Travelling through colonial India in the early 1900s
In 1914, sisters Jon Godden and Rumer Godden relocated with their parents from Britain to colonial India. This book is an account of their time here, as well as a vivid portrait of India in the early 1900s.
By Jon and Rumer Godden Publisher: Speaking Tiger Pages: 247 Price: Rs. 299
Then, everything was clear; each thing was only itself: joy was joy, hope was hope, fear and sorrow were fear and sorrow; pain was simply pain; they had not yet trespassed into one another, not merged. Afterwards life inevitably thickened, became hazed and alloyed, but then it was clear.
In those days all English people living and working in the East, except those who were very poor or very wise, sent their children back to England to be brought up even though this meant years of separation during which the children were exiles. We, Jon and Rumer, were two small English girls; India was where our father worked, and we lived there until we were left with our grandmother in London, far from our home. Then suddenly we were fetched back, reprieved.
In a cabin of the Peninsular and Oriental liner Persia, on a November afternoon, we stood side by side, looking at the aunt who had come to fetch us, take us away from London because of the zeppelins. We were not sure what zeppelins were but this was November of nineteenfourteen.
It had all happened so quickly that we were bewildered — and a little frightened. Jon’s eyes, dark and lustrous, were at that moment as shy as a doe’s, though they could be fierce as a tiger’s. She was a contradictory child, arrogant and timid — the more timid she felt, the more arrogant she became;” Jon’s fear fully brave,” Rumer often said. Rumer’s eyes were just plain alarmed — plain because she was plain, with a high-bridged nose that did not match with the rest of her; but even in their shyness and alarm, both pairs of our eyes were taking in every least thing.
The cabin was inviting with its white panelled walls and its bunks, made up ready to get into, white sheets turned down over white cotton counterpanes stamped with the letters P and O; a miniature mahogany and brass ladder was placed to lead up to the top bunk. Who would go up it and sleep there? Rumer’s eyes gleamed but she knew already who it would be; Jon right fully because Jon was the eldest by sixteen months, wrongfully because she always got her own way; her rule was unquestioned. “But you should be kind to your sister,” our nurse in London had often told her. “Be kind to Rumer and help her.”
“And aren’t I kind? Don’t I help her?” said Jon. “Aren’t I always telling her what a fool she is!”
Compared to Jon she was a fool: Jon could floor grownups with a logic that was unanswerable and she was dauntless, and now Rumer stayed in her protecting shadow, surveying this new aunt.
It had been altogether a time of aunts. The two who had brought us to Tilbury, handing us over to Aunt Mary, were even now picking their way through the warehouses behind the quay towards the boat train. It was the last we had seen of them before we came below, two tall thin familiar figures, made taller by long serge coats and skirts, strangely skimpy; and by their sensible hats perched high on their heads; we had just ungrate fully rubbed their farewell kisses off our cheeks. They were Godden Aunts, Fa’s sisters, two of the five maiden Miss Goddens. This travelling aunt was a Hingley, of Mam’s, our mother’s, family. We had not seen a Hingley for a long time, not since, a year and two months ago, we had stood under the portico of our grandmother’s house, Number 4 Randolph Gardens in Maida Vale, London, and watched Mam drive away.
It was the fashion then for women to wear toques; Mam had a blue velvet one that brought out the colour of her eyes — not one of us had inherited that larkspur blue, and only our youngest sister Rose, the apple blossom skin that smelled of freshness and verbena.
Mam was little and plump; the Godden Aunts were tall, thin and sallow- pale from living in London; their clothes smelled of London grime and slightly of perspiration — coming from India, even as children we noticed the unwashedness of English people’s skins and clothes. We did not know then how ascetic these Aunts were, partly from lack of money, partly from a very real holiness that made them deny themselves the little they might have had. We only sensed that velvet toques and verbena were far, far removed from them.
The motor was a landau, one of those with a leather hood of which the back folded down, and we had been able to see the blue velvet toque being borne away. Our nurse, in her grey silk veil, and the white bonnets of our two small sisters, Nancy and Rose, had been there as well — Nurse was escorting them to the ship — but we had eyes only for the toque. Jon was stony-faced, dryeyed; for her, sharpening the grief, was a feeling of betrayal — that Mam could leave us behind; it was a knife that cut so deeply that she refused to cry; but Rumer was more simple, uninhibited and totally without pride; she let out a howl that reached the house tops.
“When she grew up she married Professor Key, the one you called Buttons,” Aunt Evelyn Kate said. “They were married in 1824 at Marylebone Church, and she was given away by her brother Albany who had fought at Waterloo and lived nearly all his life in India and never came home.”
It was immediately stifled by the nearest Aunt who swept her up into a serge embrace. There was an undignified scuffle — Rumer did not want to be stifled, not even comforted — she wanted to let her woe reach those house tops, ring down the street, over the railed Gardens with the asphalt walks and notices and up the tall spire of St Augustine’s church that stood just opposite. To her it was a passionate protest, meant to shatter everyone, but Jon was old enough, at seven, to know the noise was a scratch against the sky; there was no escape; grown-ups won all the time, and too, for her, beneath the outrage and grief, was a flicker of excitement; to be an abandoned child was at least dramatic, and this dark house promised to be interesting in a horrid gloomy way, because it was so different from anything she had known.
Grandmother and the Aunts were living in what were then called “straightened circumstances”; we did not know what that meant but there seemed to be a straight hard line drawn each side of their lives, penning them in. They could not entertain as they had done when Grandfather was alive so they did not entertain at all, excepting the visiting missionaries and clergy men connected with our eldest Aunt’s work; she was secretary of one of the African Missions. Nor did the Aunts ever go out except to work, which they all did, or else for “visiting” among the slums. Life was regular and, in a curious way, dark as the staircase and landings of that tall house were dark; it was so quiet that on the top landing one could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall.
The calm and certain waters of this quiet pool must have been very much disturbed, or rather, troubled, by the advent of “Arthur’s two eldest from India”.
It seemed strange to think that “Arthur” was Fa; there was a photograph of him on our Grandmother’s writing table, a little boy with a cherub face, a dimple and gold curls, and wearing what looked like a frill round his neck.
Grandmother was Fa’s mother, and her family was distin guished in a quiet way as the family portraits that hung in the drawing- and dining-rooms showed.
“This is your great-grandfather, Professor Thomas Hewitt Key,” Aunt Evelyn Kate told us. “When he was a young man he went to America as Professor of Mathematics at the University of Virginia. He and his wife took fifteen weeks to get there and the fresh water on board nearly ran out. When they arrived they were horrified to find that if they wanted any servants they would have to buy slaves and, after two years, they came back to England.”
The handsome face above the white cravat did not look like anyone’s grandfather. “He’s like Fa,” said Jon, which pleased our Aunt. She was not so pleased when we named the professor Buttons after the four large brass ones that shone from his dark coat. Excerpted with permission from Two Under the Indian Sun, published by Speaking Tiger