest Edwina Ashley paid a three-day visit to the Maharaja of Alwar, a state known as one of the hottest parts of India (here India’s highest-ever temperature, 50.6°C, was recorded on 10 May 1956). They travelled in the Viceroy’s personal narrow gauge train; on arrival they were met by a fleet of Rolls-Royces; four lorries for the luggage and an omnibus for the servants."
"Girls who had been invited out by relations or friends usually arrived at a reasonably sizeable destination. They could expect to find themselves in a station or cantonment, with a club or Gymkhana as its social heart. The club could be anything from a few rooms where you could read old newspapers, buy drinks and meet the (often lamentably few) other Europeans in the station, to much grander affairs with tennis courts and golf links, a library and Saturday dances. Its rules were much the same as English clubs, with the addition that almost all excluded Indians, even as guests. Women were kept in their place, often a special annexe, and generally not allowed near the bar.* Sometimes segregation was such that if a husband was in the club and his wife was in the hen house, as the ladies’ annexe was familiarly known, the couple had to send each other notes by a servant if they wanted to leave together."
"In the Madras Club, Humphrey Trevelyan records that women were not even allowed to watch the men playing tennis."
"The new girl would have been struck at once by the formality of much of life and the protocols that governed it. In the Raj, as with royalty, attitudes and behaviour were well behind contemporary custom and usage, with everything from etiquette to medical theories preserved in a kind of social formaldehyde. This sprang from the hierarchical nature of the governing institutions: the ICS and the Army. When junior members of either arrived in India, they naturally took their lead from the top; by the time they in turn had reached this exalted position, they carried with them the customs and habits imprinted on them in their youth.
"Thus the iron rule of precedence regulated social intercourse, from whom you called on to whom you sat next to at dinner. As the position of every official and military officer was detailed in a graded list known as the ‘Warrant of Precedence’, published by the Government of India, it was possible not only to seat people according to seniority but for a new arrival to deduce everyone’s place in the pecking order. There were sixty-six categories in the Warrant; at the top, of course, was the Viceroy, at the bottom, sub-deputy opium agents.
"Businessmen did not figure on the Warrant of Precedence but were nonetheless graded according to equally arcane rules. The broadest division among them was that between ‘commerce’ and ‘trade’ – the management of plantations was the former, and higher; selling something directly to the public was the latter. Other markers were education – a good public school and university elevated, as did long familiarity with horse, gun or rod – a decent address and a car. Even clothes came into the equation, with the wrong ones an immediate one-down mark: Owain Jenkins, a young man working in the Calcutta office of Balmer Lawrie, was quickly told by a colleague to buy a ‘better hat’. His topi had been bought in Port Said and was covered in cheap cotton cloth, with a chinstrap resembling cardboard. ‘Acceptable hats . . . were covered in gabardine and had chinstraps of suede,’ he was told.
"Women were ranked according to the status and seniority of their husband or father, the senior ladies having ‘their’ seat on a favoured club sofa reserved for them, first shuttlecock in a game of badminton served to them and getting first use of the loos after dinner; nor could anyone leave a dinner party before the most senior lady there. (When the Hon. Margaret Ashton married Hugh Whistler of the Indian Police in 1924 there was much scratching of heads: did Margaret’s status as the daughter of a lord raise that of Whistler – or did his lower hers?)"
Amazing, with so detailed and intricate a caste system of their own, they still almost reserved the word caste for India and identified India with it, denying they had any, ceiling it with other labels and a pretense that theirs was but natural, only proper, a must for civilisation - while truth is exactly the opposite.
................................................................................................
Amazingly stupid mistake here, more due to arrogance than naive ignorance, unless it's deliberately political stance against India:-
"‘The Punjab [then in the north-west of India, now in Pakistan] has a bad climate,’ wrote Bethea Field."
The mistake is factual, in that Punjab is not - never was - "in Pakistan"! When India was divided and a part of India was given to form a new nation for those muslims who couldn't live in a democracy with everyone else, but had to have Islamic supremacy over all others and Islamic law to boot, two provinces of India were divided - Punjab was one, and Bengal the other. Western part of Punjab was lost to democratic, secular India, as was East Bengal, which later was massacred by its western brethren until helped by India to survive and become what it aspired to be - an independent Bangladesh - in 1971.
................................................................................................
The author goes on - and on and on and on .... - about the heat of India and it's effect on the Brits.
"In the time of the Raj, long before air conditioning had been invented, the hot weather was an appalling strain for Europeans unused to its intensity – the heat, the flies, the dampness, the general discomfort, the glare. It was dreaded by everyone; some felt the northern part of India (except the north-west, which did not get the monsoon rains), where the temperature rose to great heights, was the worst, others that the damp heat of Bengal or Karachi, where the humidity was often 90 per cent or more and clothes had to be changed several times a day, was intolerable."
And yet, didn't occur to them that an ancient civilisation of humans, with a far greater knowledge, coped with the same weather via their cuisine and couture, despite the weather hitting them just as much. After all, being used to cold doesn't immunise Europeans enough to live outdoors in winter, does it? When short on heating, Europeans do suffer. Nor does centuries of heat of India immunise Indians.
But of course, learning from those they were there to loot would have broken the looting relationship! So the Brits wore flannel next to skin, corsets, and more, as the author describes at length in midst of going on about heat! Not to mention the diet that was completely unsuitable for the climate, but kept on as a matter of being British.
The author goes on - and on and on and on .... - about the heat of India and it's effect on the Brits.
"In the time of the Raj, long before air conditioning had been invented, the hot weather was an appalling strain for Europeans unused to its intensity – the heat, the flies, the dampness, the general discomfort, the glare. It was dreaded by everyone; some felt the northern part of India (except the north-west, which did not get the monsoon rains), where the temperature rose to great heights, was the worst, others that the damp heat of Bengal or Karachi, where the humidity was often 90 per cent or more and clothes had to be changed several times a day, was intolerable."
And yet, didn't occur to them that an ancient civilisation of humans, with a far greater knowledge, coped with the same weather via their cuisine and couture, despite the weather hitting them just as much. After all, being used to cold doesn't immunise Europeans enough to live outdoors in winter, does it? When short on heating, Europeans do suffer. Nor does centuries of heat of India immunise Indians.
But of course, learning from those they were there to loot would have broken the looting relationship! So the Brits wore flannel next to skin, corsets, and more, as the author describes at length in midst of going on about heat! Not to mention the diet that was completely unsuitable for the climate, but kept on as a matter of being British.
................................................................................................
"Those who could left for hill stations like Simla, Mussoorie, Darjeeling; Srinagar, Gulmarg and Sonmarg in Jammu and Kashmir; Manali, Naini Tal, Gangtok and Kalimpong in the east of India, and Munnar, Ootacamund (Ooty) and Mahabaleshwar."
It isn't clear if there is an order intended, or it's the author's general disregard for India, when she describes them in that way. Anyone bothering to take a minute to look up Google maps can see that Simla and Manali are comparatively close together in North in Himaalayan regions while Mussoorie and Nainital are similarly close in main Himaalayan regions in U.P.; Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Gangtok are comparatively close in Eastern Himaalayan regions of Bengal and Sikkim; Mahabaleshwar if in Western mountain range of Sahyaadri, and Udagamandalam (which British deformed to Ootacamund, and further shortened to Ooty) is in the southern central mountain ranges.
It would be ok if she named them in no particular order, but no, she had to pretend she was giving them in orderly way and then give it completely jumbled.
................................................................................................
"Today, it seems extraordinary that an impassable gulf existed between the two races; and that sophisticated, intelligent, well-educated Indians, descended from a civilisation far older than that of their overlords, should have been so snubbed. At the same time, advantage was taken of their innate good manners: if some grand personage – a governor, a viceroy – wanted a tiger shoot, it was expected that the chosen maharaja would lay one on.
"Long gone was the time when it was accepted that many East India Company men and soldiers took Indian wives; with the Raj came the barrier most forcibly expressed by Kipling in Plain Tales from the Hills: ‘A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed.’ It was an elitism fostered by what was seen as the need to emphasise the difference between the rulers and the ruled, underlining what was then the sincerely held belief that belonging to the British Empire – which then held sway over three-fifths of the earth’s surface – was the best possible fate for any nation, race or creed.
"Men in the ICS did, of course, work with Indians to a certain extent and were well aware that posts filled by Indians would increase. But, as Edward Wakefield wrote ironically: ‘It was unthinkable that European women should have to receive medical attention from an Indian doctor.’ It was the same socially, no matter how grand the Indian. When Beatrice Baker became a friend of a good-looking, charming Indian prince her mother quickly saw him off."
"Those who could left for hill stations like Simla, Mussoorie, Darjeeling; Srinagar, Gulmarg and Sonmarg in Jammu and Kashmir; Manali, Naini Tal, Gangtok and Kalimpong in the east of India, and Munnar, Ootacamund (Ooty) and Mahabaleshwar."
It isn't clear if there is an order intended, or it's the author's general disregard for India, when she describes them in that way. Anyone bothering to take a minute to look up Google maps can see that Simla and Manali are comparatively close together in North in Himaalayan regions while Mussoorie and Nainital are similarly close in main Himaalayan regions in U.P.; Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Gangtok are comparatively close in Eastern Himaalayan regions of Bengal and Sikkim; Mahabaleshwar if in Western mountain range of Sahyaadri, and Udagamandalam (which British deformed to Ootacamund, and further shortened to Ooty) is in the southern central mountain ranges.
It would be ok if she named them in no particular order, but no, she had to pretend she was giving them in orderly way and then give it completely jumbled.
................................................................................................
"Today, it seems extraordinary that an impassable gulf existed between the two races; and that sophisticated, intelligent, well-educated Indians, descended from a civilisation far older than that of their overlords, should have been so snubbed. At the same time, advantage was taken of their innate good manners: if some grand personage – a governor, a viceroy – wanted a tiger shoot, it was expected that the chosen maharaja would lay one on.
"Long gone was the time when it was accepted that many East India Company men and soldiers took Indian wives; with the Raj came the barrier most forcibly expressed by Kipling in Plain Tales from the Hills: ‘A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed.’ It was an elitism fostered by what was seen as the need to emphasise the difference between the rulers and the ruled, underlining what was then the sincerely held belief that belonging to the British Empire – which then held sway over three-fifths of the earth’s surface – was the best possible fate for any nation, race or creed.
"Men in the ICS did, of course, work with Indians to a certain extent and were well aware that posts filled by Indians would increase. But, as Edward Wakefield wrote ironically: ‘It was unthinkable that European women should have to receive medical attention from an Indian doctor.’ It was the same socially, no matter how grand the Indian. When Beatrice Baker became a friend of a good-looking, charming Indian prince her mother quickly saw him off."
................................................................................................
"The fashion-conscious Ruby Madden, youthful, blooming and determined that she would not remain in India (its effect on her complexion was already being noted), ..."
The said effect is quite visible on Indian complexion as well, in majority of the population. Most change colour several shades when affected by northern winters or summers, or exposed to southern heat. This change is even more strikingly clear when a bride of an NRI resident of Northwest or central Europe, or Northeast U.S., visits home after a couple of years.
"Here, civet cats rustled in the thatch of bungalows and hyenas howled at night and Urdu – the ‘language of the camp’ invented by the Moghuls for their multi-racial armies – was still the speech."
Urdu wasn't invented by moghuls, so misnamed by Brits themselves. The name Mughal is Persian for Mongol, and was only applicable to male lineage of Chingis Khan, misnamed Genghis by Brits. Babar didn't call himself Mughal, since he was descended from a son in law of the Khan and his male ancestry derived from the Tatar marauder and killer of millions, Taimur.
Urdu was the result of imposition of a foreign rule on India by the invaders whose court languages were Persian, Turkic, Mongol, Arabic, while their higher echelon in court consisted of those, not of Indians; this was no different from the later British rule. The lowly soldiers and others employed from India spoke their language increasingly peppered with vocabulary of the foreign rulers, and Urdu is the result. The word Urdu relates to a Persian word literally meaning hordes, and the word hordes was in fact derived from this Persian word.
Urad is a kind of lentil much favoured in the north, and looks black outside, white within. Calling the language Urdu is the graphic evidence of racism of the invaders who came before British and other Europeans.
................................................................................................
"Delhi had replaced Calcutta as the capital in 1911* ..."
"The Government felt that administration would be easier from Delhi, a northern city, rather than from the coastal city of Calcutta."
It wasn't "felt" by the British, and had nothing whatsoever to do with ease of administration. It had everything to do with establishment of an empire and getting Indians to accept British rule over India as all supreme, rather than something temporary in several pockets. Brits were informed by some of their Indian advisors that India would never accept them as rulers of India unless they ruled from Delhi.
"Although fighting was endemic on the frontier with Afghanistan, when the Pathan tribes revolted in 1897, as Bessie’s diary recorded, British officials and soldiers blamed the Afghan Amir, Abdur Rahman, for causing the trouble. They thought that, as the self-professed champion of Islam, he had commanded the tribes to undertake holy war against the British and that these calls for jihad might be heard and answered within India and even beyond. Because they ruled more Muslims than any other empire, the British were always very sensitive to any idea of Islamic hostility. At the same time, they wanted to preserve friendship with the Amir, not solely to keep peace in this volatile area but also because of fears of Russian expansion (Kipling’s Great Game)."
"The fashion-conscious Ruby Madden, youthful, blooming and determined that she would not remain in India (its effect on her complexion was already being noted), ..."
The said effect is quite visible on Indian complexion as well, in majority of the population. Most change colour several shades when affected by northern winters or summers, or exposed to southern heat. This change is even more strikingly clear when a bride of an NRI resident of Northwest or central Europe, or Northeast U.S., visits home after a couple of years.
................................................................................................
"Here, civet cats rustled in the thatch of bungalows and hyenas howled at night and Urdu – the ‘language of the camp’ invented by the Moghuls for their multi-racial armies – was still the speech."
Urdu wasn't invented by moghuls, so misnamed by Brits themselves. The name Mughal is Persian for Mongol, and was only applicable to male lineage of Chingis Khan, misnamed Genghis by Brits. Babar didn't call himself Mughal, since he was descended from a son in law of the Khan and his male ancestry derived from the Tatar marauder and killer of millions, Taimur.
Urdu was the result of imposition of a foreign rule on India by the invaders whose court languages were Persian, Turkic, Mongol, Arabic, while their higher echelon in court consisted of those, not of Indians; this was no different from the later British rule. The lowly soldiers and others employed from India spoke their language increasingly peppered with vocabulary of the foreign rulers, and Urdu is the result. The word Urdu relates to a Persian word literally meaning hordes, and the word hordes was in fact derived from this Persian word.
Urad is a kind of lentil much favoured in the north, and looks black outside, white within. Calling the language Urdu is the graphic evidence of racism of the invaders who came before British and other Europeans.
................................................................................................
"Delhi had replaced Calcutta as the capital in 1911* ..."
"The Government felt that administration would be easier from Delhi, a northern city, rather than from the coastal city of Calcutta."
It wasn't "felt" by the British, and had nothing whatsoever to do with ease of administration. It had everything to do with establishment of an empire and getting Indians to accept British rule over India as all supreme, rather than something temporary in several pockets. Brits were informed by some of their Indian advisors that India would never accept them as rulers of India unless they ruled from Delhi.
................................................................................................
"Although fighting was endemic on the frontier with Afghanistan, when the Pathan tribes revolted in 1897, as Bessie’s diary recorded, British officials and soldiers blamed the Afghan Amir, Abdur Rahman, for causing the trouble. They thought that, as the self-professed champion of Islam, he had commanded the tribes to undertake holy war against the British and that these calls for jihad might be heard and answered within India and even beyond. Because they ruled more Muslims than any other empire, the British were always very sensitive to any idea of Islamic hostility. At the same time, they wanted to preserve friendship with the Amir, not solely to keep peace in this volatile area but also because of fears of Russian expansion (Kipling’s Great Game)."
................................................................................................
Author makes a mistake that would be easy to correct, but for her disdain for facts when it's about India.
"Although British India was ruled from Calcutta up to 1911, all of the three important durbars were held in Delhi. With its 3,000-year-old history and ancient buildings and its past as capital of the Moghul empire, it was the obvious choice for these later imperialists.
The first durbar, held over a fortnight during December 1876, marked the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India (on New Year’s Day 1877), and was largely an official occasion, although attended by about 100,000 people, all eager for spectacle."
"Twenty years later, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee was celebrated in Simla, where the Viceroy, now Lord Elgin and his family, had moved during the hot weather (the actual Jubilee Day was Tuesday 22 June 1897)."
"The third grand durbar was the Coronation Durbar of 1911, attended by the newly crowned King George V and his Queen, Mary – the only one at which a ruling Sovereign was present."
Anyone unfamiliar with geography, reading the above in good faith, would assume that Simla was a suburb of Delhi, or was at least in the neighbourhood. Which would be roughly as correct as assuming Zermat was in close proximity of Rome, or Edinburgh a suburb of London.
"H. E. and the men joined us for coffee and after a decent interval when the sexes interchanged, Their Exes retired."
"when the sexes interchanged"?????
"We were given whisky and sodas and relaxed in the care of the aides. Not for too long however. As their glances grew cool, we scampered back down the long red stairway – now no longer guarded by the handsome soldiers, to our cars and our homes.’"
""We were given whisky and sodas and relaxed in the care of the aides. Not for too long however. As their glances grew cool, we scampered back "?????
Author makes a mistake that would be easy to correct, but for her disdain for facts when it's about India.
"Although British India was ruled from Calcutta up to 1911, all of the three important durbars were held in Delhi. With its 3,000-year-old history and ancient buildings and its past as capital of the Moghul empire, it was the obvious choice for these later imperialists.
The first durbar, held over a fortnight during December 1876, marked the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India (on New Year’s Day 1877), and was largely an official occasion, although attended by about 100,000 people, all eager for spectacle."
"Twenty years later, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee was celebrated in Simla, where the Viceroy, now Lord Elgin and his family, had moved during the hot weather (the actual Jubilee Day was Tuesday 22 June 1897)."
"The third grand durbar was the Coronation Durbar of 1911, attended by the newly crowned King George V and his Queen, Mary – the only one at which a ruling Sovereign was present."
Anyone unfamiliar with geography, reading the above in good faith, would assume that Simla was a suburb of Delhi, or was at least in the neighbourhood. Which would be roughly as correct as assuming Zermat was in close proximity of Rome, or Edinburgh a suburb of London.
................................................................................................
"H. E. and the men joined us for coffee and after a decent interval when the sexes interchanged, Their Exes retired."
"when the sexes interchanged"?????
"We were given whisky and sodas and relaxed in the care of the aides. Not for too long however. As their glances grew cool, we scampered back down the long red stairway – now no longer guarded by the handsome soldiers, to our cars and our homes.’"
""We were given whisky and sodas and relaxed in the care of the aides. Not for too long however. As their glances grew cool, we scampered back "?????
................................................................................................
"No story of viceregal entertaining would be complete without mention of the most famous faux pas of the inter-war years. The Viceroy had his own orchestra, which used to play throughout dinner, and once when he recognised a tune but could not put a name to it and nor could anyone else, an ADC was sent to ask the bandmaster for the song’s title. When the ADC came back everyone was talking so he patiently waited his turn. Finally the babble of conversation ceased and the young man seized his chance. Leaning forward and gazing at the Viceroy, he announced into the sudden silence: ‘I Will Remember your Kisses, your Excellency, when you Have Forgotten Mine.’"
"The princely states had remained loyal to Britain throughout the Mutiny and, in return for this steadfastness, the various maharajas, rajahs, ranas, nizams, gaekwars and nawabs continued as rulers under the paramountcy of the British Crown."
The author is only remotely partially correct: partially, because at least two of the Indian rulers and empires, along with the Mughal ruler of Delhi who was old and had not been effective even when young, were intrinsic in this 1857 war that was for all purposes the war of independence by india as a whole against british rule; Maratha empire, topped by descendents of Shivaji and represented by the Peshwa administration of Pune for most purposes, was one large part; Jhansi which was related to the Maratha empire and was headed by the Queen Laxmibai was and is famous for its part due chiefly to the personal valour of this queen, who refused to surrender her kingdom when demanded by the Brits.
Remotely, because no ruler in India was loyal as such to the British. It was quite the opposite, in that they mostly saw it as 'someone rules remotely from somewhere and collects taxes, mughal or Brits, equally foreign, as long as it's convenient and we are not troubled over much'; a few who did prefer Brits to Muslims were instrumental in bringing Brits back after they had been routed in 1857. Those were less than a handful in number.
"No story of viceregal entertaining would be complete without mention of the most famous faux pas of the inter-war years. The Viceroy had his own orchestra, which used to play throughout dinner, and once when he recognised a tune but could not put a name to it and nor could anyone else, an ADC was sent to ask the bandmaster for the song’s title. When the ADC came back everyone was talking so he patiently waited his turn. Finally the babble of conversation ceased and the young man seized his chance. Leaning forward and gazing at the Viceroy, he announced into the sudden silence: ‘I Will Remember your Kisses, your Excellency, when you Have Forgotten Mine.’"
................................................................................................
"The princely states had remained loyal to Britain throughout the Mutiny and, in return for this steadfastness, the various maharajas, rajahs, ranas, nizams, gaekwars and nawabs continued as rulers under the paramountcy of the British Crown."
The author is only remotely partially correct: partially, because at least two of the Indian rulers and empires, along with the Mughal ruler of Delhi who was old and had not been effective even when young, were intrinsic in this 1857 war that was for all purposes the war of independence by india as a whole against british rule; Maratha empire, topped by descendents of Shivaji and represented by the Peshwa administration of Pune for most purposes, was one large part; Jhansi which was related to the Maratha empire and was headed by the Queen Laxmibai was and is famous for its part due chiefly to the personal valour of this queen, who refused to surrender her kingdom when demanded by the Brits.
Remotely, because no ruler in India was loyal as such to the British. It was quite the opposite, in that they mostly saw it as 'someone rules remotely from somewhere and collects taxes, mughal or Brits, equally foreign, as long as it's convenient and we are not troubled over much'; a few who did prefer Brits to Muslims were instrumental in bringing Brits back after they had been routed in 1857. Those were less than a handful in number.
................................................................................................
"But the main reason for the unblemished moral behaviour of the vast majority of the Fishing Fleet was that from the inception of the Raj in 1858 and up to the outbreak of the Second World War gently born young women were brought up in an ambiance where sex was never even discussed, let alone condoned."
Not exactly the impression one gets from some of the other works of the author, unless she means that dalliance and open marriages were fine once they were married. Surely some of the younger sisters were aware of the state of affairs, even if not of precise anatomical details of acts?
"Although the family hunted, and lived in a large house, money was tight – country parsons have never been well paid – and all there was went on her brothers’ education, first at prep school and then at Charterhouse and Stowe. Patience, who longed for an education, taught herself to read, and used to pray each night that she would be sent to school.
"She grew up pretty, clever, an excellent rider and county-level tennis player. Although she was presented in July 1930, she did not ‘do the Season’ and the chance to meet suitable young men in the heart of rural Suffolk was limited. The result was that at the age of twenty-three she was considered to be ‘on the shelf’ and sent off to India in October 1933 on what her family called ‘the marriage boat’."
Funny, India is told young should make their own matches, but it hardly ever seems as if young women are helped in West in any way does it! They are burdened with a requirement to be attractive, popular, yet not do anything but wait! Fishing indeed!
"But the main reason for the unblemished moral behaviour of the vast majority of the Fishing Fleet was that from the inception of the Raj in 1858 and up to the outbreak of the Second World War gently born young women were brought up in an ambiance where sex was never even discussed, let alone condoned."
Not exactly the impression one gets from some of the other works of the author, unless she means that dalliance and open marriages were fine once they were married. Surely some of the younger sisters were aware of the state of affairs, even if not of precise anatomical details of acts?
................................................................................................
"Although the family hunted, and lived in a large house, money was tight – country parsons have never been well paid – and all there was went on her brothers’ education, first at prep school and then at Charterhouse and Stowe. Patience, who longed for an education, taught herself to read, and used to pray each night that she would be sent to school.
"She grew up pretty, clever, an excellent rider and county-level tennis player. Although she was presented in July 1930, she did not ‘do the Season’ and the chance to meet suitable young men in the heart of rural Suffolk was limited. The result was that at the age of twenty-three she was considered to be ‘on the shelf’ and sent off to India in October 1933 on what her family called ‘the marriage boat’."
Funny, India is told young should make their own matches, but it hardly ever seems as if young women are helped in West in any way does it! They are burdened with a requirement to be attractive, popular, yet not do anything but wait! Fishing indeed!
................................................................................................
Not quite the freedom fight soldiers' army as the congress today would insist on reminding everyone, is it, but only a forum originally begun with Brits encouragement to have some Indians they'd talk to, unlike in most clubs where Indians weren't allowed.
"In the 1870s one mother was writing to her thirteen-year-old daughter, at school in Simla, ‘I very much hope the other girls are ladies. As for those who are dark, ignore them. It is a sad fact that unions are made in India of the nicest of men of the best families, and women of no breeding who have coloured forebears. The sad result we must simply accept as part of God’s plan, but there is no need either to speak or even have physical contact with these poor creatures. I know Mama can trust you not to have such a girl as a close friend or a friend of any kind.’"
Most of this chapter is taken by the story of Gracie Trotted who, with another sister, was part Indian, but could and did pass for English, and was determined to establish herself as such. The discovery of their Indian roots could have had them in jeopardy as to connecting with their British heritage, so they distanced themselves from the other four sisters whose existence even their children weren't told of. Grace made an excellent match, but later disapproved of a daughter Dorothy marrying someone in trade instead of in ICS, as Grace's husband was.
"The story of Grace and William has a painful ending. For both, retirement could have been a life where William’s many distinguished posts brought them much recognition and a wide social circle. But as soon as the Vincents returned to England Grace left her husband, to live in Cheltenham, and rarely saw or spoke to her daughter Dorothy again. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that much of the reason for her marriage had been to escape from the curse of being Eurasian and to reclaim what she saw as her rightful place in society – and that, once at the top, she pulled up the drawbridge."
Going too far? Perhaps the author just assumes that, having been India in part, Grace must be at fault; could it be that William had discarded her having found her out, and was only waiting to retire, not wanting a scandal to endanger his children? Or simply that they parted because they needed to? Must Anne De Courcy make a racist assumption that grace had to be a social climber and was never honest or in love?
For that matter, even branding it as social climbing is racist; and making a choice of one half of ones heritage isn't a crime. But being branded a half breed isn't a picnic anywhere, as they then were, and story of Anglo Indians isn't without pathos, cut off from Indian roots since Brits elevated them above Indians but kept them distanced below Brits.
"As early as 1885, with the encouragement of the Viceroy and the support of several British officials, a group of Indian lawyers and other professionals, of all religions and from all parts of India, had founded the Indian National Congress as a forum for debate and to express Indian opinion to Britain. This was followed in 1906 by the All-India Muslim League and the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909, which enlarged the Viceroy’s Council to include an Indian member and allowed Indians to elect representatives to the provincial legislative councils."
Not quite the freedom fight soldiers' army as the congress today would insist on reminding everyone, is it, but only a forum originally begun with Brits encouragement to have some Indians they'd talk to, unlike in most clubs where Indians weren't allowed.
................................................................................................
"The first to actually marry a Fishing Fleet girl was Rajendar Singh, the rich, glamorous, hard-playing, philandering Maharaja of Patiala. ... he was so keen on cricket that he once had the top of an 8,000-foot mountain levelled off to make the highest cricket pitch in the world –"
"He owned 700 of the best thoroughbreds in India, bought for him by his great friend Lord William Beresford, VC, the horse-mad third son of the Marquis of Waterford. These studs were managed for him by an Irishman called Charles Bryan, the son of the head clerk of the Central Police Office in Lahore. When Charles Bryan came to Patiala in 1890 he brought his three young sisters with him."
"On 13 April 1893 the Civil and Military Gazette carried the news of his marriage on its front page. ‘The Maharaja Rajendar Singh of Patiala has secretly married Miss Florry Bryan, sister of Mr C. Bryan, in charge of H.H.’s stables . . . the marriage was by the Hindu and Sikh ceremonies united . . . the bride’s name was changed to Harnam Kaur.
"The Maharaja left for Dholpur the same night with his new bride.’ Florence was already five months pregnant; her son was born on 20 August 1893. But her married life was brief and unhappy. In spite of her adoption of her husband’s religion the nobility of Patiala took no notice of her; and she was spurned by European society. Worst of all, her son was poisoned. By 1896 a Foreign Office file refers to her as ‘the late’ – it is believed she died of pneumonia while accompanying her husband on a campaign in the Himalayas. Rajendar himself died a few years later, on 1 November 1900, following a riding accident."
Very Heat And Dust!
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"In the 1870s one mother was writing to her thirteen-year-old daughter, at school in Simla, ‘I very much hope the other girls are ladies. As for those who are dark, ignore them. It is a sad fact that unions are made in India of the nicest of men of the best families, and women of no breeding who have coloured forebears. The sad result we must simply accept as part of God’s plan, but there is no need either to speak or even have physical contact with these poor creatures. I know Mama can trust you not to have such a girl as a close friend or a friend of any kind.’"
Most of this chapter is taken by the story of Gracie Trotted who, with another sister, was part Indian, but could and did pass for English, and was determined to establish herself as such. The discovery of their Indian roots could have had them in jeopardy as to connecting with their British heritage, so they distanced themselves from the other four sisters whose existence even their children weren't told of. Grace made an excellent match, but later disapproved of a daughter Dorothy marrying someone in trade instead of in ICS, as Grace's husband was.
"The story of Grace and William has a painful ending. For both, retirement could have been a life where William’s many distinguished posts brought them much recognition and a wide social circle. But as soon as the Vincents returned to England Grace left her husband, to live in Cheltenham, and rarely saw or spoke to her daughter Dorothy again. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that much of the reason for her marriage had been to escape from the curse of being Eurasian and to reclaim what she saw as her rightful place in society – and that, once at the top, she pulled up the drawbridge."
Going too far? Perhaps the author just assumes that, having been India in part, Grace must be at fault; could it be that William had discarded her having found her out, and was only waiting to retire, not wanting a scandal to endanger his children? Or simply that they parted because they needed to? Must Anne De Courcy make a racist assumption that grace had to be a social climber and was never honest or in love?
For that matter, even branding it as social climbing is racist; and making a choice of one half of ones heritage isn't a crime. But being branded a half breed isn't a picnic anywhere, as they then were, and story of Anglo Indians isn't without pathos, cut off from Indian roots since Brits elevated them above Indians but kept them distanced below Brits.
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"‘The villagers, who had been posted up trees to mark the tiger’s movements, crowded in to rejoice at the death of their enemy and showed their contempt of him now he could not harm them by kicking and abusing him."
Not kosher behaviour as per Indian culture, since lion and tiger are what Goddess Durga rides, and in India, more so in Bengal than in other parts, Durga worship is major. So the villagers she speaks of weren't, likely, Hindu.
"For all but the last few years of its duration the Raj was a patriarchy, as were the indigenous cultures over which it held sway."
Only true if one ignored most of India, that is, Hindus. It isn't only that in several parts of India the old established communities have been, were, are matriarchies, but far more than that - its thst the very concept of Divine isnt limited to male form, and Goddesses aren't only accompanying Deities but supremely important on their own, woth their own festivals of worship and celebration that have not just women but male devotees, worshippers and priests, and they aren't there as a matter of protest but as a traditional element. After all, the major Goddesses represent Wisdom, Power, Wealth and Learning, and there are more.
Another careless mistake:-
"Sauga is 112 miles north-east of the state capital, Bhopal, in the United Provinces (as they were then)."
No it isn't. Bhopal is shown in pretty much centre of Central Provinces as they were then, and so is Sagar, which was presumably deformed by Brits to Sauga. This is so, even in the map of India as it was then, in this very book by this author.
"‘The villagers, who had been posted up trees to mark the tiger’s movements, crowded in to rejoice at the death of their enemy and showed their contempt of him now he could not harm them by kicking and abusing him."
Not kosher behaviour as per Indian culture, since lion and tiger are what Goddess Durga rides, and in India, more so in Bengal than in other parts, Durga worship is major. So the villagers she speaks of weren't, likely, Hindu.
................................................................................................
"For all but the last few years of its duration the Raj was a patriarchy, as were the indigenous cultures over which it held sway."
Only true if one ignored most of India, that is, Hindus. It isn't only that in several parts of India the old established communities have been, were, are matriarchies, but far more than that - its thst the very concept of Divine isnt limited to male form, and Goddesses aren't only accompanying Deities but supremely important on their own, woth their own festivals of worship and celebration that have not just women but male devotees, worshippers and priests, and they aren't there as a matter of protest but as a traditional element. After all, the major Goddesses represent Wisdom, Power, Wealth and Learning, and there are more.
................................................................................................
Another careless mistake:-
"Sauga is 112 miles north-east of the state capital, Bhopal, in the United Provinces (as they were then)."
No it isn't. Bhopal is shown in pretty much centre of Central Provinces as they were then, and so is Sagar, which was presumably deformed by Brits to Sauga. This is so, even in the map of India as it was then, in this very book by this author.
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"During the British Raj, India experienced some of the worst famines ever recorded, including the Great Famine of 1876–8, in which 6.1 million to 10.3 million people died, and the Indian famine of 1899–1900, in which 1.25 to 10 million people perished. The main reason was the British insistence on Indian farmers growing jute or cotton – to facilitate trade – rather than food crops such as rice and wheat. In times of shortage, this policy was catastrophic."
"Some things were permitted that would be frowned on at home – in India, for example, it was quite permissible for young ladies to have a chota peg as a sundowner (indeed, it was medically advised), whereas in England a young woman downing whisky would have been very mal vu."
The author fails to make it clear that she's referring only to Europeans, and in particular to British, in the above; the young ladies referred to in the paragraph above are most certainly not Indian. Anglo-Indian, possibly, if the father was a Brit and could afford it, but no other Indian then fitted the description above.
"During the British Raj, India experienced some of the worst famines ever recorded, including the Great Famine of 1876–8, in which 6.1 million to 10.3 million people died, and the Indian famine of 1899–1900, in which 1.25 to 10 million people perished. The main reason was the British insistence on Indian farmers growing jute or cotton – to facilitate trade – rather than food crops such as rice and wheat. In times of shortage, this policy was catastrophic."
................................................................................................
"Some things were permitted that would be frowned on at home – in India, for example, it was quite permissible for young ladies to have a chota peg as a sundowner (indeed, it was medically advised), whereas in England a young woman downing whisky would have been very mal vu."
The author fails to make it clear that she's referring only to Europeans, and in particular to British, in the above; the young ladies referred to in the paragraph above are most certainly not Indian. Anglo-Indian, possibly, if the father was a Brit and could afford it, but no other Indian then fitted the description above.
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"For Indians, domestic service carried no stigma but rather conferred status. Servants, like soldiers, were drawn from the highest strata of village society, their regular wage a wealth normally undreamt of."
Elsewhere the author expresses incredulity about the caste related behaviour of Indians, and she does not bother to connect the above with that in any way, which shows how little she knows about India and how little she thinks.
What ought to be perfectly obvious is that most domestic or otherwise servants employed by the British were only performing those services that they would otherwise elsewhere outside their own home, unless they were performing services for Brits that were a level higher than allowed for them by their caste elsewhere. This remains true in most cases in working for anyone, Indian or otherwise.
"Iris and her mother went to apologise to the Hindu family – who were very nice about Phra, and explained that the ashes were being taken down to be scattered on the Ganges."
Hindus do not 'scatter' ashes, ever, as westerners usually do if cremation of theirs takes place; ashes are immersed, carefully, preferably in Gangaa, but if that isn't possible, in a river near, or the ocean. In the last case, care is taken to immerse them beyond the tidal waves so they don't return.
"For Indians, domestic service carried no stigma but rather conferred status. Servants, like soldiers, were drawn from the highest strata of village society, their regular wage a wealth normally undreamt of."
Elsewhere the author expresses incredulity about the caste related behaviour of Indians, and she does not bother to connect the above with that in any way, which shows how little she knows about India and how little she thinks.
What ought to be perfectly obvious is that most domestic or otherwise servants employed by the British were only performing those services that they would otherwise elsewhere outside their own home, unless they were performing services for Brits that were a level higher than allowed for them by their caste elsewhere. This remains true in most cases in working for anyone, Indian or otherwise.
................................................................................................
"Iris and her mother went to apologise to the Hindu family – who were very nice about Phra, and explained that the ashes were being taken down to be scattered on the Ganges."
Hindus do not 'scatter' ashes, ever, as westerners usually do if cremation of theirs takes place; ashes are immersed, carefully, preferably in Gangaa, but if that isn't possible, in a river near, or the ocean. In the last case, care is taken to immerse them beyond the tidal waves so they don't return.
................................................................................................
"What Iris noticed was how carefully shooting was regulated.* The decimation of the jungles came later and was due to a combination of factors: poaching, appropriation of land for grazing by domestic cattle, and the destruction of large tracts of jungle through the spread of industrialisation. ‘Anyone then wanting to shoot rented a block from the Forest Department,’ wrote Iris, ‘and the game in it was strictly rationed: a tiger or two was allowed, one good Chital stag, one sambhur perhaps as well. Even if they were shot in the first few days, no more were allowed. The Forest Officers kept a close watch and in those days the forest guards, all Indian, were not corruptible by Europeans or fellow Indians. Poaching was almost unknown, although in the most remote and dense jungles the aboriginal tribes had regular battues when all game was driven into nets and killed with bows and arrows. They did this to feed themselves but their inroads made no more difference to the tiger population than a farmer’s rabbit shoot made to rabbits in the days before myxomatosis.’"
Well worth taking note.
"The Bishop, who had spent most of his life in the jungle as a missionary to the Gonds (the ancient tribal peoples of Central India), was not used to soldiers and refused to allow Squire to wear a ‘lungee’ (the regulation parade dress turban worn by all Indian cavalry) in church. Both Iris and Squire found it impossible to get him to understand that the Indian officers from the regiment, some of whom had come from as far away as Poona, would be horrified and shocked at what they would regard as an indecency – a bare head in uniform."
There the author reaches new low of ridiculous. Lungi is approximately equivalent of a kilt from waist to foot that's a white dhoti (usually worn in most places by pleading at front and tucking up at centre so there are two legs separated) knotted at waist and without pleats or tucking up. It's NOT a headgear. Headgear is usually called pagadi, or also Pagotey in Marathi. Lungi worn by Hindus is always white cotton, while dhoti is usually white cotton but not for temple worship or similar purposes, including any religious rituals; those are silk and often particular colours other than white. Sunshine yellow or plum, raspberry are usually acceptable shades.
"What Iris noticed was how carefully shooting was regulated.* The decimation of the jungles came later and was due to a combination of factors: poaching, appropriation of land for grazing by domestic cattle, and the destruction of large tracts of jungle through the spread of industrialisation. ‘Anyone then wanting to shoot rented a block from the Forest Department,’ wrote Iris, ‘and the game in it was strictly rationed: a tiger or two was allowed, one good Chital stag, one sambhur perhaps as well. Even if they were shot in the first few days, no more were allowed. The Forest Officers kept a close watch and in those days the forest guards, all Indian, were not corruptible by Europeans or fellow Indians. Poaching was almost unknown, although in the most remote and dense jungles the aboriginal tribes had regular battues when all game was driven into nets and killed with bows and arrows. They did this to feed themselves but their inroads made no more difference to the tiger population than a farmer’s rabbit shoot made to rabbits in the days before myxomatosis.’"
Well worth taking note.
................................................................................................
"The Bishop, who had spent most of his life in the jungle as a missionary to the Gonds (the ancient tribal peoples of Central India), was not used to soldiers and refused to allow Squire to wear a ‘lungee’ (the regulation parade dress turban worn by all Indian cavalry) in church. Both Iris and Squire found it impossible to get him to understand that the Indian officers from the regiment, some of whom had come from as far away as Poona, would be horrified and shocked at what they would regard as an indecency – a bare head in uniform."
There the author reaches new low of ridiculous. Lungi is approximately equivalent of a kilt from waist to foot that's a white dhoti (usually worn in most places by pleading at front and tucking up at centre so there are two legs separated) knotted at waist and without pleats or tucking up. It's NOT a headgear. Headgear is usually called pagadi, or also Pagotey in Marathi. Lungi worn by Hindus is always white cotton, while dhoti is usually white cotton but not for temple worship or similar purposes, including any religious rituals; those are silk and often particular colours other than white. Sunshine yellow or plum, raspberry are usually acceptable shades.
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February 27, 2020 - March 5, 2020.
ISBN: 978 0 2978 6383 0
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February 27, 2020 - March 5, 2020.
ISBN: 978 0 2978 6383 0
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