suit of a wide choice of interests; a life of interruptions and publicity, of few domestic responsibilities, much solitude for the women, and peculiarly heavy responsibilities for the men.

These are the conditions which are peculiar to India, but many characteristics of both the life and the people are common to all English provincial lives and people. Anglo-Indian society is provincial with officialism superadded, and has much in common with that of the English country town, especially the garrison town, whilst the hill-stations have a considerable dash of the watering-place about them. It is my object to show that some of the less attractive peculiarities of the Englishwoman in India have nothing peculiarly Indian about them. And whilst I must own that in India a woman is more tempted to drift into idleness, inertia, local-mindedness, uncultured, gossipy lines of thought and speech, into pleasure-seeking and flirtation (I use the word advisedly as distinct from serious love-making), than she ever need be at home, yet the life has produced, and is producing, women of whom we have every reason to be proud, and whose qualities many women in England may do well to imitate.

Let us begin with the "Burra Memsahib." There is no adequate translation of this name; "the great lady " has too aristocratic and feudal a sound about it; "the great official lady" would be nearer the mark. She is the wife of a member-incouncil, a commissioner, a judge, or a collector. There is something lovable, and yet awful, about her. She grasps an ornate card-case as her social oriflamme, the table of precedence is her Magna Charta, she is supremely virtuous, she leads and judges the society in which she moves, her conversation is strictly local, practical, and personal. She has weathered many dangers and hardships. She is a Conservative, and in theory her sympathies are anti-native, but if you inquired of her servants and others of her Aryan brethren, you would hear how in more than name she is "the protector of the poor." There is a touch of the patriarchal about her household. In camp she shows a genius for "bundobust; "* in "the station" her dinner-parties are wearisome, but her hospitality unfailing. Her doors are ever open, her help ever ready for the sick, the bereaved, or simply the stranger. Her faults are pomposity and huffiness; her virtues hospitality, charity (not always

* Arrangement.

in the widest sense), indeed, all Christian virtues, except, perhaps, humility. There is nothing specially Indian about her, except her long Indian experience, her pluck and hospitality. She is the nearest approach we ever get in India to the venerable in age, but she is not fifty, and soon her husband will retire on his hard-earned pension, and take her away to a semidetached villa at Bath or Cheltenham, and India will lose in her a restraint and a tradition.

Then there is the gay and giddy lady, the "cheery woman, who rests not day or night organizing picnics, promoting dances and theatricals, who mourns the inertia of her fellows if entertainments flag even for a week, who frequents hillstations, but is not necessarily a grasswidow. Her talk is much interlarded with Anglo-Indian expressions, such as "tiffin," "chit," "pukka,' ""gup. Her children, if she has any, are at home. Before they went she most likely was a different woman much as Indian mothers always are, anxious, watchful, and worn, but they had to go, and she had to stay, and her pleasure-loving nature, without occupation or responsibility, finds its own consolation. There is no particular harm in the cheery woman; she is what is called "a useful sort of person to have in a station, because she gets things up, you know,” and there is some truth in the phrase in a country where all amusements are amateur, and must be self-constructed. There is always a lady of this type on a P. and O. steamer ; she has a fancy dress in the hold, and therefore insists on a fancy ball; she generally knows one part in "Sweethearts " or "Ici on Parle Français," but as Mr. Kipling would say, "that is another story," and must be written some day under the head of "P. and O. passengers, a distinct race." What is there peculiarly Indian about this woman? I maintain nothing but her circumstances. Frivolity and pleasure-seeking are foibles of English as well as Indian growth. Indeed, the ordinary "plains" station offers a starvation diet for such a nature, but in a hill-station, or any large centre in "the season," there is an atmosphere of holiday-making, especially among those who have escaped there on a few weeks' leave, and the cheery woman finds many playmates and amusements for every day of the week.

Then there are the flirts, and will any one tell me they are the product of any particular country? They exist in India, no doubt, in a larger proportion than in England, but there is less demand for fe

male flirts here, owing to the surplus of women. In India women are in a minority, and therefore at a premium socially. It is a law of nature that whichever sex is in a minority in any society obtains an amount of attention, flattery, and homage from the other sex which results, among the lighterheaded, in a condition of things commonly known as being "spoilt." As an exemplification of this law we have only to look at London society, where the men are in a minority. Who that has travelled about the world, and seen men under the opposite condition, but will agree with me that the average English gentleman, of no special moral or intellectual power to lift him above the crowd, is a more chivalrousminded man after ten years in India than if he had remained in London at a false social premium. As London society is an abnormal test of a man's vanity, so is Anglo-Indian society of a woman's. At least, in India things are balanced, so that it is rare to see women "running after" men; the race is all the other way.

ted and courted. She has her love affairs, | salt her savorless life by the excitements,

of sentimental friendships; to let her vanity be fed by the attentions and flattery of the surplus of subalterns and other unattached men, of whom in India there is always a supply. Like flirts all over the world, she deceives herself into thinking she is only giving sympathy when she is really accepting admiration and love, and once having begun to sip the cup of these moral stimulants, she finds it hard to do without them.

She is without two great restraints which act on most women who drift into the same line of conduct in England, viz.: first, the risk of paining and estranging her elders and contemporaries in her own family, whose criticism, once aroused, is apt to be plainly expressed; second, the wide-eyed, silent criticism of her own girls and boys, who also by their mere existence take up her time, and draw her back to healthier interests.

and after a year or two, varied by intervals at hill-stations, she selects a husband from the number of her suitors. Just as the stress of climate is beginning to fade her complexion and lower her energies she enters on the holy state. Then babies come, and whilst they are there it is rare for an Anglo-Indian mother, be she ever so uncultured and lonely, to be tempted back into the arena of flirtation. Mothers of Indian children are as a rule models of devotion to these little pale ghosts of English babyhood, whose graves occupy such large corners of our Indian cemeteries. To save them from such an end, the mother has often to spend one-third of the year in the hills away from her husband, and sometimes she has to fly suddenly with them as fast as train and ship can carry her, over "the black, dividing sea," back to her old home in England. There, after a year or so, she leaves them, and goes back to the old life, to emptiness, monotony, and, for the greater part of the day, solitude, her husband being in office all day. But towards sundown the old social gatherings go on - how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable they seem to her now! An Englishwoman in India once said bitterly to me, "If a woman becomes perfectly contented in India it is a sign she has deteriorated." This is much too general and sweeping an assertion, but as applied to life in an ordinary Indian station there is some truth in it. The woman who can drown homesickness, keep her health, and who has sufficient resources within herself to be happy anywhere, is happy in India, but such women are exceptions all over the world. To the average woman, who is more or less dependent upon her circumstances, the conIsolations and distractions of station life are, to say the least, inadequate. The weekly gymkana, the more frequent polo, the daily gathering between 6 and 7.30 P.M. at the general meeting place, "the Club," a building consisting of a billiard-room and a library, with lawn-tennis grounds outside, where the craving for companion. The existence of this belief that Enship drives the few English people to col-glishwomen in India are all flirts, fostered lect, talk "shop," and gossip, to read the by Mr. Kipling's masterly sketches of papers with flagging interest, and borrow Mrs. Hauksbee and others of the more books from the indifferent library, these vulgar of this class, blending as he does gatherings, varied by an occasional dance with such absolute truth their vulgarity or picnic, can do little to fill the gaps in with their own peculiar pathos, - this Indian life, and they leave the average must be my excuse for dwelling so long woman fairly homesick for life in En- on this small percentage of the Englishgland. woman in India.

The typical Anglo-Indian flirt is simply she who succumbs to the temptation to

I have no wish to justify this typical flirt; I only wish to show that whilst her temptations are abnormal and Indian, her nature and her follies are merely human. The unwritten laws of Indian society allow her to ride, drive, and walk with men. Women, both married and single, are almost obliged to go to balls and dance; they are dubbed airified and unobliging if they do not do so, women being in demand socially; thus there is endless propinquity, always more or less in public, yet admitting of the sentimental tête-à-tête. There is an Arcadian simplicity, a naïve love of display about the Indian flirt, something disarming and comic about the way she gallops, drives, and dances her admirers up and down before the eyes of her small world — eyes that have so little to occupy them. It is this continual observation, and the inevitable discussion following upon it that have given rise to the impression that there is so much flirtation in India. There is a good deal of it, for the reasons already given, but no sign of it in its mildest or its acuter form escapes observation.

Of the types already described the last two are characteristic of the many small

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trees. She was then elated at having shot her first head of big game, a hyena, but I have since heard that she has shot tigers, big sambur, panther, bear, and black-buck, everything, in fact, except elephant and bison. Such spirited reaction from the inertia to which the climate and life make many women victims, must disarm criticism.

But these types that I have described still include but a percentage of the rank and file of Anglo-Indian ladies, who, when I begin to think of them, present to me an array of white faces on which endurance is plainly written. There is an impression of faded, old-fashioned refinement about them; their conversation drifts into discussing the comparative merits of the various places where they have been stationed, how much or how little ill-health their husbands, their children, or they themselves have had there. Often they sound a note of cheerful gratitude for the place they are in, because it has the advantages of some "European "society, an English doctor, or the power of escaping by road or rail to the hills, or Bombay, Calcutta, or Madras, in case of obstinate fever or other illness. They talk of when they were last in England, and speak with sudden animation of the delights of that time, or of how "next hot-weather," or "the hot-weather after next," they hope to go home again.

military stations, and the hill-stations, but | forest, in the south of the Bombay presithe district life in tents, or in places where dency, where the shooting is done from there are no soldiers, is the most characteristically Anglo-Indian. In such places has of late years come into existence the sporting lady. These are generally wives of district officers, either in the revenue, forest, police, or public works departments, who have to live in places where, perhaps, they, and one subordinate officer, and a half-caste apothecary form the only "European" population. These spend their winters pleasantly enough travelling about in tents. They rise about 6 or 6.30 A.M., and ride on to the next camping ground, where they find duplicate tents already pitched. On the way the husband shoots, the ordinary game being_blackbuck, wild duck, snipe, or quail. By ten at latest they are in camp, breakfast, and the husband sets to work in his office-tent, transacting the business of local administration. He therefore has the double interest of his work and his sport, whilst the wife's chief occupation is the bundobust of the camp. If she has children they are a considerable anxiety. They travel in a bullock "dumny" daily the same distance as their parents ride. Towards sundown, if he has time, the husband shoots again. It can easily be understood that if the wife can take an active share in his sport the monotony of her life will be much relieved. I remember once arriving late one evening during "the rains" at an out-of-the-way place in the Deccan, to go on the next morning. We had expected to eat the inevitable tough chicken in the traveller's bungalow, and to share our night's rest with bats, toads, fleas, etc. But the ever alert hospitality of India, in the shape of the local superintendent of police, found us out at once, and transplanted us to his cool and comfortable bungalow, where his wife most kindly received us in her pretty drawing-room, of which the least usual adornment was a row of fine black-buck heads hung round the wall. N. remarked on them with the envy of a fellow-sportsman, and we were astonished to find that they had all been shot by our hostess, a pretty, delicate-looking little woman. She then showed us a photograph of herself in her "shikar "suit a loose Norfolk jacket, short petticoat, and gaiters (as a protection against snakes), a huge pith sun-hat, and a wadded pad down her back as a protection from the sun. She spoke with feeling of the monotony of her life until she took to shooting with her husband. One other lady, the wife of a collector, I met in the Kanara VOL. LXXIX. 4068

LIVING AGE.

Their uncomplainingness is marvellous, their pluck undefeated, their hospitality and kindness to each other, to any passing globe-trotter, or other stranger, unfailing. These qualities of large-hearted kindness and hospitality are characteristic of all Anglo-Indians; the Burra Memsahib excels in them, the siren, the cheery woman, and the flirt are not behindhand in them. And when I speak of hospitality I do not mean the giving of entertainments. I mean hospitality that makes people turn out of their more comfortable rooms to give them up to a stranger, that takes in a sick acquaintance, nurses him night and day, feeds him on the best beef-tea, milk, and champagne that can be managed, writes home to his friends accounts of his progress, or details of his death; the kindness that makes people go at once to a house where there is illness, and offer to take a share of the nursing. At ordinary times, Anglo-Indian society presents examples of petty gossip, self-asserting huf. finess, and undignified flirtation; but the very women who will one day meet each

Let

other with an indignant snort and a sweep | our lungs, and living, as at any rate Lonof their somewhat faded skirts, on account doners do, in the forcing house of literaof some dispute over a question of pre- ture, art, science, and politics, to criticise cedence, or something equally petty, will our exiled sisters in India; in which be found next day combining to nurse a country the subtler refinements of civilcholera patient, or tending each other in ization, which develop women in England some grief or trouble. and mould their tastes, are absent. the critics be wafted suddenly in June from the exhilarating freshness of English country, or the mental mill-race of London, to an Indian station, its stifling heat, darkened rooms, and swaying punkahs, and let them see if in the lightest literature is to be found anything but a powerful soporific.

It is a pity that Mr. Kipling has not used his photographic powers of description, and allowed his genius to put life into more "Plain Tales" of quiet women's heroism in the plains than of foolish women's follies in the hills. He would find in the former a larger field and less commonplace material, and would, withal, give a truer picture of the most distinctively AngloIndian life. It may be said generally that the majority of women in India share with the men all the roughing and danger, except actual war (and in the Mutiny they shared that too), without sharing the credit or the rewards, except in so far as their husbands' honors benefit them. Women are the camp followers of the great army of English occupation, and they often find themselves under conditions which, to use a telling phrase of Mr. Kipling's own, are "like the field of battle with all the glory missing.'

A less obvious cause than that already mentioned has been suggested to me as underlying this lack of intellectual keenness among English women in India as a rule -a rule to which happily there are many exceptions. In India we find our selves in a country and among a people where, as everywhere in Asia, tradition, religion, and inveterate custom combine to throw women entirely into the background; and it is particularly difficult for English women living among scattered groups of foreign sojourners in the land to find the material, or the opportunity, I regret that, owing partly to the fact for advancing outside the strict limitations that my own better luck gave me little of household duty and petty social occuopportunity of personally observing my pations. The Englishwoman as well as fellow-women under the most trying con- other women in India has to fight against ditions of Indian life, and partly that the the strong Asiatic prejudice which diskind of all-in-the-day's-work, matter-of-likes her taking part in public affairs of course heroism and endurance that are any kind. In this direction she has few most characteristic of the Anglo-Indian chances and little encouragement. woman do not easily condense into anecdote, I am unable to give many illustrative instances. But one pathetically characteristic story comes to my mind of a young, newly married woman, who went with her husband on duty to some distant and God-forsaken spot, miles from any English cantonment. Within a year the husband died of cholera, dysentery, or one of the rapid Indian sicknesses. She found herself without benefit of clergy, doctor, or undertaker, alone, but for a handful of native servants. These helped her to dig the grave, but the coffin she hammered together with her own hands, out of the wood of old packing-cases which had contained the "Europe stores " for their daily

use.

Globe-trotters from time to time comment on the dulness of Indian society, and there is no doubt that it is conversationally dull, borné, and uncultured, but so is conversation apt to be in provincial society anywhere.

It is easy here, with English ozone in

The English

But, in spite of these disadvantages and impediments, philanthropic English women are arising in these latter days, who interest themselves in schools and hospitals, both English and native, and who learn the native dialect in order to make friends with native ladies, the wives of chiefs and other native gentlemen. lady doctors sent out by the Society for Providing Female Medical Aid to Indian Women (better known as the Lady Dufferin Fund) are a new development of Anglo-Indian society. Their numbers are still comparatively small, but their existence certainly tends to stimulate the philanthropic and intellectual life of English women in India. These lady doctors, gaining as they do considerable acquaintance with, and insight into, the lives of native women of all classes, and yet taking their place in the English-social life, form a link and arouse an interest between English and native women which leads to the widening and enriching of the lives of both.