Thinking of England
Allan Mallinson
ANGELS OF ALBION: WOMEN OF THE INDIAN MUTINY by Jane Robinson Viking, f20, pp. 298 What happened in May 1857 was more than a mutiny but a lot less than a war of independence. It is as well that Jane Robinson has chosen largely to steer clear of this debate, however, for to have talked only of 'rebellion', or whatever, would have been to miss a potent element of the drama of this infamous episode. There is an espe- cial evil in murder by mutinous troops the betrayal of trust, the taking advantage of power meant only to be exercised under discipline. Discipline is the soul of an army and, when it mutinied, the Army of the Presidency of Bengal (those of Bombay and Madras were largely unaffected) lost its soul. To high-Victorian England sup- pression of the Mutiny was a spiritual imperative therefore, a crusade, no less.
But there was another dimension. In the author's words: The memsahib neatly symbolised national purity . . . Britannia's virgin daughter, an angel of Albion whose sacrilegious violation at the hands of the mutineers became a metaphor for the violation of the Empire. British soldiers fought the Indians in blood- revenge, calling on the spirit of their mur- dered country-women to inspire them to unsurpassed heights of valour.
Yet this image of the memsahib does not do her full justice. Jane Robinson confesses to having regarded the memsahibs a little derisively when working on a previous book about lady travellers, but reading of their impassiveness during the Mutiny changed that. In Agra she came across a Moslem tradition which clinched it: the marble monuments in the Itimad-ud- daulah (or `Baby-Tan have either a carved figure of a writing-slate or else of a pen- box. When asked their meaning, her guide explained that they signified whether the tomb was of a man or a woman: 'Women are the slates, memsahib, on which men write the history of the world.'
The women of the Mutiny are not all of a piece. Some are by no means ladies, or even gentlewomen. There is Charlotte Canning, wife of the Governor-General, first lady of India, `burra memsahib', who keeps up her intelligent and enlightened correspondence with Queen Victoria throughout from the safety of her Calcutta residence. There is Kate Bartrum, a silver- smith's daughter from Bath, married to an assistant surgeon in the remote station of Gonda in Oudh province, whose story, with her toddler son, is as harrowing as any. There are the officers' wives, as one mem- sahib puts it, curiously different from the civilians. The civil ladies are generally very quiet, rather languid, speaking almost in a whisper, simply dressed, almost always ladylike and comme- il-faut, not pretty, but pleasant and nice- looking, rather dull, and give one very hard work in pumping for conversation .. . The military ladies, on the contrary, are always quite young, pretty, noisy, affected, showily dressed, with a great many ornaments, mauvais ton, chatter incessantly from the moment they enter the house, twist their curls, shake their bustles, and are altogether what you may call 'Low Toss'.
But there is lower toss still, and not just the wives of the rank and file soldiery — the `gora log'. There are women who had come out to India with the 'fishing fleet' to find a husband but, having failed, were making ends meet as best they could — in some cases following the oldest profession in the local bazaars. Then there are the Eurasians who might fall foul of both sides. Amelia 'Bonny' Byrne is one, a captain's daughter and an ensign's wife who becomes mistress of the Nawab of Far- rukhabad, escapes the massacre of Cawn- pore but is then nearly hanged by the British. Some find the Mutiny a relief from boredom — at least until death becomes a real possibility. Others, like the Mar- chioness of Sligo, brought up in India to the age of six, 'finished' at school in Eng- land, and then back in Patna with a hus- band and baby at 21, regard the affair with insouciance, contempt even.
From letters and journals smuggled through the lines or found posthumously by relief columns, and from numerous other accounts, Jane Robinson recalls the horror of it all. There is the misery of sieges like Cawnpore — privation followed by cold- blooded butchery. There are fugitives in the jungle enduring heat, cholera, snakes, treacherous villagers — and pregnancy. There is the relative comfort of the resi- dency at Lucknow where, in the initial stages at least, a much-straitened but for- mal existence is maintained. There is forti- tude beyond belief, sustained in no small measure by absolute trust in God.
One thing, surprisingly, there is not rape. It was a potent fear among the women themselves, and saving them from this fate was a powerful spur to the relief columns. But Jane Robinson maintains there was not a single authenticated case despite thorough contemporary investiga- tion. There was, of course, little that foren- sic science could reveal from bodies piled in wells, as at Cawnpore, but anecdotal evi- dence too seems to have been lacking. To kill a woman was one thing, but rape would have meant loss of caste for a Hindu and defilement for a Moslem. There was one exception, it seems, though the case of Miss Ulrica Wheeler is unusual to the point of being bizarre. In St James's church, Delhi, built in the likeness of St Paul's cathedral by the leg- endary Eurasian adventurer Colonel James Skinner, there are plaques to the memory of those who died there in the first days of the Mutiny. Two in particular stand out. One records the death of the manager of the Delhi branch of a London bank, together with his wife and three daughters. Another commemorates the life of the sole survivor of that family, the son (presumably at school in England at the time), who returned subsequently to become manager of that same branch. To see these plaques is to wonder what mutiny was like for the memsahibs and children when it came to their homes, and what it was that made life go on as it did after it was put down. Jane Robinson tells us, engagingly and movingly.
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