Bhupal Singh

A Survey of Anglo-Indian Fiction. Oxford University Press, 1934. 42–52.

Thackeray is not an Anglo-Indian novelist of any outstanding merit. The most important writer of the pre-Kipling period in the history of Anglo-Indian fiction is undoubtedly Colonel Meadows Taylor. Himself a romantic figure, he had ample opportunities of coming into close contact with native life and manners at the impressionable age of fifteen. He was a diligent student of the Persian, Mahratti, and Hindustani languages. Hindustani he could speak, he says in the Story of My Life, ‘like a gentleman’. Very few Englishmen in India would understand this remark, as the Hindustani they learn to speak is often the vulgar Hindustani of illiterate servants or low-class people. Delhi, Lucknow, and Hyderabad (Deccan) are the three centres where Hindustani as gentlemen are supposed to speak it, may be learnt, and Taylor was fortunate enough to secure a commission in the army of the Nizam at Hyderabad through the agency of Sir Charles Metcalfe. Though his romances are written in English, he often reproduces in them the flavour of cultured Indian conversation by using proper forms of address and oriental modes of expression. He enjoyed his life in Hyderabad and was fond of mixing with the local gentry. ‘I was often asked’, he says in his autobiography, ‘to sit down with them, while their carpets were spread and their attendants brought hookahs.’ The result of this free intercourse with Indian gentlemen was that he got an insight into Indian life such as is shown by few other writers.

Meadows Taylor visited England in 1838, just after his recovery from a severe illness in India. The whole journey through Persia, Arabia, and other countries took about nine months. This visit is important because it was in England that he published his first famous book, Confessions of a Thug (1839), which laid the foundation of his literary career and brought him into public notice. The suggestion to write the Confessions came from Sir Edward Bulwer.

‘He sent me word,’ says Taylor in his autobiography, ‘that had he possessed any local knowledge of India or its people, he would write a romance on the subject; why did I not do so? I pondered over this advice, and hence my novel, “Confessions of a Thug”.’ (The Story of My Life, p. 73.) The subject of Thuggee had always fascinated him. He had given much time to its study and speaks of it as ‘the offspring of fatalism and superstition, cherished and perfected by the wildest excitement that ever urged human beings to deeds at which humanity shudders’.¹ He had assisted Colonel Sleeman in his investigations and the disclosures of Colonel Sleeman in 1832 had startled the whole civilized world. The Confessions appeared at an opportune moment and Meadows Taylor suddenly found himself famous.

This book stands apart from the rest of his work, not only in the nature of its subject, but also in the manner of its narration. Its art is the result of its apparent artlessness. It is a simple tale of what actually happened as told by one of the exponents of Thuggee himself, vitalized by great force of imagination and vividness of description. Ameer All, the central figure of the book, was a real Thug examined by Meadows Taylor. His Confessions were startling, ‘a strange and horrible page in the varied record of humanity’.² Taylor lets him speak, apparently fascinated by the remarkable man, the perpetrator of hundreds of murders, who thinks of his past deeds with pleasure and satisfaction; who glories in describing the minutest particulars of his victims and his share in their destruction. Ameer All is a ‘Bhula Admee’, a ‘most devout man in his life and conduct’, who has said nimaz five times a day from his youth. Withal he is a murderer, one

‘before whom every murderer of the known world, in times past or present, except perhaps some of his own profession---the free bands of Germany, the Lanzknechts, the Banditti, the Condottieri of Italy, the Buccaneers and Pirates, and in our own time the fraternity of Burkes and Hares (a degenerate system of Thuggee, by the by, at which Ameer All. . . laughed heartily, and said they were sad bunglers)---must be counted men of small account.’ (Confessions, p. 264.)

Ameer Ali is essentially human. He loves fine dresses and good food, the excitement of war, and adventure. He is a passionate lover, a devoted son and a loving father, whose only regret is that having some seven hundred and nineteen murders to his credit he did not reach four figures. He admires Cheetoo, ‘a fine looking man and a gallant leader’. He is proud of having been received by him as a sirdar. He praises his justice and his horsemanship and knows how to flatter him.

The Confessions is a book by itself and has no connexion with the several novels that followed it. In the Confessions Meadows Taylor showed himself as a great realistic painter of Thuggee; in the novels that follow he is the chronicler of the romance of Indian history. His Tippoo Sultan, published in 1840, is the first of the historical romances that have made his name famous as the Scott of India. His romances show the influence of the great master. He learnt the art of re-creating the past in the school of Scott who, as we have seen, has himself described the pageantry and picturesqueness of the gorgeous East in The Surgeon’s Daughter. Tippoo Sultan may be said to be a continuation of The Surgeon’s Daughter, not only historically but artistically. The method is the same---the mingling of the real with the ideal human type against a highly romantic background. The difference is due to Scott’s unfamiliarity with India and Indians. Meadows Taylor knows his India as very few writers had known her before him. Naturally there is more of India in Tippoo Sultan than in The Surgeon’s Daughter. Scott selects that period of the history of Mysore when Haidar Ali was still living; Meadows Taylor deals with the period subsequent to Haidar Ali’s death. Scott knows the president of the council at Madras, ‘an able and active but unconscientious man’, who carried on mysterious intrigues with the natives through his Dubash, the notorious Paupiah; he also knows the beautiful adventuress, the Begum Montrevills. But he does not know any Indian except Barak-el-Hadij, who is slightly drawn. Scott’s imagination can help him to conjure up Indian scenes but not Indian characters. Scott has no character to show like Abdul Rhyman Khan, the knightly Mussulman noble who, having two wives living, marries a third, the beautiful Ameena. Nor has Scott any such scenes, peculiarly Indian, like the crossing of the Toombuddra at night or the reception of Ameena by the two wives of the Khan, Kummoobee and Hurmutbee. Scott easily surpasses Taylor in the description of scenes like the Sultan’s Durbar, or the movement of armies and the clash of arms, but the intimate knowledge of the zenankhana of a Mohammedan nobleman of the eighteenth century is obviously the result of experience gained on the spot. The old Khan is thus greeted by his two wives when they learn that he has got a third:

‘“Ill-conditionedI” cried Kummoobee, “Alla, Alla, a man who has no shame---a man who is perjured---a man, who is less than a man, a poor, pitiful, unblest coward! Yes,” she exclaimed, her voice rising with her passion as she proceeded, “a namurd! a fellow who has not the spirit of a flea, to dare to come into the presence of women who, Inshalla! are daughters of men of family! to dare to approach us, and tell us that he has come, and brought with him a vile woman---an unchaste.”’ (vol. i, p. 295.)

Herbert Compton and Casim Ali are idealized types of English and Indian heroes. Jaffur is the typical scoundrel of romance and has his counterpart in Paupiah.

In the imaginative representation of historical events Meadows Taylor is an imitator of Scott. His description of the attack on Travancore by Tippoo is a masterpiece. The portrait of the ‘Tiger of Mysore’ is on conventional lines. He is represented as a ‘savage and merciless’ man, who delights in spearing bulls, and in smearing the face of the Brahmins with bull’s blood.³

‘Sometimes he uttered the noblest and loftiest sentiments of honour---again some frivolous or ridiculous idea would get possession of his imagination and drive him into the commission of a thousand absurdities and terrible cruelties. It was no uncommon thing to see beyond the precincts of the camp a row of miserable Hindoos hanging upon trees, who had defied the Sultan’s efforts at conversion, and had preferred death rather than change the religion of their fathers.’⁴

Tara is the most ambitious of Meadows Taylor’s works and the first of that group of historical novels which constitute his famous trilogy. It is his greatest book excepting the Confessions. How it was begun and planned is described by the author himself in The Story of My Life.

‘The incidents and actions of the story had been planned for nearly twenty years; and I knew all the scenes and localities described, as I had the story in my mind during my visit to Beejapoor and had noted the details accurately; while my long residence in an entirely native State, and my intimate acquaintance with the people, their manners, habits, and social organization, gave me opportunities, which I think few Englishmen have ever enjoyed, of thoroughly understanding native life.’ (vol. ii, pp. 358-9.)

Tara was published in 1863, though planned twenty years before. The result of this careful planning is seen in the symmetry of its plot-structure. Tara, the widowed daughter of Vyas Shastri and his wife Anunda, is dedicated to the goddess Kali. She is carried off by Moro Trimmul and rescued by Fazil, the gallant son of chivalrous Afzool Khan, at the desecration of the temple at Tuljapoor. After the treacherous murder of Afzool Khan by Shivaji, Tara again falls into the clutches of Moro Trimmul. In order to save her honour she declares herself sati, but is saved in the nick of time by Fazil and his followers who carry her off, slaying Moro Trimmul. Tara is then married to Fazil.

This is the bare outline of the main plot. But the book is full of fascinating scenes, idealized men and women and romantic situations. Meadows Taylor displays a wonderful knowledge of the domestic life of Hindus and Mohammedans. Anunda is a noble type of Hindu lady, as Lurlee Khanum is a noble type of Moslem lady. Zyna, the sister of Fazil, is beautifully drawn. The variety of characters is amazing. The sleek, avaricious Tulsi Dass is an unscrupulous scribe at the Mogul court; Pahar Singh represents the independent freebooters of the time, combining in his person qualities of extreme daring and cruelty; Moro Trimmul combines the functions of a priest and spy. He is the villain of the piece. Ali Adil Shah, the chivalrous King of Bijapur, Shivaji, regarded with superstitious awe by his followers, and Afzool Khan are the chief historical figures of the novel. Both as giving the political history of the time and as a picture of the fife of the period Tara will long hold a high position among Indian historical romances.

Ralph Darnell deals with the rise of British power in India and Clive’s famous victory of Plassey. The plot, which is partly laid in England and partly in India, is simple. A gambling, drinking nephew of an English baronet, with the suspicion of illegitimacy hanging around him and disappointed in love, is abducted to India---the happy hunting-ground of political adventurers and a dumping-ground for all undesirable relations. Ralph Darnell not only distinguishes himself in the accepted style of English heroes, but like Esmond succeeds in clearing the mystery of his birth and obtaining the certificate of his mother’s marriage. In this novel Meadows Taylor shows the influence of Thackeray to a marked degree. Ralph Darnell is a combination of the characters of Esmond, Pendennis, and Colonel Newcome. Shuja-ud-Dowla, ‘a weak, sensual youth’, is the wicked nawab of history. In the career of the Afghan orphan, Sozun, the novelist provides some elements of romance. The book throws some light on the life of Englishmen in India in the eighteenth century when ‘the sudden transmission of an obnoxious relative to His Majesty’s plantations in Virginia, or to a friend in Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay was by no means uncommon’.⁵ Ralph, who was not squeamish, found in the English society of Calcutta ‘harder drinking, coarser swearing and deeper play than he had been accustomed to, and a general tone of profligacy, which belonged to a lower grade of society as it were’.⁶

Seeta is the third novel of the famous trilogy. Behind the romantic marriage of the beautiful Hindu widow to Cyril Brandon, the Collector of Noorpoor, we listen to the distant rumblings of the Mutiny of 1857. Seeta is a creation of romance; her very faithfulness and devotion to the religion of her forefathers would make her marriage to Brandon improbable in real life. Further, Aunt Ella, a hide-bound Hindu widow, not only tolerates but actually helps in the love-intrigue. Aunts of her type would rather see their daughters or nieces dead than married to a Christian. Allowing for this fundamental error, the character of Seeta is that of an idealized Hindu wife, a copy of the character of her namesake of the Ramayana which it is the ambition of every Hindu lady to imitate. She dies saving her lord and husband, and she dies a Hindu in spite of her marriage to a Christian and the 'good seed' that Mrs. Pratt, the missionary, had sown in her soul. 'There is good seed sown, my dear,' says Mrs. Pratt to Grace one day, 'and it must germinate and grow: and I shall be much mistaken if it does not. I am no match for her in metaphysics.'⁷ Meadows Taylor is much too anxious to see the 'good seed' germinate, and he regards Seeta as only a type of thousands and thousands of her countrymen and countrywomen who feel the truth of Christianity and are afraid of taking the 'final plunge'. The real interest of the book does not lie in characterization (though Azarael Pande is a notable character) or in the picture of the Mutiny, but in the attitude of English men and women towards this marriage⁸ and in the 'spicy detail of male and female doings and sayings' of this period.

Seeta is inferior to Tara in breadth of canvas as well as in general consistency and vigour of conception. But it contains many passages of singular power and beauty. The first chapter describing the 'weird conclave of dakaits with all its eerie surroundings' is written in the author's best style. Obviously Meadows Taylor knows his robbers and their haunts as well as he knows himself. The account of a robbery committed in the house of Haree Dass, and Seeta's visit to the Cow's Mouth, are good examples of his descriptive power.

In Tara Meadows Taylor is at the height of his powers. Ralph Darnell and Seeta show signs of exhaustion.

A Noble Queen is the last of the historical novels of Meadows Taylor. It describes the court-life and heroic career of the noble queen, Chand Bibi, who reigned in the sixteenth century. The character of Don Diego, the Portuguese priest and adventurer, is carefully drawn, and the same idealism that characterizes Taylor’s other books finds expression in this also.

Meadows Taylor is one of those few writers who have tried to depict India as she is. Before him the European conception of the East in general and of India in particular, as illustrated in literature, was extremely vague and often extravagantly ludicrous. Beckford’s Vathek, Southey’s Love of Kama, Moore’s Kalla Rookh are instances in point. ‘The orient of these writers’, as Professor Dunn has said, ‘was no more eastern, than was Horace Walpole’s residence at Strawbury Hill a Gothic structure.’⁹ Before Meadows Taylor, as we have seen, W. B. Hockley tried to give a realistic picture of India in his two novels Pandurang Hari and Tales of the Zenana. Meadows Taylor in his preface to the Confessions acknowledges the merits of Hockley’s work. He belongs to the school of Hockley and Morier in his first book. In his later books the tendency to idealism and romance is more prominent. The realism that is such a prominent feature of the Confessions is confined to minor characters and presentation of Indian manners and customs in his historical romances.

It will always be a matter of controversy as to which of the two classes of stories---the realistic Confessions, or the idealistic romances---is better. It is often a matter of taste. Some like realism, others romance. According to Professor Oaten the fame of Meadows Taylor rests ‘not on the Confessions of a Thug, which, though it first brought him fame, stands entirely apart from the rest of his work, but upon the series of splendid historical tales which he subsequently wrote’.¹⁰ Mr. Sencourt, on the other hand, preferring the Confessions, says: ‘A certain conventionality of romantic style, a tendency to false effects, and an incapacity to make adventure really exciting or absorbing, prevent these works from reaching the level of the Confessions of a Thug, which is simply a record of fact filled in by imagination and description till it attains the vividness of life.’¹¹ It will be clear even to a casual student that artistically Taylor’s historical romances are inferior to the Confessions. The plot of the romances is generally loose and leisurely and characterization is idealized at the cost of truth. Such beautiful and virtuous women as Tara and Seeta have always existed in India, but they would not have behaved as they did, particularly in the age to which they belonged. Tara, who is dedicated to Kali and who offers to become sati, may wed a Mohammedan gallant who saves her. But such marriages are not common. The effect is as bad as it would be if Scott were to marry Rebecca to Ivanhoe. The marriage of Seeta to Cyril Brandon is still more improbable. Seeta is a Hindu widow and very religious. If Tara’s marriage is improbable, Seeta’s is almost impossible. Our objection to this marriage is not like that of the English reviewers who object to mixed marriages on grounds of prestige. Our objection is on the ground of improbability.