Women's Travel Writings in India 1777–1854

Volume III: Mrs A. Deane, A Tour through the Upper Provinces of Hindustan (1823); and Julia Charlotte Maitland, Letters from Madras During the Years 1836-39, by a Lady (1843)

Éadaoin Agnew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781138202788
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315472911
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del siglo XIX

The 'memsahibs' of the British Raj in India are well-known figures today, frequently depicted in fiction, TV and film. In recent years, they have also become the focus of extensive scholarship. Less familiar to both academics and the general public, however, are the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century precursors to the memsahibs of the Victorian and Edwardian era. Yet British women also visited and resided in India in this earlier period, witnessing first-hand the tumultuous, expansionist decades in which the East India Company established British control over the subcontinent. Some of these travellers produced highly regarded accounts of their experiences, thereby inaugurating a rich tradition of women's travel writing about India. In the process, they not only reported events and developments in the subcontinent, they also contributed to them, helping to shape opinion and policy on issues such as colonial rule, religion, and social reform.

This new set in the Chawton House Library Women's Travel Writing series assembles seven of these accounts, six by British authors (Jemima Kindersley, Maria Graham, Eliza Fay, Ann Deane, Julia Maitland and Mary Sherwood) and one by an American (Harriet Newell). Their narratives – here reproduced for the first time in reset scholarly editions – were published between 1777 and 1854, and recount journeys undertaken in India, or periods of residence there, between the 1760s and the 1830s. Collectively they showcase the range of women's interests and activities in India, and also the variety of narrative forms, voices and personae available to them as travel writers. Some stand squarely in the tradition of Enlightenment ethnography; others show the growing influence of Evangelical beliefs. But all disrupt any lingering stereotypes about women's passivity, reticence and lack of public agency in this period, when colonial women were not yet as sequestered and debarred from cross-cultural contact as they would later be during the Raj. Their narratives are consequently a useful resource to students and researchers across multiple fields and disciplines, including women's writing, travel writing, colonial and postcolonial studies, the history of women's educational and missionary work, and Romantic-era and nineteenth-century literature.

This volume includes two texts, Ann Deane, A Tour Through the Upper Provinces of Hindostan (1823) and Julia Maitland, Letters from Madras (1846).

JULIA MAITLAND, LETTERS FROM MADRAS (1846)

Julia Maitland (1808–1864), née Barrett, travelled to India in 1836, accompanying her first husband, James Thomas, who was a Judge in the Madras Presidency. Thomas was a widower with three children; during their time in India, the couple also had two further children. After seven months in Madras, Thomas was appointed Judge at Rajahmundry and the family relocated to this ‘up country’ station for the following 18 months, with the exception of brief sojourns in Samuldavee by the coast. In 1839, Thomas received two new postings, the first to Cuddapah and Bellary, and the second to Bangalore. However, by this time, their daughter Henrietta was sick and Julia had recently given birth to a son, James Cambridge Thomas. Thus, she was advised to return home with the children. Not long after she left, her husband died in India. Two years later, in 1842, Julia married the author and curate Charlies Maitland (1815–1866).

The following year, in 1843, Maitland’s Letters from Madras: During the Years 1836–1839 was published anonymously by John Murray. The volume received favourable reviews. The Gentleman’s Magazine describing it as ‘a good and evidently a genuine account of the manners and society of India, including not only the European portion of the inhabitants, but the native population also’.¹ In a long, anonymously written review-essay in the Quarterly Review in 1845, Elizabeth Eastlake judged it ‘the very lightest work that has ever appeared from India, yet it tells us more of what everybody cares to know than any other’.² Maitland’s successful blending of entertainment and information was presumably one reason why the publisher John Murray chose to reissue the volume, with very minor revisions, in 1846, as part of his Home and Colonial Library. This series ran from 1843–1849 and ultimately comprised 49 titles, mostly cheap reprints as well as some original works and translations. It was intended to help Murray acquire a greater share of the colonial writing market, and Maitland’s inclusion in a predominantly male list indicates the contemporary perception of her text as authoritative and informative. This perception, and the volume’s appeal, continued into the 1860s, with another edition appearing in 1861. A facsimile edition, with scholarly apparatus, has more recently been published by the Woodstock Press in 2003.³

A prominent theme in Letters from Madras is Maitland’s interest in education as a means of inculcating Christian morality in children. This interest continued once she returned home to Britain. Rather than become involved in philanthropic projects, however, she went on to write three moralistic children’s novels: Historical Acting Charades (1847), The Doll and her Friends, or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina (1852), and Cat and Dog, or, Memoirs of Puss and the Captain (1854). All were popular and went through several editions.

Julia Maitland died from phthisis in 1864.

Notes

1 ‘Review of Letters from Madras: By a Lady’, Gentleman’s Magazine (July 1843), p. 58.

2 E. Eastlake, ‘Lady Travellers’, Quarterly Review 76 (June 1845), p. 111.

3 J. Maitland, Letters from Madras, ed. A. Price (Otley: Woodstock Books, 2003).

LETTERS FROM MADRAS,

DURING THE YEARS 1836–1839.

BY A LADY.

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

1846.

INTRODUCTION.

THE public attention has of late been so much directed to our East Indian possessions, that any particulars concerning that portion of the globe may probably find a welcome from the general reader. It is under this impression that the following Letters are offered to the public. They were written during the years 1836, 37, 38, and 39, by a young married lady, who had accompanied her husband to Madras for the first time, and they are (with the necessary omission of family details) printed verbatim from the originals. This will account for some abruptness of transition, and also for a colloquial familiarity of style, which might easily have been remedied if it had not been thought more advisable to give the correspondence in its genuine unsophisticated state.

Those who open the volume with an expectation of finding details relative to the wars and vicissitudes¹ which have lately excited universal interest^a will be disappointed, as the writer quitted India in 1840. Neither did she devote much attention to public affairs, though she occasionally notices the apprehensions and opinions that were prevalent at the time. But first impressions,^b when they occur incidentally in a familiar narrative, are amusing, and may sometimes be useful: such, indeed, constitute the chief feature in these Letters. The reader will also find in them many traits^c of national character; and some descriptions of the Author’s intercourse with the natives of Hindostan, and of the endeavours^d in which she shared to improve their condition.

It is proper to observe that, whenever European individuals are mentioned,^e fictitious names have been assigned to them, and other precautions taken to prevent the personal application of such passages.

Note

1 wars and vicissitudes: The First Afghan War (1839–1842) took place directly after Mait-land’s departure from India and prior to the publication of her text.

LETTERS FROM MADRAS

LETTER THE FIRST.

Bay of Biscay, August 17th.

I BEGIN now, in hopes of meeting a ship, to tell you our histories. This is the first day I have been well enough to write; and I am not very steady yet, as you may perceive, but still we are all exceedingly well—for the Bay of Biscay.¹

We have persuaded my brother Frank² to go with us as far as Madeira,³ and take his chance of finding a homeward-bound ship.

The Captain⁴ says he never had so smooth a passage, but there is a good deal of swell here. The wind allows of our passing outside the roughest part of this unfortunate Bay, which is a very great advantage.

Mrs. M—⁵ was quite right in advising us to take the roundhouse. There is much more air than in the lower cabins, and the noises do not annoy me at all. We all go to bed at nine o’clock, so that it is no hardship to be awakened at five. Certainly, the first morning, when I woke, there did seem to be as quaint a combination and succession of noises as could well be imagined. Pigs, dogs, poultry, cow, cats, sheep, all in concert at sunrise. Then the nursery noises: Major O’Brien⁶ twittering to his baby—the baby squealing—the nurse singing and squalling to it—the mamma cooing to it. Then the cuddy noises: all the servants quarrelling for their clothes, &c. &c. So on till breakfast-time.

I was too sick to laugh then, and I am used to it now. Then, when I was as sick and cross as possible, in came my Irish maid Freeman⁷ with a great plate of beefsteak and potatoes. I exclaimed in despair at the very sight of it, “Oh, what is all that for? O dear me!”—“Sure, it’s for you to ate, ma’am.”—“Eat! I can’t eat.”—“Oh, you must ate it all, ma’am: you’ve no notion how well you would be if you would only ate hearty!” Her cramming was a great bore, but she cured me by it. Frank is nearly mad: he is in such raptures with everything on board, I think he will end by turning ship’s surgeon. The first night his hammock was slung under the doctor’s. The poor doctor complained to me in the morning how very odd it was he could not keep his cot steady,—he had been swinging about, he said, all night. Frank confided to me privately the reason, viz. that the doctor looked so tempting over his head, he could not resist swinging him at every opportunity. However, next night he was found out, for the doctor peeped over the top of his cot and caught him in the fact; and when Mr. Darke,⁸ the second mate, came into the cabin, poor Dr. Lowe⁹ exclaimed, “Here, Darke! I could not imagine why I could not keep my cot steady all night, and at last I looked over the top, when I found this precious fellow swinging me!”

Our passengers are Mr. and Mrs. Wilde¹⁰ (he is going to St. Helena¹¹ as Chief Justice: they go with us to the Cape,¹² and there wait for a homeward-bound ship to take them to St. Helena);—the O’Briens;¹³—Miss Shields,¹⁴ good humoured and lively, going out as a missionary;—Miss Knight,¹⁵ sick and solemn;—several Irish girls apparently on their promotion;^16f—Mr. Harvey,¹⁷ who plays chess, and takes care of his flowers: he has them in an hermetically sealed glass case, which he is taking to the Cape;—a number of hitherto unnamed gentlemen, who sit down to eat and drink, and rise up to play;—one or two pretty boys, who saunter about with Lord Byron¹⁸ in hand;—and Mr. Stevens,¹⁹ the missionary, who is good and gentle, but so sick that we have not yet made much acquaintance: he is getting better, and talks of reading the service next Sunday.

August 23rd. FUNCHAL.²⁰—Here we are on shore again, in this beautiful Madeira, and all excessively thankful and happy to be out of our ship, though it is very hot on shore, compared with the real sea air: it has been quite cold at sea. Our chief employment just now is eating figs and grapes, and planning our excursions for to-morrow. We have been landed about an hour, and are to remain here till Thursday. Frank is gone to the consul to get a passport, and inquire about a ship to take him home. We are grown pretty well used to the life on board ship. Everybody is good-natured and civil. Captain Faulkner²¹ is our chief crony, but we are all good friends. I am beginning greatly to enjoy some parts of our sea-life, especially the bright blue water, and the bright yellow moonlight,—such colours as no shoregoing people ever saw.^g

August 25th.—Madeira is very lively, very like Lucca:²² the country, and the heat, and the people, are Italy over again. We have just been to visit a convent here.^23h There is not much to be seen. The nuns spoke to us through a double grating and sold us flowers. Nobody is allowed to see the inside of the convent. They spoke nothing but Portuguese. They came to me, chirping, and asking me to talk to them, and to tell them something; but, unluckily, though I could understand what they said to me, I could not answer a word; so we were obliged to be content with nodding and bobbing, and looking friendly at each other. We have taken some beautiful rides and gathered nosegays of wild flowers—heliotropes, roses, fuchsias, and every variety of geraniums. To-night we go on board again, leaving Frank here to find his way home by the first ship. We shall be very anxious to hear his adventures: I am afraid he may be obliged to go round by Lisbon, for no English ship is expected just at present. The Captain has sent his summons for us, so I must say “Good-bye.”

LETTER THE SECOND.

August 29th, Lat. 22° N., Lon. 23½° W.

THE Captain has just told us that he expects to pass a ship every day, so we are all setting to work getting our letters ready, as he only allows five minutes for sealing and sending off. I hope, by the time you receive this letter, Frank will have arrived safely at home, and not the worse for his journey. Pray make him write to me directly; I shall be quite uneasy till I hear from him, for we left him at Madeira quite ignorant of what his plans might be. Everybody on board was very sorry to lose him, and they all sing his praises with much good taste.

We are now entering the Tropics,²⁴ and the weather is still cool, owing to the constant breeze. We have had no calms, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• Introduction
• Ann Deane, A Tour through the Upper Provinces of Hindostan (1823)
• Julia Maitland, Letters from Madras (1846)
• Textual variants