bout de papier, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1985) — Summer 1985 // Été 1985, p. 8
“The years go hence, and wild, and lovely things
Their own, go with them never to return.”
Most western women had, and have, a good deal of leisure time in India, and this was particularly true in the days of the Raj when contacts with the Indian ladies were more infrequent than they are now.
A certain amount of dalliance between the sexes was to be expected and there was no doubt a goodly expenditure of time and ingenuity in the civilian lines devoted to “bundo” (arrangements) and more than the odd slap and tickle in the “kala jugga” (dark nook). Things were perhaps a little more leisured and accepted in the hill stations, particularly Simla, the resort which, quite possibly, first gave rise to the term “grass widow”, a companion piece (sic) with the Anglo- Indian expression “grass bidi” or casual country encounter. There was a seasonal fillip with the arrival of the “fishing fleet”, an annual influx of young ladies out from school. Many of these who returned “bottom empty” were no doubt richer in experience.
Nevertheless, reflecting the prudery of the age, the usual impression of the western women in the days of the Raj partook largely of Mrs. Miniver and the kind who thought of England
It was with some éclat that a burst of torrid love lyrics arched from Indian shores to stir the banked fires of Victorian prurience which happened to be going through a bad patch between “A Child’s Garden of Verses” and Yeats’ “Red Hanrahan’s Song about Ireland”. Beyond these there was little to recall. Shelley’s Indian Serenade never had swept the clubs like wildfire “I rise from dreams of thee – The champak odours fail The nightingale’s complaint – O lift me from the grass I die, I faint, I fail.”
The new stuff was such as, Afridi Love:
“When I have slowly drawn my knife across you Taking my pleasure till I see you swoon.” or of “Pale hands beside the Shalimar”: “I would rather have felt you round my throat, crushing out life, then waving me farewell”
Or, (Gold help us!), what of she whose: “body lay with hacked off breats, dishonoured in the pass”
The new poet, Lawrence Hope, knew his India; sume of the lines had the creak and jingle of a Kipling column:
“Tis eight miles out and eight miles in Just at the break of morn ’Tis ice without and flame within To gain a kiss at dawn.”
Is there something of Tennyson’s “idle king” in? “Ah! to exchange this wealth of idle days For one cold reckless night in Khorosan.”
Though still red in tooth and claw there was sometimes a hint of change in approach — … the red tears falling from thy shattered wrist A spent Waziri, forceful still in hate Covered thy heart ten paces off – and missed.”
1901 – and London agog as Lawrence Hope was revealed to be Mrs. Malcolm Nicolson, née Adela Corry, a slip of a girl who had been in India since the age of 16 and had married a Colonel Nicolson who was 20 years older than her, in circumstances which might have strained her poetry.
Nicolson was one of those frontier legends, the kind who went disguised into the Tirah and fought in deepest Sind. He looked like a Pathan and, like Burton, he spoke Pushto, Baluchi and some of the rarer dialects of the frontier. Adela, a beautiful young lady of 24, was seeing Nicholson off to God knows where, at a railway station. When she followed the starting train a bit Nicolson swung her into his compartment and off they went on a lifelong companionship that quite possibly knows no parallel in India, that land of sudden romance.
Adela had amazing empathy with India:
“These are my people and this is my land I hear the pulse of her secret soul … washed in the light of a clear, fierce sun Heart, my heart, the journey is done.” In her life with Nicolson she often accompanied him on dangerous missions. In 1890, when Nicolson was in the Zhob valley, where today one cannot go unescorted, she followed him, disguised as a Pathan boy. Together they explored the arcana of the Sub-Continent in a union which puzzled and titillated lesser souls. Could a woman, married to an aging soldier, write:
“Upon the city ramparts, lit by the sunset dream, The Blue eyes that conquer, meet the Dark eyes that gleam.”
It would be difficult to think of Nicolson as a mari complaisant; indeed marriage at Nicolson’s age was far from exceptional under the Raj when duty kept the young man in the field. The years passed and Nicolson wrote: – he only wished he had known before how happy life could be.
Nicolson died in India on August 7, 1904, aged 62. Two months later Adela killed herself. Her last poems were dedicated to her husband:
“Useless, my love — as vain as this regret That pours my hopeless life across thy grave.”
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1985) — Summer 1985 // Été 1985, p. 8. Read the rest of this issue →
