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William Makepeace Thackeray: The Indian In The Closet
Anil Menon
William Makepeace Thackeray was one of those rare writers who could criticize something without developing a contempt for it. Writing, for him, was a way of coming to terms with human nature, specifically, his human nature. As Gordon N. Ray in his definitive biography of Thackeray, wrote: "Closely scrutinized, his novels turn out to afford a kind of diary of his intimate life" [1]. So it is interesting that the theme of racial mixing — of miscegenation — runs like a bright red thread through Thackeray's work.
For example, in The Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan (1838), Gollian Gahagan falls madly in love with a half-breed, the fair and lovely Julie Jowler, daughter of Colonel Jowler and his Indian wife, a "hideous, bloated, yellow creature." Later on, Gahagan is chased by the lady Puttee Rooge with the "complexion of molasses" and "rendered a thousand times more ugly by the tawdry dress and the blazing jewels with which she was covered." And at one of the novel's many crisis points, Belinda Bulcher, 100% white and "dazzling as alabaster" extracts a promise from her hero:
'Captain Gahagan,' sobbed she, 'Go-Go-Goggle-iah!'
'My soul's adored!' replied I.
'Swear to me one thing.'
I swear.'
'That if--that if--the nasty, horrid, odious black Mah-ra-a-a-attahs take the fort, you will put me out of their power.'
Gahagan promises and then goes around offering the same service to the other white ladies in the camp. However:
Fancy my disgust when, after making this proposition, not one of the ladies chose to accede to it...
Disgust? Why? That the white women preferred rape and possible survival over virtue and certain death? Thackeray was unusually sympathetic to human foibles, especially feminine ones. He was the first major English writer to see that in a thoroughly materialistic society, morality too becomes just another status symbol. But when it came to racial mixing, there is an uncharacteristic latent disgust in his writing. Phillip Davies, who first studied Thackeray's obsessions with racial mixing, concluded:
It would appear that Thackeray was strongly conscious of what he might have imagined to be a skeleton in his closet. [2]
But just what was this skeleton? The author of Vanity Fair 
was born on July 18, 1811 in Calcutta, India, and was the first and only child of Richmond Thackeray and Anne Becher. As the Secretary to East India Company's Board of Revenue, Thakeray, Sr. was very well off and had a palatial house on 39 Free School St in Chowringhee, Calcutta. Young William lived the life of a prince: an Indian wetnurse, adoring parents, devoted Gunga Dins, fine morning walks on the Esplanade, spring-hung Ox-driven carriages and the thrill of surveying a world still largely clueless about the British shaft rudely and firmly ensconced between its butt-cheeks.
This idyllic existence came to an abrupt end on September 13, 1815, when Richmond Thackeray took gravely ill and died. Anne Becher decided to send her beloved son back to England (she joined him a year later). William Thackeray left more than a mother behind; he left behind two aunts (a maternal aunt, Maria, and a paternal one, Augusta) and his ayah, "Black Betty." He also left behind a half-breed sister, Sarah Redfield. Her absence was to haunt him.
Sarah Redfield, born in 1804, was the daughter of Richmond Thackeray and Charlotte Sophia Rudd, his native — possibly Eurasian — mistress, or cara amica as Roberdeau delicately puts it in his Bengal: Past and Present. In the early 1800s, it wasn't that big of a deal. The ratio of white officers to white women was around 16 to 1. And if the illegitimate children could pass for white, then their fathers would even send them to England for a chance at full assimilation. Sarah was unlucky that way. It is known that she got married in Calcutta to James Blechynden, also an Eurasian, on July 20, 1820. Thackeray Sr. wasn't a total jerk; in his will he'd left an annuity of 100 pounds for her and 25 pounds for Charlotte. Sarah Blechynden nee Redfield must've had no surviving children because upon her death in 1841, her share of the annuity went to William.
It is understandable that William Thackeray would be haunted by thoughts of his brown sister enduring God alone knew what in Calcutta. But it began to border on the morbid. For example, after eating a dinner of turtle and cold beef (!), he recorded in his diary:
I wish the turtle had choked me — there is poor Mrs. Blechynden starving in India whilst I am gorging in this unconscionable way here. I must write to her. [2]
The source of his guilt may not have been entirely due to the fact that his mother, unlike hers, was also their father's wife. It's probable that Thackeray too was the product of a distant miscegenation; not so distant that people didn't remember but distant enough that it didn't matter. His maternal grandmother, Harriet Cowper — Anne Becher's mother -- is thought to have been of Indian origin, perhaps twice or thrice removed. In fact, according to Gordon N. Ray, Thackeray's daughter referred to Harriet Cowper as "my brown grandmother" [1, pp. 54]. Such doubts about pedigree, in that time and place, could be a heavy burden. For example, in a letter to her husband-to-be, the great Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was partly black, wrote:
I would give ten towns in Norfolk (if I had them) to own some purer lineage than that of the blood of the slave!
William Thackeray was the brother who'd been able to pass. Thackeray's anxieties popped up in his conversations, letters, novels and essays. His essay On Being Found Out [3], while meant to be comic, is also confessional, apologetic and defiant:
It is a very curious sensation to sit by a man who has found you out, and who, as you know, has found you out; or, vice versa, to sit with a man whom YOU have found out. His talent? Bah! His virtue? We know a little story or two about his virtue, and he knows we know it. We are thinking over friend Robinson's antecedents, as we grin, bow and talk; and we are both humbugs together.
Indeed, for someone with Thackeray's sensitivity — several peers referred to it as being almost "womanly" — his secret would've been like a convex mirror, distorting the familiar and revealing, as the poet John Ashbery wrote:
...in that gaze a combination
Of tenderness, amusement and regret, so powerful
In its restraint that one cannot look for long.
The secret is too plain...
References:
[1] Gordon N. Ray. Thackeray. McGraw-Hill. New York. 1972.
[2] Phillip George Davies. The miscegenation theme in the works of Thackeray. Modern Language Notes, 76(4). 1961. pp. 326-331
[3] William M. Thackeray. On Being Found Out. Cornhill Magazine, 5(3). 1861, pp. 636-40.
William Makepeace Thackeray: The Indian In The Closet
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Aaman
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March 29, 2006
12:28 AM
I've seen the house he was born in Calcutta, a ramshackle little thing on Free School Street, good write-up
temporal
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March 29, 2006
11:31 AM
anil:
interesting read:)
Anil Menon
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March 29, 2006
05:56 PM
Thanks Aaman, temporal. A tad too long, what?
Aaman
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March 29, 2006
06:15 PM
I can't believe Free School Street has a Wikipedia entry:)
Anil Menon
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March 29, 2006
08:02 PM
The Armenian College made use of Richmond Thackeray's residence at one point (1840s I think). It's still around and has an active bunch of alums. I guess that why's the street got an entry.
bevivek
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March 29, 2006
08:45 PM
Anil - Thackeray of mixed blood is news to me though perhaps I should have guessed from the Indian thread in his writing. But then again, India was the biggest thing on the English map and referring to India, esp. Hindoos was common: Dickens did in Pickwick while Wilkie Collins wrote a whole book about Hindoos, idols with curses and the moonstone.
But of course what is interesting is that while it was obviously kosher in the senior Thackeray's time to have a native wife and children who were more or less social equals (Sarah Redfield was obviously someone Thackeray mixed with on a regular basis), the McCaulay effect meant that from the 1820s, the divide between white and brown kept growing until they reached the Kiplinesque. William Dalrymple's White Moguls is an interesting read on this topic.
Anil Menon
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March 29, 2006
09:12 PM
@vivek: I suspect the easy relations in the early days was an artifact of the severe shortage of white women. Later on, as the supply began to meet the demand, people may have gotten picky. But I'm not sure. Haven't checked out Dalrymple yet.
Regarding the indian theme in Victorian fiction: I can't think of a single novel that tried to look at Indians with any depth. There's nothing like Tagore's Gora on the Victorian side. Perhaps they found it impossible to see the Other. Again, not sure.
deepti lamba
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March 29, 2006
09:49 PM
May I be whipped a thousand times for not knowing this author. Shame on me!
Anil, fantastic review - the blend of history and review was smooth and seamless.
bevivek
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March 29, 2006
10:44 PM
Anil - When the British came to India they came as businessmen, almost as supplicants, to establish trade with one of the richest nations in the world. As Dalrymple says in White Moghuls, many Brits went native, indeed took great pride in the transition. This was not restricted to the upper or trading class. Once Europe discovered the route to India, and found a plentitude of rajahs who were looking for men of war who knew how to use muskets and modern weaponry, the armies of most Indian Kingdoms had divisions of europeans. Tipu had one, as did the Nawab of Hyderabad. So while the lack of women might have had something to do with the egalite, I dont think it was a big factor.
Dont know enough about English writing on India 1700s, 1800s. Interesting question. But I will hypothecate that fiction (perhaps unavailable now) must have followed the incredible non-fiction discoveries of the Asiatic society and the growth of indology as a discipline.
Amrita
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March 30, 2006
12:19 AM
@ bevivek and anil -
have either of you read MM Kaye's novels? both the Far Pavilions and Shadow of the Moon explore this idea of how the arrival of the white woman changed the equation of the white man to the natives, in some way or form. plus, coz they're considered "trashy" they're a good read :)
Anil Menon
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March 30, 2006
06:25 AM
@bevivek: I guess it's always a good idea not to base historical explanations on the unavailability of white women. More seriously, the transition in attitudes seems to have been fairly rapid.
@Amrita: Far Pavilions! I thought M. M. Kaye did a good job. There was def a hierarchy in writers: Lobsang Rampa -- M.M. Kaye -- Paul Scott -- EM Forster.
@deepti: thanks. Ref: "may I be whipped a thousand times..." Thackeray was into flogging too. :-) he wrote about how much he hated it, then he wrote a bit more, and then he wrote about it just to make sure everybody got it and then...
bevivek
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March 30, 2006
07:08 AM
Amrita - Confess haven't read Kaye. I object strongly to Anil's use of 'Third Eye' Rampa in the hierarchy since the poor man stuck for the most to how Tibetan tea was to be drunk and why cats are not just cats esp. if you are in Paris. I'd replace him with John 'All Indians are cowards or thugs' Masters.
Anil - On early English fiction on India, there was some soft porn ostensibly written by an English soldier mercenary in 18th / 19th century India full of lusty encounters with native women. Think it had 'confessions' in the title but might be wrong. Been trying to google it without success.
temporal
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March 30, 2006
09:10 AM
bevivek:
porn? am not sure but read up on the reports of sir richard burton...the famous linguist, arabologist, traveler, wanderer, translator...he had some things to say about sex variants in early raj...
he joined east india company in teens and one of the books i recall is sindhe visited or sindhe revisited... his reports and dispatches to his boss were passed on and were juicy enough to earn him a reprimand first and later a discharge from service...(even though his scouting reports resulted in the charles napier conquest of sindh ..."peccavi"...) very interesting fellow...too bad his wife burned his memoirs and journals after his death....one of the ondaatje brothers revisited burton's trail and wrote another account sindhe revisited with my friend haroon...
Anil Menon
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March 30, 2006
11:37 AM
bevivek: perchance you're thinking of Charles Devereaux's "Venus In India"? Ah, good times. Good times.
temporal: Charles Napier sounds like an interesting dude himself.
Amrita
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March 30, 2006
12:01 PM
Venus in India? hmmm.... :D
interestingly, Paul Scott was MM Kaye's agent and it was she who aided him with the Raj Quartet and he who encouraged her to write Far Pavilions. And in western culture, she became a part of what the Guardian called the Raj culture in her obituary - Scott's Quartet, Rushdie's Midnight's Children, David Lean's A Passage to India and Kaye's FP which outsold them all.
Moushumi Chakrabarty
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March 30, 2006
01:42 PM
m m kaye's 'shadow of the moon' is one of my all time favourites! has anyone read her memoirs? charming stuff. i also have a thing for 'passage to india'. great review, btw, anil. i enjoy reading anything to do with the raj period. i plan to write my next book (fiction, this time) on this period of history...if i ever do!
Amrita
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March 30, 2006
02:31 PM
moushumi - no i havent read her memoirs although i have looked enviously at them on amazon from time to time. i read her obit and found some stuff there that was so completely out of a romance novel. made me want to read her memoirs even more. :(
i hope u do write that book.
Anil Menon
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March 30, 2006
04:21 PM
Moushumi: muchos gracias.
Offtopic note #1: I like the Raj period too but may have overdosed on it a bit. It'd be nice to read something that doesn't have the east-meets-west theme as the main plotline but is still set in that time and place. Perhaps something like Kiran Nagrekar's Cuckold. Damn book was as gorgeous as Zari cloth.
Offtopic note #2: your URL link doesn't work. Think you have to put a "http://desicritics.org/mt/mt-comments.php?mode=red&u=http://" when you specify the link.
Moushumi Chakrabarty
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March 30, 2006
07:48 PM
anil,
your url doesn't work either! strange. so what are we supposed to do?
and i haven't yet had the pleasure of reading kiran nagrekar. will do so at the earliest opportunity. am reading sylvia fraser currently.
Aaman
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March 30, 2006
08:37 PM
What URL are you all trying to make work?
If it's the URL in the URL field on a comment, just put http://url
Aaman
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March 30, 2006
08:39 PM
OK, I see now - Moushumi - you need to put http:// before your URL else it is treated as relative to Desicritics.org
bevivek
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March 30, 2006
09:43 PM
Anil - Yessss, Venus in India it was. Memories :)
Moushumi - Kiran Nagarkar's Cuckold is easily among the best Indian fiction I've read and definitely the best Historical fiction. Go right now and buy the book.
I agree with Anil on the ODing on the traditional Raj theme. P'hap the reason I like contrary themes like Bend it like Beckham.
Captain James Todd's Annals and antiquities of Rajasthan too provide an alternate view.
grumpy
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March 31, 2006
12:29 AM
Thackeray too .... Hmmm its an ever growing list ... and interesting for the fault lines on nation and raceit reveals about various eras .... Boris Karloff,Vivien Leigh and Anna Leonowens are my fave's ... think how much more interesting that Whole Anna and the King re-make would have been if Jodie Foster had gotten to play the whole Anglo-Indian passing for British at the Siamese Royal Court aspect ... the real Mrs. Leonowen's books take on a much more arch and interesting relationship to Victorian Orientalist fiction when you read them through the filter of her "secret" but I digress ... majorly :)
Sujatha
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March 31, 2006
03:13 AM
Anil, I've linked to this post in my article on Identity (http://desicritics.org/2006/03/31/002013.php).
Moushumi Chakrabarty
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March 31, 2006
06:35 AM
i'm going to read the highly recommended 'cuckold' asap! i've fixed the url prob with a http...
on another note - anna leonowens:grumpy, have you had a look at my book on her? not many people know that she was actually born in pune (my hometown) and was probably eurasian. all her life, she struggled to pass herself off as white and cut off all contact with her family. big secret, huh?
Anil Menon
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March 31, 2006
06:42 AM
Grumpy: A digression that deserves its own blog. I was unaware of Anna Leonowens's background. You're absolutely right that Anna and the King would've tilted quite a bit differently if this little factoid had been attached to the tale. You can add Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband Robert Browning to the list as well.
G. Johnson Fox
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May 27, 2006
03:43 PM
An interesting article but it includes rather too many unsupported assertions. What evidence is there that James Blechynden was eurasian? His father certainly was not and I have seen no evidence that his mother, Mary Ann Ward, had asian ancestry. Certainly most of his siblings appear to have had Indian mothers. The article also suggests, incorrectly, that Sarah (Redfield, Thackeray)Blechynden had no living children when she died, yet the record shows that she had two girls, Augusta Ann and Emily Harriet. The former had two children after the death of her mother and the latter died about 10 years afterwards.
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