GEORGE SAND - LADY WITH THE PRODIGIOUS PEN.

                      

A holiday in Majorca, the Isle of Love, is never complete without a visit to the Cartusian Monastery at Valledemossa. A bus journey along the coast line from Playa de Palma to Valldemossa is a thrilling experience which takes all of ninety minutes.

Cell No. 4 in the monastery is the room where the famous writer George Sand wintered with her lover the musical genius Frederick Chopin, between 1838 and 1839. It is a modest room with essentials of furniture and his Pleyel Piano standing in one corner. Chopin was already suffering from Tuberculosis and George nursed him like a devoted mother. Chopin however, resented her oversolicitude. They quarreled frequently, and in her story “Winter’s Tale,” published in 1841, she was frank about their tempestuous life together. They parted company after eight years of living together. Ironically it was her daughter who brought about their rift.

Baroness Aurore Dudevant was a French novelist, who preferred to go by the name of George Sand. She was born in Nohant in central Paris on 1^st July 1804. She lost her father at the age of four, and was brought up by a flighty mother. George had a broad education and was familiar with the literary works of Shakespeare, Rousseau, Homer and others.

But George was unlucky in love. Married at the age of 18 to Baron Cashmere Dudevant, she bore him two children. She was a dutiful wife until she discovered he was an adulterer. She left him in 1831, and moved to literary quarter of Paris, where she plunged into a Bohemian lifestyle for the next five years. She took the name of George Sand, dressed like a man, smoked, drank and rubbed shoulders with the literati like Dumas, Balzac and Hugo and several other artists.

Like the heroine in her third novel “Lelia” she was forever in search of an ideal man. She was attracted to younger men like Jules Sandeau and Alfred de Musset who broke her heart by being unfaithful to her, and the composer Chopin, who made the best of her hospitality at Nohant, where he composed his haunting nocturnes, melodious preludes and Sonata in B Flat minor.

George now realised that she was wasting her time on men. She would rather shower her love on humanity. Her writing became more humanitarian. She envisaged a classless society where people would live together in love. She was back in her natal home at Nohant. In her pastoral idylls like “The Haunted Pool” (1890) and “Francis the Waif,” (1889) she advocated a return to the soil where one could find peace, virtue and happiness.

At the outbreak of the Revolution, George offered her services to the provisional government and wrote many articles for the Bulletin of The Republic. But after the repression that followed, she once again retired to Nohant.

Many of George’s books dealt with women’s lives, loves, marriage and divorce. She stood for equality of the sexes and property rights for women. During her lifetime, she wrote hundred books and twenty five plays. She could cobble together 3000 words per day and was said to complete a novel within a month. Her advocacy of Romantic Feminism did not endear her to the conservative society of her day. But her books are popular among analysts of Feminism even today. Her first book ‘Indiana’ published in 1832 was the story of a woman’s escape from a stifling marriage, to live with the lover on a primitive island.

George Sand was truly a woman with a prodigious pen. Though she was from an aristocratic family, she was kind hearted and hospitable to all around her. She died at the age of 71 years at her home in Nohant, on June 8^th 1876.

ISABELLA EBERHARDT – A VAGABOND BY CHOICE.

About 45 kms east of Morocco is Ain Sefra, Algeria, the gateway to the Sahara Desert. It was once a 19^th century French Garrison Town that was destroyed by a flash flood in 1904 – the very same flood that killed the young Swiss explorer and writer Isabella Eberhardt, who had made Algeria her home.

Isabella was a law unto herself. One seldom sees such rare courage in a young woman of twenty, who threw conventional morality to the winds and insisted on her right to be a vagrant with the freedom to wander and to live life according to the dictates of her own conscience.

Isabella Eberhardt was born in Geneva on February 17^th 1877, to a German Russian mother Natalie Eberhardt and an Armenian anarchist father Alexandre Trophimowsky. She was registered as an illegitimate child and therefore never needed to recognize Trophimowsky’s paternity. Perhaps her mixed genetic pool contributed to her erratic behaviour which shocked the world.

Isabella was well educated and fluent in several languages like French, German, Russian and Italian. She even learnt Latin and Greek and was specially tutored by her father in Arabic Classics and the Koran. The Koran so influenced her faith that she called Islam her true calling.

In 1897 she moved with her mother from Geneva to North Africa where they both embraced Islam.

Isabella was always dressed like a man to enjoy freedom of movement in Arab Society. She re-christened herself Si Mahamoud Essadi and joined a secret Sufi sect called Qadiriya, to help the poor and needy. She also encouraged Muslim locals to fight against French Colonial rule.

Isabella traveled extensively as a Muslim man. She rubbed shoulders with vagrants and vagabonds and squandered her meager resources on drugs and drinks, and bedded with any man who pleased her. Her endless wanderings gave her intimate knowledge of the lives of the poor and powerless. She believed that vagrancy was deliverance from conformity and freedom from the burdensome shackles of society. It was the route to self-purification. 

She said,“Such men can reach the magic horizon where they are free to build their dream palaces of delight.”

Perhaps the Hippie Movement drew its inspiration from her.

            As a creative person, she was a keen observer of people and practices around her. Her experience of low life made her a sensitive human being. Her short stories are so compelling. Her diaries are packed with fascinating information of her life and times. Not for her the beaten track. Derision  and ridicule by society left her unfazed.

“As a nomad who has no country besides Islam and neither family nor close friends, I shall wind my way through life until it is time for everlasting sleep beyond the grave,” she wrote.

It is difficult to understand how she reconciled her faith in Islam to her depraved life style.

            Isabella was not the darling of Algerian Society and must have earned the ire of many holy men. In 1901, she was attacked by a man who severed her arm. But this magnanimous lady not only forgave him but pleaded for his life.

            Later that year in October 1901, Isabella married an Algerian soldier called Slimane Ehnni, in Marseilles. But they were seldom together because of his duties and her wanderings.

However in 1904, her husband joined her for a long break and they rented a house for the duration of his leave. Unfortunately on October 21^st 1904, tragedy struck in the form of a flash flood and their clay house collapsed, killing Isabella. Her husband was washed away but he survived.

            Isabella Eberhardt was buried in the Muslim cemetery in Ain Sefra, according to Muslim rites. A trip to the cemetery can be made by car or by foot. Here, her restless spirit lies in peace, framed in by Mount Atlas on one side and the golden sands of the Sahara on the other.

Isabella’s “Algerian Short Stories” was published posthumously in 1905 and “In the warm shadows of Islam,” in 1906. A novella was made into a film.

            Isabella reached that “sun-drenched Somewhere” which she was always seeking for, sadly at a very young age. She was only 27 years old when she died.

FANNY PARKES – THE SITAR-PLAYING INDOPHILE.

 

            Kanpur, the industrial capital of Uttar Pradesh in India, was once known by its anglicized name Cawnpore. Here in the mid-19^th century lived Fanny Parkes -“Lady of the Raj”, a maverick who flaunted Victorian norms, hobnobbed with colonized Indians and scandalized the entire British community in India with her love for all things Indian.

            Frances Susannah Archer was born in Conway, Wales in 1794, to Anne and Major Edward Archer. Her father served in India as A.D.C. to Lord Combermere. Fanny married Charles Crawford Parkes, a writer for the East India Company and lived in India from 1822 to 1845. For most part, she stayed in Cawnpore and Allahabad after her husband became Customs Collector for Cawnpore in 1830.

            Fanny was a woman with a striking personality and was very independent in her way of thinking.  Her love affair with India began the moment she landed on the shores of Calcutta. Her early diary entry said, “I was charmed by the climate. The weather was delicious and I thought India was the most beautiful country.”

She was fascinated by Indian culture, the beauty of the countryside, temples and God men, snake charmers and astrologers and the beautiful women in their colourful costumes. She thought Indian men were ‘remarkably handsome.’ Fanny hated British arrogance in dealing with the local people, their oppression and enslavement of the Indians and the exploitation of the wealth of the country.

            Not for Fanny the boring role of wife to a humorless employee of the East India Company. The wide open spaces beckoned. Emily Eden her occasional travelling companion said, “Her husband always goes mad in the cold season. So she says it is her duty to herself to leave him and travel about.”

A nature lover, she spent less time with her husband and more time roaming the country.

“How much there is to delight the eyes in this bright beautiful world!” she wrote in her diary. Fanny travelled all over the country on her horse and with her portable travelling tent. She studied Urdu, delved into Hindu mythology, learnt how to play the sitar and had a great admiration for Indian culture.

            Fanny kept detailed accounts of her travels, her exploits and observations. She even had her own yacht “Seagull” on which she navigated the rivers of India. But in spite of her love for the country, she was critical of the plight of women and the inhuman practices of Sati and child marriages, the purdah system and meaningless rituals of mutilating the body. Famine, plagues and poverty were other situations that bothered her.

            Fanny’s notes about the Colonial rule in India were not complimentary. She was critical of British arrogance. She lampooned the sloppy dress sense of English women with their uppity airs, and the stiff uniforms and solar topees of the men. Her powers of observation enabled her to give vivid descriptions of Hindu deities and rituals. Rib-tickling anecdotes and amusing stories were also included.

            Fanny tried her hand at farming in Allahabad. Taxidermy was another of her hobbies. In her “Cabinet of Horrors” she displayed skulls of tigers, crocodiles and hyenas. She made replicas of cobras, scorpions and locusts from arsenical soap and stuffed them with cotton.

            Back in England, her detailed diaries helped her compile her memoirs. They filled two bulky volumes titled “Wandering of a Pilgrim in search of the Picturesque, after four and twenty years in the East, with revelations of life in the Zenana.”

As a travel writer, she wrote without prejudice, giving detailed and honest accounts of Indian life in the 19^th century. Her descriptions were so accurate that hundred years later, a resident of Cawnpore was able to recognize the Collector’s bungalow where she lived. He was instrumental in having a commemorative brass plaque for Fanny Parkes put up in April 1936, by Frank Mudie the then Collector.

            Kanpur has all but forgotten this feisty, Urdu-speaking, sitar-playing, cigarette smoking British Memsahib for whom ‘Vagabondising in India’ was a pleasure, and exposing the ‘Philistinism of the English’ a duty.

Her memoirs have been condensed into a convenient paperback titled “Begums, Thugs and White Moghuls” by William Dalrymple another British writer who has made India his home.

CLARA SWAIN - PHYSICIAN TO THE ZENANA

                             

The Clara Swain Hospital at Bareilly stands as a tribute to the perseverance and dedication of Clara Swain, the first woman physician who came to India. She was to provide quality medical care for women secluded in the zenana. This institution is now a famous multi-specialty hospital providing Integrated Health Care to thousands of people. Not many of the patients who come here are aware of the pioneering work of a young American woman, who goaded by her faith and zeal for service, answered the call for a female doctor to work in a village called Bareilly.

This was in the mid-19^th century when one missionary described “India as the land of breaking hearts.” Women were shrouded in purdah, with no exposure to education and no access to medical care. Male doctors could not attend on women. Women lived their lives in seclusion and could speak only to male relatives. Both maternal and infant mortality was high. Child marriage was the practice and female infanticide was common.

Clara Swain was ignorant of the cultural shock that awaited her. Her religious fervor and missionary zeal can be aptly described in the words of Browning. “All service is the same with God, whose puppets best and worst are we. There is no last nor first.”

Clara was born in Elmira, New York on 18^th July, 1834. Brought up as a Methodist by very religious parents, she was attracted to a Christian profession. She completed her religious studies by the age of 21. But soon after, she developed an interest in caring for the sick. She spent the next three years working with a physician called Cordelia Brown. Now she was convinced that Medicine was her calling. She enrolled at the Medical College in Pennsylvania and graduated in 1869, at the age of 35. In November that same year, she left for India.

The voyage from New York to Bombay was a horrible experience. The weather was stormy and she was sea-sick for most of her journey.

“I cannot bear to think of the sea,” she moaned, “It has treated me badly.”

Neither was her landing in Bombay exciting. Her means of transport was a horse-driven carriage called dak gari. The long journey to Jubalpore by road was exhausting, especially as she was at the mercy of a temperamental horse, which would sometimes squat and refuse to budge. With no knowledge of the local language and no proper food, it was an awful journey. From Jubalpore to Cawnpore she took a train. But the last stretch to Bareilly was again by dak gari. After a journey that took almost two months, she reached Bareilly in January 1870. Her luggage and medicines did not arrive until one month later.

            Clara was deluged by patients from the very first day.  Though her packet of medicines had not arrived, she had to make do with what was locally available. It was difficult to maintain segregation of Hindu, Muslim and Christian patients in her small dispensary. In her first month  she had examined three thousand patients.

            Clara decided to approach the Nawab of Rampore to sell her a piece of his land. It was a bold gesture for an unveiled woman to travel sixty miles to meet a Muslim Nawab. The Nawab had sworn that he would never allow a Christian missionary inside his city. He kept her waiting for a whole day. Then to her surprise and delight, he donated 42 acres for her project. It contained a large house, gardens and wells.

“Take it,” he said, “It is yours. I give it to you with great pleasure for such a purpose.”

            Clara moved into the Nawab’s property on 1^st January 1872. Two years later, a hospital for women was opened. It was the first women’s hospital in all of Asia and was patronized by women from princely families. They made generous donations towards the upkeep of the hospital, which came to be known as the Palace of Healing. Women came from other states as well, even from as far as Burma. The hostility towards western medicine was gradually fading. The Nawab also permitted her to open a school for girls on his property.

            Clara trained local women to assist her in her work. Her first batch had 14 students. She taught the basics in anatomy, physiology and simple medicaments. They became proficient in compounding and dispensing. When sufficiently trained they appeared for the “Examination of 4^th grade doctors.” Two civil surgeons and an American physician were the examiners. Successful candidates were given a “Certificate for practice in all ordinary diseases.”

In 1890, the school was upgraded to provide formalized medical training instead of basic training. It was now called the Christian Medical College, Ludhiana.

             Clara often fell ill due to ill-health and overwork. She had to go back to the States periodically for treatment. Now there were other trained personnel to run the hospital. When her health declined, she accepted an offer to become the personal physician of the Rani of Khetri. She held this position for ten years. It gave her the luxury of living in her own house close to the palace, with a small dispensary attached. Her assignment with the Royal family ended in 1895.

            Clara lived for 25 long years in India. There were no precedents to the kind of work she was doing among women. It was a combination of Medicine and Evangelism. She chose career over marriage, leading the way for professional women to achieve fulfillment outside the institution of marriage.

            This woman who went for home visits on the back of an elephant, lived an exciting life. But there were moments of fear too and close brushes with death on her elephant rides. Once, she was about to be washed away in a flood.

            Clara tackled social issues like female education, purdah and its disadvantages and female infanticide. She trained women in hygiene and fought to increase the age of marriage for girls. Her work stimulated interest in women’s medical education.

            Clara retired at the age of 61. She died in New York on Christmas day in 1910. She was 79 years old. Her poor health was due to overwork and many privations she suffered in India. But she will always be remembered for her ministry of healing and the concern for the spiritual well being of her patients.