Raj

by Lawrence, James

  Sir David Ochterlony, the conqueror of Nepal and agent for Rajputana, was alleged to have kept a harem of thirteen odalisques.6 A native of Boston, Massachusetts, he had first come to India in 1777 and stayed attached to the flamboyant, princely style of the old nabobs of the Warren Hastings era. Not long before his death in 1825, he briefly met Reginald Heber, the hymn-writer and Evangelical bishop of Calcutta, who was impressed by Ochterlony’s train of elephants and servants, but dismayed by his lack of morals. The bishop deplored the keeping of mistresses by Company officers and officials and hoped, mistakenly as it turned out, that it was fast disappearing.

  Sexual liaisons of the sort which Metcalfe, Ochterlony and hundreds of others found necessary and enjoyable were a moral affront for Heber. They broke not only the laws of God, but the new codes of gentlemanly conduct. Whilst the working-class soldiery were naturally incontinent in all things, gentlemen possessed finer characters and the self-discipline to resist temptation. By keeping concubines or consorting with Indian prostitutes, they debased themselves, their Christian faith and the prestige of their nation. By keeping chaste they elevated themselves above the pagan Indians, who knew no better, and their feckless countrymen. Abstinence was the course chosen by the narrator in Tennyson’s ‘Locksley Hall’ (1842). Orphaned by the death of his father in ‘a wild Mahratte battle’, the young man contemplates taking a native wife ‘who shall rear my dusky race’. He rejects the notion, for to do so would make him: ‘Like a beast with lower pleasure, like a beast with lower pains.’

  Such high-mindedness was still exceptional. The licentiousness of the eighteenth century survived well into the nineteenth, and was proving remarkably resilient in face of the growing assaults by the Evangelical movement and its various offshoots dedicated to the reform of public morals. ‘Sexual intercourse’, which only began for Philip Larkin in 1963 after an unspecified period of suspension, was still flourishing as late as the 1840s. Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates seduced housemaids and kept mistresses with an abandon which shocked strait-laced American youths. In 1848 Emerson heard from Dickens and Carlyle that male chastity scarcely existed among middle- and upper-class young men in Britain. They confirmed what the American had already seen in Liverpool and central London, where he had been horrified by the numbers and brazenness of the streetwalkers.7 No one counted them, nor was it possible since many were part-timers, underpaid seamstresses and milliners driven by poverty to solicit. An estimate of 1850 suggested that there were about 50,000 prostitutes in the whole country, with the largest concentrations in London (8–10,000), Liverpool (2,900) and Glasgow (1,800) and, inevitably, the provincial garrison towns and ports.8

  In 1840 there were thought to be at least a thousand brothels in London, catering for every taste, including flagellation (always popular) and pederasty.9 There was also a thriving trade in erotic prints and books, often conducted by dealers who were radicals and freethinkers, like George Cooper who did business from various premises in the Covent Garden area of London. When his shop was raided by the police in 1853, they discovered over 2,000 erotic prints and 81 indecent books.10 Among these may have been copies of The Randy Songster and The Nobby Songster, anthologies of music-hall lyrics of the 1840s. Individual items in this genre included: ‘Oh, Miss Tabitha Ticklecock!!!’, ‘The Height of Impudence, or the Turd in the Muffin’ and ‘The Lost Cow!!! or, the Bulling Match Under the Tree’, all first published between 1815 and 1835.11 Old strains of ribald humour remained strong and may be detected, often reading between the lines, in the novels of R. S. Surtees, who depicts the essentially Georgian and Regency world of the hard-drinking, coarse-grained, hunting squires surviving well into the 1850s.

  On the whole, early-Victorian novelists succumbed to the pressure of the new respectability and did not present their growing middle-class readership with anything which might cause a blush. The emotional entanglements, frustrations and reverses of courtship were staple fictional themes, but writers steered clear of describing the physical impulses which accompanied them or actual love-making. Readers were free to exercise their imaginations in this area, a task which was imagined to be easier for men than women. The nature of female sexuality and the possibility that women might enjoy sex as much as men were taboo subjects. The Battle of Venus (1760) had suggested that women might have more intense sexual feelings than men, as did Fanny Hill, but the erotic literature of a far less inhibited age played no part in shaping Victorian attitudes. The consensus on this fissile subject was contained in an article on prostitution which appeared in the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly in July 1850. The anonymous author defined male sexual urges as ‘inherent and spontaneous’, but argued that in women they were, ‘dormant, if not non-existent, till excited; always till excited by undue familiarities; almost always till excited by actual intercourse’. For a woman to enjoy sex for solely physical reasons was ‘against nature’, for the sensations would be divorced from ‘all feelings of love that which was meant by nature as the last and intensest expression of passionate love’.12

  For these reasons, prostitutes were creatures who were driven by desperation to follow what they often recognised as a shameful and unnatural occupation and were sustained in it by frequent draughts of gin. It was impossible for them to find any pleasure in sex, the author concluded, a verdict which was extended to women in general during the second half of the century. It was as a mother, not as a bedmate, that the mid-Victorian wife fulfilled what society took to be her highest duty.

  II

  And yet, Indian prostitutes clearly enjoyed sex for its own sake and their status, like that of mistresses, carried no social opprobrium. Or so Edward Sellon discovered. Remembering his ten years of philandering, he recalled two kinds of prostitutes: one charging two rupees (10p) for her services, the other, an infinitely superior creature, five. He recalled:

  The ‘fivers’ are a very different set of people from their sisterhood in European countries; they do not drink, they are scrupulously cleanly in their persons, they are sumptuously dressed, they wear the most costly jewels in profusion, they are well educated and sing sweetly, accompany their voices on the viol de gambe, a sort of guitar, they generally decorate their hair with clusters of clematis, or sweetly scented bilwa flowers entwined with pearls and diamonds.13

  The contrast between British and Indian prostitutes was stark; Mrs Theresa Berkley, a celebrated madame who died in 1836, was praised for having ‘the first grand requisite of a courtesan, viz lewdness’.14 Her Indian counterpart cultivated a sophisticated sensuality.

  At the heart of this difference in the approach to sexuality lay the Indian attitude towards sex. The Indian courtesan saw herself as a sharer in a legitimate pleasure which men and women naturally desired and to which no guilt was attached. Understanding the nature of this pleasure, and how best it could be achieved, required not only a belief that its fulfilment was worthwhile, but training. In the early eighteenth century, Alexander Hamilton had reported the existence near Calcutta of what he called a ‘Seminary of female Lewdness where Numbers of Girls are trained up for the Destruction of unwary Youths’.15 He had heard of and rendered in crude terms which were familiar to his British readers one of those Hindu temples to which families brought daughters to be prepared for what they considered an honourable profession. At the age of seven or eight the girl began training as a dancer and singer, and at the onset of puberty was initiated into sexual activity by the temple priests. The ‘coming of age’ of these kasbis or deva-dasis (servants of God) was publicly celebrated with a feast and a religious festival.16

  Among the accomplishments of the Hindu kasbis and their Muslim equivalents, the taiwaifs, was an amazing range of gymnastic love-making positions which, carved in stone, decorate many Hindu temples. They were, as now, a popular tourist attraction, at least for male officers and officials. Captain Halket made a special excursion to see some erotic paintings on the walls of a tank near Bharatpur in 1851. He was specially struck by a scene in which a
naked woman tempted three naked men, one in the ‘excited state . . . of one about to forfeit the reward of years of abstinence’, whatever that might have been.17 For many British onlookers, Indian erotic art was a revelation of practices which were all but unheard of in their homeland, or condemned as deviant and depraved. There was group sex, oral sex, sex in every conceivable position, buggery and masturbation, a pastime which was already being described by clergymen, dominies and quacks as the cause of debility.

  Temple reliefs were a confirmation of that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European commonplace which assumed that the Orient was a place where men could freely sample fruits that were either rare or forbidden at home. As Sellon noted, India was a country where erotic fantasies could be fulfiled with impunity, for he came across many courtesans who shaved their pudenda ‘so that until you glance at their hard, full and enchanting breasts, handsome beyond compare, you fancy you have got hold of some unfledged girl’.18 Back in Britain, rich men spent large sums on procuring pubescent virgins.19

  Homosexuals were also free to satisfy their fancies in India, whereas in Britain they were widely despised and buggery was a capital crime until 1861. There was a strong antipathy towards homosexuality, especially among the working classes and those who satisfied heterosexual clients. London streetwalkers were in the forefront of the mob which vigorously pelted a group of homosexuals arrested and pilloried in 1810. Public rage was further inflamed by the knowledge that some of the accused had engaged in such outwardly ‘manly’ occupations as coal-heaver, butcher and blacksmith.20 Regency ‘Margeries’ and ‘Pooffs’ also trampled on national self-esteem by indulging in what was known as the ‘Italian vice’, a perversion which had its origins among the notoriously degenerate Turks. There was a similar working-class revulsion against lesbianism, which enjoyed a vogue at the turn of the century among actresses and aristocratic ladies.21 Class feelings erupted again in 1822 when Percy Jocelyn, Bishop of Clogher, was caught in flagrante buggering a dragoon. A contemporary cartoon by Cruikshank nicely captioned ‘The Arse Bishop Joslin a Soldier’ showed the pair and indignant onlookers shouting out ‘Hang them in Chains’, ‘The Pillory, The Pillory’ and ‘Hang the Dogs’. The cleric escaped the gallows by flight, but between 1800 and 1835 fifty men were hanged for sodomy.22

  There were no such risks in India, so long as a homosexual was careful. Major Chevers noted disapprovingly in 1852 evidence which recently came to light of what he called ‘a very extensive and abominable trade of unnatural prostitution carried on by eunuchs’.23 They dressed as women, were strikingly effeminate and kept brothels in which transvestite nautchs (musical and dancing entertainments) were held for patrons. In 1786 one British officer, not satisfied with his Hindu mistress, made a lunge at what he took to be a pretty young lady to discover that ‘she’ was a Eurasian drummer boy in women’s clothes, presumably looking for custom.24 Rumours that three British officers were regular clients at a male brothel in Karachi in 1845 led General Napier to send Richard Burton, then a junior officer on his staff, on a clandestine mission to investigate these places. Masquerading as a native, Burton reported with minute clinical detail the practices he had witnessed and perhaps participated in, noting that several senior amirs were among his fellow customers.25

  Whilst the homosexual in India had greater opportunity than in Britain, he could not rid himself of his countrymen’s aversion to his conduct, nor their laws against it. Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Smythe of the 5th Madras Cavalry found himself at the centre of an acrimonious scandal in December 1831 when he was posted to take command of his old regiment, the 8th Madras Cavalry. For many years there had been rumours that he had been ‘addicted to sodomy’ and had practised it regularly with troopers of the 8th. One, Muhammad Lal, had attempted to murder Smythe after he had made advances, an excuse which the regiment’s commander had dismissed as nonsense. Another officer, Captain Garton, was also accused of being an active homosexual by Indian NCOs. Nothing was proved, but the charges were said to have contributed to the captain’s display of symptoms of insanity, although some contemporaries would have readily believed that these might well have been a consequence of his vice.

  Matters subsided when Smythe left the regiment, but surfaced again when it was known he would return. A havildar and jemadar major repeated old stories about him to the adjutant, Major John Watkins, claiming that he had favoured his catemites for promotion. Those sowars ‘who wish to do their duty like honest men’ hoped that Watkins would remain in command. Meanwhile, Smythe was facing ridicule from officers of the 5th Cavalry: ‘It was currently said among the Mess of the Regiment that there were still more men to be buggered and that it had fallen to Colonel Smythe’s lot to commit sodomy on them.’26 The subsequent official enquiries exonerated Smythe, who was then urged to retire, which he did. Invariably in such cases, where there is smoke there is also fire, and no doubt the Company was glad to see the back of a source of embarrassment. Watkins was also asked to leave the service for encouraging the rumours and failing to tell his superior about them, which together constituted ungentlemanly conduct.

  It would be impossible to draw any far-reaching conclusions from an unusual scandal save that there was a strong suggestion that Smythe used his authority to indulge his passions. Not all of his partners appear to have objected and some may have been of his inclination. Homosexuality seems to have been rare among British other ranks, at least according to the court-martial returns.

  What is perhaps most interesting about Colonel Smythe’s case is that it supports the contention that the British in India commonly asserted their power to force Indians, mostly women, to submit to their embraces. What might be called ‘sexual imperialism’ was nothing more than a form of rape, because the master race somehow compelled Indian prostitutes and mistresses to cohabit with them against their will.27 Genuine rape certainly did occur in wartime, although it was very rarely mentioned in diaries and letters home. An exception to this rule was Private Ryder, who recorded a horrific example after the storming of Multan in 1849:

  A man of the 3rd company of my regiment [the 32nd], an Irish Roman Catholic, named B______, went into a room, and took a young girl from her mother’s side, and perpetrated the offence, for which he has to answer before God who heard that poor girl’s cries and petitions.28

  Ryder added that had he been present, he would have shot the man. It is impossible to know how many similar offences were committed by British and Company troops during other Indian campaigns. Nor was rape a crime confined to the conquerors; the wives of sepoys were violated by Marathas after the cantonments near Poona had been overrun in November 1817.29

  These outrages occurred in brutal circumstances when the normal disciplines of human conduct had been suspended which, to a great extent, explains, without, of course, condoning. The same was never true of everyday sexual relations between British men and Indian women. If, as some nationalist and feminist historians have claimed, these were always the outcome of aggression on one side and were unwelcome on the other, then the same was true of the sexual relations between many Indian men and women. Frequent consorting with temple prostitutes was a mark of their superior status for men of the Indian upper classes, and low-caste girls and women were regularly abducted for sale as wives. Moreover, caste taboos on remarriage often drove young Hindu widows into the margins of society and prostitution.30 The British did not invent and import into India the concept of rich and powerful men asserting sexual prerogatives over women; of that we can be sure. Nor were they innovators in the sexual exploitation of women. A guest at a nautch in Peshawar early in 1842, Lieutenant Trower of the Bengal army, was attracted to a very young girl singer. He had never before seen her ‘equal beauty’ and he contrived the means to speak with her as the party progressed. The pair talked until daybreak and Trower discovered that her name was Kareemun, that she was thirteen years of age and had been recently purchased by a Sikh for 112 rupees (£11.20). She appears to have accepted her lot, not t
hat she could have changed it.31 By our standards, and no doubt those of Trower’s enlightened contemporaries, Kareemun was a victim of oppression.

  When British officials and officers took Indian lovers or sought out prostitutes, they were conforming to well-established local customs. Indians did not question their right to do so; when, in 1807, an anonymous Madras NCO complained that white officers always got the prettiest women, his sole concern was the discrepancies in pay which prevented him from competing for their charms.32 Obviously the wealth and status of British administrators and officers made them attractive to Indian women, who found being ‘under the protection of a European’ advantageous.33 There were benefits too for the British officer, as Richard Burton recalled:

  She [the mistress] keeps house for him, never allowing him to save money, or if possible to waste it. She keeps the servants in order. She has an infallible recipe to prevent maternity, especially if her tenure of office depends on such compact. She looks after him in sickness, and is one of the best of nurses, and, as it is not good for man to live alone, she makes him a manner of a home.34

  It is extremely hard to trace the emotional relationships between the British and their Indian mistresses. Burton believed that for the woman the union was always one of convenience rather than passion. He blamed the absence of love on the lack of art or imagination in his countrymen’s approach to sex. Their love-making was rough and over-hasty, at least by the standards of Indian youths who had learned how to prolong foreplay and intercourse. Hindu women, therefore, likened British soldiers to ‘village cocks’ and their sexual abruptness rendered it impossible for them to be ‘truly loved by a native girl’.35 His views may reflect either hearsay or his own performance and, therefore, cannot be taken as universal.