"No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read."

David McCullough, 2003 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities

1857 - India: a selected and annotated bibliography

 There are many fascinating books written about British India, particularly in regard to the events of 1857. Listed below are a few of those which I read when preparing to write The Duke of Shadows. (And if you're interested in 1880s London -- the setting for my next two novels -- then please to be sure to scroll down for another growing bibliography!)

• Ladies in the Sun: the Memsahibs' India 1760-1860, by J.K. Stanford, and Women of the Raj, by Margaret MacMillan. These are both fabulous books, that draw on many first-hand accounts written by memsahibs in India. MacMillan notes a detail that I chose not to include in the dinner party scene in The Duke of Shadows: "At dinner-parties moths and flies fluttered in through the unscreened windows, crashing into diners' faces, flopping into their food." I thought I'd spare Emma and Julian that small hassle... they had enough on their plates already. (Yes, pun totally intended!)
• The Manners and Customs of Society in India, by Mrs. Major Clemons. Published in 1841, this is the etiquette volume Emma references during the aforementioned dinner party.
• Hobson-Jobson: The Anglo-Indian Dictionary. Published in 1886, but drawing from sources that date all the way back to the 1700s (and, like the O.E.D., handily offering dates for each word's first appearance in writing!), this is a fantastic book. Some of the vocabulary in it had become obscure even at the time of publication ("Punch-house: An Inn or Tavern; now the term is chiefly used by natives...Formerly the word was in general Anglo-Indian use"); some of its entries have become firmly entrenched in the English language ("Pyjammas: A pair of loose drawers or trousers, tied around the waist...adopted from the Mahommedans by Europeans as an article of dishabille and of night attire").
• Anything by P.J.O. Taylor, eminent historian of 1857, is a good bet. My personal favorites include What Really Happened in the Mutiny: A Day-By-Day Account of the Major Events of 1857 - 1859 in India, and also A Companion to the 'Indian Mutiny' of 1857. (I assume that 'Indian Mutiny' is in quotes in the second book's title because the issue of what to call the events of 1857 has become very politically fraught. Was it simply a military mutiny? Or was it, in fact, the First War of Indian Independence?) The latter book is an incredible encyclopedia full of fact and lore both. It contains some truly fascinating snippets that I found nowhere else, most of them drawn from primary sources (many Mutiny survivors recorded their experiences in journals and memoirs). Take the entry for "Mees Dolly," for instance. Dolly was "a European woman, pure-bred but country-born, the widow of a sergeant in the British Army". When her husband died, Miss Dolly spurned all marriage offers and chose instead to set up a brothel in the bazaar. Shortly after the mutiny in Meerut on May 10, 1857, she was arrested "for helping in the murder of two Eurasian girls and, significantly, for 'egging on the mutineers,'" and was hanged by the British. Besides these few sparse details, little else is known of her; it probably was not an incident the British felt comfortable advertising! But It is speculated in the book that if she did indeed "egg on" the mutineers, she might have ultimately caused them to act before they were ready -- thus unwittingly undermining the very rebellion she sought to start. (Interestingly, Dolly was not the only European who sided with the rebels; P.J.O. Taylor also mentions an Englishman who was said to have aided the uprising.)
• Another great overview of the events of 1857 is Christopher Hibbert's The Great Mutiny: India 1857. Also, while browsing in a used bookstore a year ago, I came across The Great Indian Mutiny, by Richard Collier. This book is an incredibly riveting, nearly cinematic read. However, some of its claims are contradicted by other books on this list.
• Real Life in India: embracing a view of the requirements of individuals appointed to any branch of the Indian public service : the methods of proceeding to India, and the course of life in different parts of the country - by an old resident. Published in 1847, this book includes an appendix with packing advice for those moving to India. The list for women contains the most amazing number of things -- including a stupendous amount of flannel! Random treat: there's also an advertisement in the back for London's very own, one-of-a-kind Mourning Warehouse, for all your mourning needs. Bombazine ahoy!
• A Lady's Diary of the Siege of Lucknow: Written for the Perusal of Friends At Home, by Mrs. J.P. Harris. Emma and Julian are lucky enough to have avoided the incredibly violent siege of the British encampment in Lucknow, which Mrs. Harris endured (and, unlike so many others, survived). Background: In late May, 1857, alarmed by the reports from Delhi and Meerut, around three thousand people (British, Indian, soldiers, civilians, women, children) barricaded themselves in the British Residency, a large complex of buildings with long lawns bounded, at the perimeters, by very low walls. Obviously, this complex was poorly situated for defense, and vulnerable to artillery and sniper fire; but there was no better choice available to the British and British loyalists. Indeed, once the fightning began, the Residency provided scant shelter, and supplies quickly ran low. During the eighty-seven days before adequate reinforcements were able to arrive, the population was decimated by disease, starvation, and artillery fire.
  
  This diary charts Mrs. Harris's experiences immediately before, during, and after the Siege. Written as letters to her mother, the entries clearly show the emotional toll taken by war. Early on, Mrs. Harris devotes her letters to chronicling her fears that the Mutiny will spread to Lucknow (May 18, 1857: "Delhi is in the hands of the insurgents, and no post could go out from there, even if there were a survivor to write... The Sepoy regiments here are supposed to be faithful, and everything is being done to secure their allegiance"). When the sepoys rise against their commanders, she vents her shock (May 31: "Oh, mother! mother! how dreadful it is! We have just heard there is a rising in the city. God help us! Last night we were at dinner when the servants came running in to say there was firing heard at the cantonments: we heard it distinctly, and from the top of the Residency the whole place was seen in a blaze"). As the fighting wears on, and the death toll mounts, her once-lengthy entries become terse catalogues of the wounded and killed (August 4: "One of the gunners was shot dead in the verandah this morning... I saw the poor fellow lying there in a pool of blood." August 5: "A soldier of the 32nd was shot in hospital this morning, while sitting on a comrade's bed." August 6: "Mr. Studdy, a 32nd officer, had his arm shot off by an 18-pounder.") But even war can become commonplace; two months later, the siege still ongoing, Mrs. Harris demonstrates a newly prosaic attitude to the violence around her: "October 30: We have been besieged four months to-day. This morning an 18-pounder came through our unfortunate room again, which we flattered ourselves was so safe, and which we had made so comfortable...There was a sale today of Colonel Halford's property [Meredith's note: the possessions of the killed were auctioned], and James bought some plated dishes, a great bargain: they will be very useful if we ever set up house again in India."
  
  The Residency complex still stands, by the way. While in Lucknow in 2005 to study Urdu, I spent time wandering through the Residency, which is now a park. The graveyard is full of British victims of the Siege, and as you can tell from this photo, many of the buildings have been left untouched since the Relief in the fall of 1857. Their walls are riddled with holes left by bullets and cannon fire.

1880s London

For my next two novels, which will be published by Pocket in Summer 2009, I have been busy reading up on the world of 1880s London. Here are tidbits from three of the
primary sources I've consulted.

• Aristocracy in England, by Adam Badeau. Published in 1886, this firsthand account of London high society is intended for the foreign reader. Badeau, who seems to have been a diplomat or some other highly-placed person (he recounts anecdotal conversations with some of the most famous noblemen of the period), does not appear to have been impressed with the aristocracy. In a tangential screed about the privileges of birth, he informs his readers, "A duke may be a boor or a clown, a duchess may be illiterate or drunken or immoral -— and there have been instances of all this within the last twenty years... There are men of the highest rank who turn palaces into dog-kennels and consort with pugilists and yet marry into ducal families; and I have seen tipsy duchesses dance after dinner with shawls and castanets before ambassadors and Prime Ministers, when but for their rank they would not have been tolerated."
• World of London, by Count Vasili. Published in 1885, this is another firsthand account of English high society, viewed through marginally kinder eyes. The author, commenting on the widespread animosity in England for the landed classes, predicts the coming abolishment of the aristocracy, to be preceded only by the imminent demise of the House of Lords: "If the days of the House of Lords are not yet numbered, its years most decidedly are. It is an ancient edifice that rests only upon the shifting sands of privilege and of class interests; and as slight storms have already made it shake and tremble, a tempest will completely overthrow it." The author is also thoroughly unimpressed with musicales: "As for the piano, it is understood to be a machine to set people talking, and as soon as the first notes are heard, conversation begins on all sides, and is only checked by the last chord. I heard a lady say to another after an artist had played very brilliantly, 'She made such a noise we couldn't hear ourselves speak.'"
• Sidelights on English Society, by EC Grenville Murray, published in 1881. Murray is much obsessed with the figure of the fashionable flirt, devoting an entire volume of his opus to detailing her canny ways: "At Ascot and Goodwood, the Eton and Harrow Match at Lord’s, the parties fines at the Orleans Club, and the cotillons at balls…she studies men for hours at a time. During Ascot week, for instance, the chaperon probably hires a lodge near the course, goes to witness four days’ racing, and gives little dinners every evening to pleasant acquaintances whom she has met in the Grand Strand. Some of these inveigle the Flirt into betting. It used to be the custom for girls to bet gloves, but this has grown tame, and a girl now wagers hard money, or ‘discretions’ —which mean jewelry or a private settlement of a long milliner’s bill. Men do not like a betting-girl, and many a smart miss has thrown a good matrimonial chance away by unguardedly taking a bet which has been offered to prove her."

As you may have gathered, I really love my research. If you know of a book that I simply must read about this period, please do drop me a line with your suggestion!