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  • Bungalows and Bazaars:India in Victorian Children's Fiction
  • Clarissa M. Rowland (bio)

In 1815, The Indian Pilgrim, Mrs. Sherwood's adaptation of Pilgrim's Progress for converts to Christianity, was published in England. In 1901 one of E. Nesbit's families, the Would-Be-Goods, act out scenes from Kipling's Jungle Book in their garden. In the years between, the theme of India is used in English books and stories for children. Besides directly inspiring several superb tales for children, we can surely say that India served as a source of plot and situation, and that Indian settings reflect changes in travel and education which were taking place during the nineteenth century.

Conversion was Mrs. Sherwood's obsession, and it dictated the shape of those tracts written by her for young people which have an Indian background. But she had spent more than ten years in India with her husband's regiment, and her tales also illustrate something of the life led by European children there, at a time when the voyage out from England took four or five months by sailing boat. In Little Lucy and her Dhaye, written in 1816, for instance, Mrs. Sherwood tells us all about the household which Mr. Grenville, Lucy's father, set up for his daughter in the town where he was a merchant, after her mother's death. She records for us the names and duties of all the attendants employed in looking after the infant, from the beheistie, or water-carrier, to the garry-waun who drove her bullock-coach. She describes the daily routine, from the early-morning airing, to the cool of evening when Lucy would finally fall asleep on her nurse's lap in the jasmine-scented air outside their bungalow. Little Henry and his Bearer (1819), Mrs. Sherwood's best-known tale, gives an account of the short life of an orphaned English child, taken into the house of a wealthy English lady living in India and tended there, until his early death, by Boosey, the devoted bearer and nurse. Here is a lively picture of him:

Henry could not speak English but he could talk with Boosey in his language as fast as possible; and he knew every word, good or bad, which the natives spoke. He used to sit on the verandah between his bearer's knees and chew paun and eat bazar sweetmeats. He wore no shoes or stockings; but was dressed in panjammahs and had silver bangles on his ancles (sic).

In The Memoirs of Sergeant Dale, written in 1816, we are introduced to the routine of a regiment serving in India, at the Cawnpore barracks, a life punctuated by daily parades and the guns fired off morning and evening. Some of the problems of raising a baby in the tropics are touched on here, when Sergeant Dale and his young daughter Sarah discuss whether between them they can take in [End Page 192] and care for the orphaned baby, Mary; what she is to be fed, how Sarah will manage to cook and get the baby's washing done. It comes as no surprise to learn that during Mrs. Sherwood's years in India her great interest was the founding of schools and homes for soldiers' orphans. She established an orphanage near Calcutta, wrote a book on the subject,1 and brought three regimental orphans home, together with her own five children, when in 1816 she and her husband left India for good.

Mrs. Sherwood could pick out scenes which would touch a parent, and which have often been used in later stories. She mentions little Lucy's despair after the final parting from her dhaye, who "probably until these few hours had been ready to attend to her every call"; she even notes the dilemma of Lucy's father starting on the voyage home—totally unused to the care or company of his daughter, but convinced that it would be highly improper to bring any female attendant into his cabin to help him with the child. (This particular problem was solved by the timely and tactful help of the lady who was to become Lucy's stepmother.) Perhaps she...

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