by Miles Taylor
Grey’s memoir gave Albert’s backstory. The Early Years of the Prince Consort was an account of just how well fitted for British royal service the Coburg prince had been on the eve of first meeting Victoria. The book described his schooling and university years, the mentoring given by King Leopold of Belgium, and his tours of central Europe and Italy. It was also an intimate account of their love match, how their courtship was as much a meeting of two hearts as two dynasties. Initially intended for private circulation only, Grey’s book went into four editions in its first year, and over time became the queen’s preferred memoir of Prince Albert, part romance, part exemplary tale of lives groomed for public service. There was no Indian edition of the memoir, although one was contemplated by William Nassau Lees, principal of the Mohammedan College in Calcutta and part proprietor of the Times of India, who assured Grey that a Hindustani translation would give ‘Her Majesty’s Indian subjects some idea of how a virtuous and good Prince can make his life conducive to the welfare and happiness of the subjects of his sovereign’.10 Clearly a book with a message.
Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands continued the dedicatory tone, but with Queen Victoria now installed alongside her consort, making it a work of pious devotion from a grieving widow, as well as an account of how the royal couple had managed their realm. As its title suggested, Leaves from . . . the Highlands was a memoir of family life from the 1840s to the early 1860s, taking in trips to and eventual residence in Scotland, as well as visits to Wales, Ireland, the Channel Islands and Devon and Cornwall, all aboard their paddle-steamer yacht. Readers were given an unusual insight into the private world of the royal family. Victoria and Albert were revealed as caring but controlling parents. The queen noted how she intended to make the Prince of Wales ‘Earl of Dublin’, and she described the wedding of her eldest daughter Vicky into the Prussian royal family. Prince Albert featured throughout as a renaissance Prince, sharing his knowledge of the topography of Europe as they traversed the glens and lochs of Scotland and the coastline of Ireland. He was also described as a keen mountain-walker and stag-hunter. In addition to being a family portrait, Leaves from . . . the Highlands was a travelogue of the closest parts of the queen’s dominion. Her commentary highlighted the national differences between the English, the Scots and the Welsh, the variety of topography across the British Isles, and also the loyalty on display in the three nations. Particularly, in the 1840s, when she and Albert made their first visits across the border to Scotland, she described an itinerary that was a scenic tour of the history of Anglo-Scottish warfare down to the union of 1707. The journal was instructive, showing the queen as a devoted wife and mother, and as royal ruler, travelling to all the compass points of her kingdom, realms now united after centuries of strife and rebellion. Published in 1884, More Leaves from . . . the Highlands continued the story of ‘our life’, with Albert’s ghostly presence supplying a constant point of reference for Queen Victoria, as she retraced journeys originally undertaken at his side, and recalled examples of his wisdom.
In India, the translations of the queen’s works were themselves acts of devotion, presented to Queen Victoria via her sons when they visited India, or in person when the translators were in England.11 Ornate, illustrated with woodcuts and hand-finished, the Indian editions of the Highland journals were expensive, published by subscription, and so well out of the reach of most Indians. Despite their limited circulation, they broke some new ground. The Marathi edition of the Highland journals included, it claimed, ‘for the first time’ in such ventures, Hindu ladies amongst its subscribers. The books were intended to furnish lessons. The Gujarati edition was welcomed as showing the duties of princes to the people, ‘a fitting pendant to the splendours of the Delhi durbar’.12 Published in Indian editions either side of the tours of her two sons, the Prince of Wales and Prince Alfred, Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, depicted a pious and devoted but active widow. She no longer seemed the ‘warrior queen’, a genre now re-emerging in stories about the rebel Rhani of Jhansi. Rather, she now belonged to a new trend of public-spirited noble Indian women and queens.13
Mother
The princely tours developed another aspect of Queen Victoria’s persona in India: that of mother. Mothering her people was partly a religious and educational trope. Missionaries in India used stories of the Christian queen as a handmaiden to their evangelical work – for example, the accounts of the queen’s life produced by the Reverend Babu in Tamil and Telugu in the mid-1870s. The apocryphal story of the queen presenting a Bible to an African chief, and attributing ‘England’s greatness’ to Christianity, was retold in a Bengali pamphlet, Maharanir Sakshya / The Testimony of the Queen, published by the Christian Tract Society in 1895. And, after Queen Victoria died, 15,000 copies – a huge print run for this kind of ephemera – of The Queen and her Bible, another Bengali work, was rushed into print in Calcutta.14 Queen Victoria’s two jubilee years and her death also saw the advent of a spate of Tamil popular biographies destined for a school-age readership, the publicity suggesting they were suitable as prizes, or presents.15
However, much of the vernacular print culture also focused on the idea of Queen Victoria as a mother figure. Significantly, as ‘mother of India’, Queen Victoria emerged around the same time as her native counterpart, ‘Bharat Mata’ or ‘mother India’. Indeed, in the original story of Bharat Mata, written by Kiran Chandra Banerjee and published in Bengali in 1873, the feminine character of ‘India’ is described as petitioning Queen Victoria. Other Bengali publications for the 1870s also placed ‘Bharat Mata’ alongside the queen, in her role as the source of justice and wisdom.16 There was no contradiction between idealising India as a nation in the form of a woman under the care of the remote queen as an empress. Indeed, down to her death, prominent Indian reformers, including nationalists, authored popular celebrations of Queen Victoria, revering her domestic virtues. A few examples will suffice. The Hindi writer, Bharatendu Harischandra, who had eulogised Prince Alfred during his passage through Benares in 1870, hailed the queen at the time of Britain’s invasion of Egypt in 1882, not least because Indian troops were involved. Another example was Ichharam Surayam Desai, a Gujarati journalist and author of Hind ane Britannia (1886), a sharp indictment of British rule. Desai was prosecuted by the British, but that did not stop him penning a jubilee life of the queen in 1887, which dwelled on the moral character of her life as a widow. Then there was Bipin Chandra Pal, member of the Indian National Congress, who famously broke with the old guard of nationalist leaders in 1905, pushing the movement towards swadeshi (home-made goods) and swaraj (self-rule). Yet back in 1891 he also produced a life of the queen, praising her private virtues, her kindness towards her subjects and her vow of perpetual widowhood.17 In each case, latter-day scholars have breezed past these tributes to the queen, sitting awkwardly as they do in the oeuvre of men so associated with the burgeoning of Indian nationalism in the final years of the nineteenth century. As a metaphor for the parental empire, ‘mother of India’ could rest comfortably, for the moment, alongside the emergent nation.
Sisters
There were not many women wielding power in nineteenth-century India, but those who did found in Queen Victoria their champion.18 Some had lost power. The annexation policy of Dalhousie and his predecessors before 1857 resulted in a long trail of displaced maharani and their families, many of whom were supported in exile with Government of India pensions.19 At the opposite end of the spectrum, there were states where women ruled outright, most famously Bhopal. Other states experienced the rule of queen regents – notably Rajkot (1862–7), Balrampur (1882–94), Nandgaon (1883–91), Cooch Behar (1857–60, 1863–83) and Mysore (1894–1902) – a stand-in role accepted by the Government of India when the male heir was still in his minority. Across this spectrum of female power in India there was one constant: Queen Victoria as role model.
Sisterly exchange did not begin well. The assumption of power in India in 1858 by a Br
itish queen brought a strident riposte from another first lady. Hazrat Mahal, the Begum of Awadh, the first wife of the King of Awadh, issued a ‘counter-proclamation’ from the ‘parents of the people of Oudh’.20 The begum picked through Queen Victoria’s proclamation, pouring scorn on the idea that the queen would honour treaties, tolerate non-Christian religions, observe clemency and forgiveness, and improve the condition of the people. The document challenged the new royal authority, as well as Queen Victoria’s status as the motherly queen of the Indian people. There is no evidence that the queen saw the begum’s proclamation, and anyway Hazrat Mahal was soon whisked away by the British to silent exile in Nepal. Another female royal took up the chalice, contesting the claims of the 1858 proclamation in a more public fashion. The Rani of Tanjore was the heir apparent to Shivaji II, who died in 1855. In 1860 her supporters accused the queen of disregarding her own promises in her refusal to undo the annexation of Tanjore and allow the succession to take place. Such betrayal was ‘so flagrant a falsification of their just and loyal expectations’. Appeals were made on her behalf to the spirit of the 1858 proclamation, the ‘Magna Carta’ of the Indian chiefs.21 At the same time, the princess herself adopted a different kind of private diplomacy towards Queen Victoria. Writing to the governor of Madras, she claimed that she revered the queen as her ‘mother’ and the ‘mother of her subjects’.22 She tried unsuccessfully to get on the itinerary of the Prince of Wales’s tour in 1875. Unperturbed she sent on a gift of a gold girdle for Princess Alexandra, and in 1880 she opened a medical school as a memorial to the visit – or, in her case, the visit that never was – of the Prince of Wales.23 On her death in 1885, the Government of India refused to recognise the claim to the throne of her son.24 Yet, the Tanjore maharanis continued to observe loyalty to the Crown. This was most conspicuous at the jubilees of 1887 and 1897 and suggests that the queen represented a unique channel of communication, separate from the government. Moreover, there was always the chance of redress, as the treatment of Mysore had shown. Another deposed dynasty, the Bhonsles of Satara in the ghats, south of Poona, made a similar appeal to Queen Victoria in 1874 through the last maharaja’s widow, asking the queen, on whom the ‘Ruler of the Universe’ had conferred the ‘sovereignty of the world’, to undo the injustice of the East India Company.25
The queen was also kept informed about the progress of women in other states. From Travancore in the south of India, Lady Anne Napier, wife of the governor of Madras, described in copious detail to the queen the workings of what was regarded as a reforming princely state. In letters home to the queen, Lady Napier sent on photographs and her own watercolour depictions of Travancore, accompanied by commentary praising the modern dress worn by women in public, and the accomplishments of the daughters of the state’s dewan (prime minister). On her return to Britain, Lady Napier travelled directly to stay with the queen at Balmoral, telling her more stories from the south.26 Travancore women were at the forefront of loyal demonstrations, producing their own separate addresses for the queen for the 1887 jubilee, whilst the Travancore court sent a specially commissioned portrait, by Ravi Varma, of the maharani. Ironically, what Lady Napier did not reveal to Queen Victoria was the fact that the wives of the maharajas of Travancore had no real royal status: they were drawn from a lower caste, and kept apart from the court. So, the portrait sent was of the raja’s sister.27
The most sustained contact enjoyed by Queen Victoria with female Indian royalty was with the Begums of Bhopal. For over a century, almost continuously, one dynasty of Muslim women ruled the large central Indian state.28 The first two begums did not observe the purdah. They were well travelled within India, and beyond. Two of them made the pilgrimage to Mecca: Sikander Begum in 1870 and Kaikhusrau Jahan in 1903.29 Two incidents brought them to wider attention. Firstly, Sikander Begum wrote an account of her trip to the Hajj, originally in Urdu, but translated into English by the wife of the Bhopal agent in 1870, and published in Calcutta and London, stimulating wide interest.30 Secondly, Shah Jahan travelled to Calcutta to receive the Star of India, an occasion when she was photographed. This striking portrait of the tiny, bejewelled ruler went global.31 Both Sikander and Shah Jahan sought direct correspondence with Queen Victoria. Shah Jahan authorised the presentation of sculptures in 1854 and Sikander exchanged gifts with the queen and endowed a school named after her in 1867. However, it was during the second reign of Shah Jahan that the relationship really developed. In 1870 Shah Jahan asked Lord Mayo if she might write to the queen, on a monthly basis, in order to practice her English.32 In 1874 she sent to the queen a series of books: an Urdu history of Bhopal, in which Shah Jahan placed the alliance between Bhopal and the British Crown at the centre of her story, and the account of the Hajj journey of her mother. In return the queen sent her the two works that she had commissioned to remember Albert: Grey’s Early life of the Prince Consort, and the Highland journal.33 How might we interpret these exchanges? Even though they never met, the begum was high on the queen’s loyalty list. Over twenty years later she recalled her in exact detail to Mary Curzon, who was about to travel to the state.34 Queen Victoria proved less sympathetic when the begum ran into trouble, sparked by her husband, Siddiq Hasan Khan. He was a noted Islamic scholar, but he was also suspected by the British of being part of the Wahabi movement. In Bhopal he excited jealousy, accused at court of wanting to overthrow his wife’s rule. Told of the situation by Lord Dufferin, Queen Victoria criticised her ‘foolish marriage’.35 Clearly, her advice on making the right match had been to no avail.
Queen Victoria wanted to do more than just correspond with the royal women of India. In 1876 she suggested that a new order of honours be established in India exclusively for women. This was the Order of the Crown of India, agreed to by Salisbury and Lytton in the summer of 1877, and intended for notable women of India: female members of the royal family, Indian princely spouses, vicereines and other wives of senior Government of India officials.36 It was the only order in British history ever to be restricted to women. Although across its existence – no awards were made after 1947 – it became dominated by Europeans (86 out of 109 Companions in total), half of the sixteen awards to Indian women came in the first instalment in 1878. Of these some followed the normal hierarchy of the Indian states: Bamba Singh (the wife of Duleep Singh), the Begums of Bhopal, the Maharani of Mysore, the Gaekwad of Baroda, the Begum Sahiba of Hyderabad. Room was also made for the Princess of Tanjore. And, in a signal that royal marriage was not the only criteria for inclusion in the order, the Maharani of Kasim Bazar, a small estate in northern Bengal, was made a Companion for her contributions to the famine relief campaigns earlier in the decade. Outside of this order, two other Indian women were elevated to maharani for their efforts in the famine relief: Sham Moini of Dinajpur (in Bengal) and Haro Dundari Debia of Siarsol (also in Bengal).37 As far as the queen was concerned, the native aristocracy of India, so important to the stability of the Raj, included women, even if their role was a minor one. The investiture ceremonies that followed certainly confirmed the secondary status of these women at court.38 At Hyderabad, the nizam was simply sent a packet containing the regalia and left to pass it on to his consort. At her investiture the Gaekwad of Baroda was screened off, with the wife of the British resident pinning on the new order. In Tanjore there was a more formal event, but the princess’s acceptance speech was read out on her behalf. Only in Mysore did the maharani appear in public and read out an address. However, despite their seclusion, there could be no doubting the personal connection that the new order established with the queen. At Kasim Bazar, the maharani read out her acceptance speech in Bengali from behind a screen, praising the queen as the ‘monarch of the world’ and the ‘sovereign Mother of India’.
So, by the time she became empress, Queen Victoria had made links to a small but devoted sisterhood of Indian female rulers. Her Indian royal admirers were reformers, moderately independent in their personal lives, and in the administration of their state. In the next
generation, a different type of royal progressive emerged, reformist not so much in power, which they did not exercise, but in their attitudes towards the place of women in Indian society. Two maharani stand out: Suniti Devi, the wife of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar, and Chimnabai, the consort of the Gaekwar of Baroda. Cooch Behar was a small state in the north-east of Bengal. The maharaja married the daughter of Chandra Sen, the leader of the Brahmo Sumaj, an unusual pairing of a Calcutta progressive and a small royal dynasty.39 Suniti joined her husband in attending the queen’s jubilee celebrations in London in the summer of 1887, staying on until the following year. Recalling the visit over three decades later she painted a picture of unconventional intimacy at the English court: face to face kissing on being presented to the queen, and dancing. What was excluded from her later account was also significant – the story of her dress. Already en route to England, she and the maharaja received word that Queen Victoria wished the Indian royal visits to her jubilee to appear in their ‘native dress’. For the Cooch Behar couple this presented a slight problem, as they had already been tailored and kitted out in European finery as they passed through Calcutta at the beginning of their trip. Hasty rearrangements were made with tailors en route. When they appeared at court all was in place; that is to say, Suniti wore a sari, but unlike at home her head was uncovered. Never one to miss a trick, the queen noted the substitute clothing – ‘a sort of Eastern dress of European materials’ – and observed that the maharaja had arrived without his diamonds.40 The couple’s son, inevitably named Victor, was born on their return to Bengal, with Queen Victoria as godmother. Over time Suniti went on to fashion herself as a western-style matriarch at her own court, wearing European dress. She also developed an expertise on the role of women in Indian history. She authored a biography of Buddha’s wife, Yasodhara, a study of Rajputana princesses, and an account of women in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.41 Suniti’s later verdict on Queen Victoria was fairly formulaic – ‘a good wife, a good mother, and a good woman all round’ – yet her autobiography places her time spent with the queen as a formative moment in her life, presaging her emergence as a public presence alongside her husband.
