I begin with a quotation from Kipling:
"Lived a woman wonderful,
May the Lord amend her !
Neither simple, kind nor true,
But her pagan beauty drew
English gentlemen a few
Hotly to attend her".
(South Africa)
and a
caveat:
In relating her life and loves, a young lady (like Johnson's "
Man in lapidiary inscription") is not upon oath.
June was the only (I think) child of a prominent British family in Bangalore. Coming to marriageable age in the early years of the war, she had been wooed and won by a young Army officer. He must have beaten off considerable competition, for she was a very attractive girl indeed. Not conventially beautiful, with rather a Slavonic cast of countenance, with wide grey eyes and high cheekbones (think Linda Kozlowski in Crocodile Dundee). To this was added a perfect figure and a sparkling personality. It was the Wedding of the Year in Bangalore, and in due course a baby boy arrived to make the picture complete.
Then her Captain was posted away up North. It must have been somewhere civilised like Delhi or Calcutta, for it would have been possible for them to accompany him. She (knowing herself far better than he knew her) pleaded to do so. But he decided that they would be better and safer staying behind with her parents in Bangalore.
(And so precipitated the disaster which was to follow. Yet in his place I would have done the same. The enemy was at the gates, there was no certainty that they could be held against him. If he did break through, then they [a thousand miles to the south] should stand a good chance of getting out in time).
Now she could pick up her social life pretty well where she left off . Her baby would be no hindrance. He would be cared for, 24/7, by an
ayah and her family. The British mother out there could spend as much (or as little) time with her offspring as she wished. Some spent little indeed. It was not unlike the nursery arrangements in well-to-do villas at home in late Victorian or Edwardian times. Children were to be seen and not heard (and not seen all that much, either). You might suppose that these expatriate children would grow up emotionally crippled by the experience. Not a bit of it. In later life amost all would recall their childhood in the East as a time of warmth, light, colour and adventure. They bonded with their ayahs:
"To our dear dark foster mothers,
To the heathen songs they sung,
To the heathen speech we babbled, #
Ere we came to the white man's tongue"
(Kipling: "A Christmas Toast")
Note #: (Every expatriate family knows the truth of this: the youngsters pick up the local lingo far faster than their parents).
Bangalore was full of young grass widows like June, and as a major garrison town, there were plenty of dashing young subalterns about. Lightweight illicit romances * sprang up all over the place. Mostly these were of short duration, the young man being posted away before any damage could be done. These temporary affairs were generally tolerated, so long as they didn't get out of hand. The young ladies deemed it almost a duty to "maintain morale": after all she * might be the last white woman he'd see in years - or ever. The more mature matrons who presided over Bangalore society turned a blind eye. It had always been so out there, and pots do not call kettles black.
Note *: (In the original 1970s "
Upstairs, Downstairs", there is a similar, innocent affair between Hazel and a young RFC Lieutenant),
"Send me somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst, An' there ain't no ten commandments, an' a man can raise a thirst"
(Kipling: Mandalay)
(and a woman, too; and there are all kinds of thirsts)
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