Lost & Found In Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities

It’s 4pm on a Friday afternoon. I sit alone at the dining room table. There’s a cheap, half-finished bottle of Sauvignon Blanc standing incongruously to the right of my open laptop. I stare at the laptop willing words to appear on the stark white screen. In one hand I have a book, its pages covered in highlighting with notes in the margins, in the other, an almost empty glass of wine. My hope is that I will somehow bring order to the indiscernible mass of ideas swirling in my head. Or maybe that’s just the alcohol. The names repeat endlessly – Esmeralda, Despina, Hypatia, Chloe, Clarice – 55 names, 55 places, or just one place?

The cause of my consternation is the book I hold in my left hand: Invisible Cities. A short, unusual travel novel written in 1972 by Italian author and Communist devotee, Italo Calvino (1923 – 1985).  I’ve read and reviewed literature composed of abstract philosophical ideas and complex language before – Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, Voltaire’s Candide, the complete works of William Shakespeare, to name only a few. However, none have left me with such an overwhelming sense that I have only just scratched the surface to expose the hidden gems within the text. The book is captivating, not for its plot or storyline, which are glaringly absent, but simply for its ability to touch a deeper part of the soul and arouse that magical sense of curiosity which is so often lacking in our fast-paced and information-saturated society. I realise I am a traveller, treading a unique path through the pages of Invisible Cities.  

Although Calvino’s novel is considered to be from the travel genre, my initial interest in Invisible Cities was sparked by the historical aura surrounding Marco Polo and Kublai Khan as it appealed to the history lover in me. On the surface, the book is a series of fictional interactions occurring between a 13^th century Tartar Emperor called Kublai Khan and a young Venetian explorer, Marco Polo. Khan senses that his Empire is coming to an end and is understandably troubled by it. Only through Polo’s accounts of his travels to remote provinces is Khan “able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites’ gnawing” (p. 5). The pattern the Emperor is referring to is Polo’s expeditions to 55 cities across the Empire. Narrated in lyrical prose, and framed by philosophical dialogue between Khan and Polo, descriptions of the 55 cities are divided between 11 thematic categories, including ‘Cities & Memory,’ ‘Hidden Cities,’ and ‘Cities & the Sky.’ Polo’s cities are enticing and fascinating places, where things are never quite as they seem. In the crystalline blue lagoons of the city of Hypatia, “crabs were biting the eyes of the suicides, stones tied around their necks” (p. 40).

At first it is difficult to engage with Invisible Cities as every ‘conventional’ element you would expect from a travel novel is missing. There is no clear storyline, little character development, and no signposted route or final destination to guide the reader to a tidy conclusion. Calvino also appears to be allergic to small, simple words and phrases, opting instead for rich imagery and daring use of metaphors, for example: “A voluptuous vibration stirs Chloe, the most chaste of cities,” in an unending “carousel of fantasies” and “ephemeral dreams” (p. 44). A combination of complex vocabulary, double meanings and a disorientating style of lyrical prose makes for a slow, time-consuming read. Take Marco Polo’s account of what he calls the “true essence” of Anastasia: “Such is the power, sometimes called malignant, sometimes benign, that Anastasia, the treacherous city, possesses…your labour which gives form to desire takes from desire its form, and you believe you are enjoying Anastasia wholly when you are only it slave” (p. 10). Despite the novels slim size, I found myself having to pause every two or three paragraphs to process what I had just read.

The beauty of discovery lies in persistence. At some indiscernible point, you realise that Calvino is not merely describing cities, at least not in the way we normally think of cities as physical constructs of concrete and steel. Calvino’s cities are creations formed from ideas, thoughts, and questions. Kublai Khan plays the role of a model reader within the text, guiding and shaping our own range of responses as readers of Invisible Cities. Like Khan, a reader must abandon any preconceived notions of what a travel book should be, and instead “take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours. Or the question it asks of you.” (p. 38). Only by freeing yourself “from the images which in the past had announced to me the things I sought” can you succeed in “understanding the language of Hypatia” (p. 41), and ultimately, Invisible Cities.

To me, Invisible Cities does not contain a single meaning, instead it is composed of three intertwined threads of questions and ideas. Firstly, Invisible Cities is a critique of human nature. Many of Polo’s cities reflect some aspect of human behaviour, and serve as metaphors for vanity, greed, lust, desire, etc… In Beersheba, the citizens are so “intent of piling up carats of perfection” that it is “only when [they] shit, [that they are] not miserly, calculating, greedy” (p. 101).The people within cities are so consumed by their own internal weaknesses that they are blinded to happiness. In Raissa, the “city of sadness,” beneath the surface of bad dreams characterising daily life there is “a happy city unaware of its own existence” (p.134). The question Calvino seems to be asking the reader to grapple with is a big one: How then should we live?

As well as being a study of humanity, Invisible Cities is also a set of cautionary tales which warn of what will happen if we, as humans, do not change how we act within our cities. The lines which separate past, present, and future become blurred as Khan contemplates an empire “covered with cities that weigh upon the earth and upon mankind, crammed with wealth and traffic…swollen, tense, ponderous” (p. 65).  There are clear references to capitalism, suburban development, and consumerism throughout the text. The city of Trude provides an example of the negative effects globalisation can have on culture. Globalisation has the potential to create a world without differences “covered by a sole Trude which does not begin and does not end. Only the name of the airport changes” (p. 116). As Polo reminds the Emperor: “If you want to know how much darkness is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance” (p. 51). The warnings found in Invisible Cities are both timeless and timely. Like the citizens of the spider-web city of Octavia, we must recognise that “the net will only last so long” (p. 67). The question is: How long?

Invisible Cities is however, at its core, still a travel book. Although Polo seemingly begins by describing different cities he has visited, it soon becomes clear that he is actually talking about one place: Venice. “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice…To distinguish the other cities’ qualities, I must speak first of a city that remains implicit” (p. 78). For Polo, Esmeralda, Despina, Hypatia, Chloe, and Clarice are all aspects of a single city. The true value in Invisible Cities lies not so much in its vivid imagery or fascinating metaphors, but in the fact that the 55 cities also merge to become a single city for each individual reader. For me, that city is Auckland. My reading of Invisible Cities became implicitly based on impressions of my home city. The sprawling urban mess of Auckland is like Penthesilea which “spreads for miles around, a soupy city diluted in the plain; pale buildings back to back…rusty suburb workshops and warehouses,” where “you advance for hours and it is not clear to you whether you are already in the city’s midst or still outside it” (p. 141). And so the journey is not Marco Polo’s alone, I was also a traveller, treading a unique path through the pages of Invisible Cities.  

For the first half of Invisible Cities I was lost and bewildered, but Calvino took me on a truly remarkable and interesting journey, awakening within me an insatiable sense of curiosity about my own city. The novel is an epistemological puzzle and its beauty lies in the fact that the puzzle is constructed slightly differently every time you pick up the book. Although Calvino’s style is at first disorientating, if you are looking for something pleasingly different or incredibly thought-provoking, I strongly recommend this little gem. Calvino freely invites the collaboration of the reader – it is up to you to shape your own experience of the text, filling in the blanks, imagining and substituting your own city in the margins just as Kublai Khan is so eager to do. 

It is best, I believe, to read Invisible Cities like a traveller, slowly and luxuriously with a glass of wine in one hand, and as if you have all the time in the world. 

Copyright Lydia Martin, 2014

Margaret Hale: Angel with a Twist

 Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel, North and South, focuses on a heroine directly entangled with the predominantly masculine world of industrial and class politics (Bodenheimer 54). While Gaskell’s central character, the “very proud” Margaret Hale (10), at first only appears to be a commentator on the conflict between labour and capital, masters and men and the industrialised North and rural South, she has found a place in literary debate as a supposed challenger of the 19^th century ‘angel in the house’ stereotype. Uprooted from her home and thrust into the smoke and fog of Milton-Northern, Margaret is forced to negotiate the public sphere of an industrialised city, unconsciously testing the boundaries of ‘obedience to authority’ (416). Following a brief analysis of Margaret’s complicated characterisation as neither an obvious endorser nor challenger of Victorian notions concerning femininity and the private sphere, I consider three scenes from the novel which focus on Margaret’s most emotional and intense experiences in the areas of socialising, politics and love. These include Margaret’s highly-charged argument with Mr Thornton over masters and men, her dramatic entry into the public political sphere during the strike, and the loss of her ‘moral purity’ when she lies out of love to protect Frederick. Despite the fact that in two of these scenes Margaret openly challenges accepted notions on femininity and the private sphere, the significance of her actions are ultimately nullified as her responses endorse Victorian domestic ideology. Rather than emerging as a champion for female emancipation, Margaret only briefly transgresses into public life before retreating into the bounds of acceptable feminine behaviour. While Gaskell is promoting a slightly more enlightened view of women as indirect moral influences on the public sphere, Margaret fails to decisively challenge the place of female ‘angels’ in Victorian society.

            Even though Margaret diverges from the conventional dimensions of femininity she is also committed to the creation and maintenance of the private sphere, complicating any simple categorisation of the heroine as either a challenger or endorser of Victorian domestic ideology. Spirited, strong minded and opinionated, Margaret is far from the typical representation of a perfect Victorian lady, such as her female counterpart, Edith Lennox (née Shaw). Edith is portrayed as the picture of womanliness in her “white muslin and blue ribbons” (5), a traditional ‘angel in the house,’ exhibiting a “natural submission to authority and an innate maternal instinct” (Vicinus x). Whereas Margaret is described as a “tall, finely made figure” (9) whose mouth is “no rosebud, [formed] to let out a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and ‘an’t please you, sir” (17). Although Margaret is not shy of intruding into the masculine realm of politics and debate when she arrives in Milton-Northern, she is also committed to creating domestic comfort for her parents in the private sphere of the home, which she describes as a sort of ‘paradise’ to Henry Lennox (12). Both Mr and Mrs Hale rely completely on Margaret when they move from Helstone and arrive in Milton-Northern, leaving the “management of [household] affairs to her” (49). Furthermore, after her mother’s death, Frederick and Mr Hale are utterly dependent on Margaret’s “working, planning, [and] considering” (252) within the private sphere to make “everything look as cheerful as possible” (252) in the midst of grief. Gaskell praises Margaret’s independence but doesn’t alienate her from the private sphere, thwarting any simple pre-analytical categorisation of Margaret as either a challenger or endorser of Victorian notions on femininity and woman’s roles.

While at first it seems Margaret is overstepping the bounds of acceptable behaviour by participating in a heated debate with Mr Thornton, Gaskell is in fact presenting an enlightened view of a woman’s capability for social engagement which doesn’t challenge conventional expectations. This scene is the first time Margaret purposefully transgresses into the realm of men and political debate, separating herself from the more conventional female characters with their “querulous domestic refrains” (Bodenheimer 63), such as Edith, Aunt Shaw and Mrs Hale. Confronted with Mr Thornton’s despotic view on masters and men, Margaret argues for what she calls ‘mutual duty and dependence’ (122) between the mill owners and their workers. Her emotions running the gamut from laughter (123) to coldness (124) during the course of the conversation, Margaret gets the final word when she contradicts Mr Thornton’s claims, “I am trying to reconcile your admiration of despotism with your respect for other men’s independence of character” (124). Even though Mr Thornton is “vexed” by Margaret’s responses, her active participation in the debate serves to make him “cooler and more thoughtful” (119). A woman’s opinions expressed within the confines of the home were to be admired, as she may be “someone to whom a man can turn when he seeks to be guided by ‘abstract principles of right and wrong’” (Harman 352). Domestic apologists, such as John Ruskin, encouraged the idea of women as an “independent moral resource[s]” to be consulted (Harman 352). Margaret endorses Ruskin’s portrayal of femininity as her emotional and highly charged responses to Mr Thornton are confined within the protection of the private sphere. By having Margaret participate in a heated debate with Mr Thornton on political topics, Gaskell is presenting a more enlightened attitude towards a woman’s capacity for social engagement with men which doesn’t challenge conventional Victorian notions.

Margaret’s explicit public actions during the strike scene dramatically violate the Victorian concept of ‘separate spheres.’  Refusing to stay secure inside the Thornton’s home with the womenfolk, Margaret rushes into the public domain to defend Mr Thornton from the “demonic desire” of the “terrible wild beast” – the mob (176). In a moment of passionate conviction Margaret persuades Mr Thornton to go down to the strikers and “face them like a man” (177). It is only after he leaves that she comprehends the grave danger she has placed him in, and “with a cry…she rushed out of the room, downstairs, - she had lifted the great iron bar of the door with an imperious force…and was there, in that angry sea of men, her eyes smiting them with flaming arrows of reproach” (178). Mr Thornton, realising Margaret has over-stepped conventional boundaries tells her to leave as “this is no place for you,” but claiming that “it is!” Margaret “threw her arms around him; she made her body into a shield from the fierce people beyond” (179). In this dramatic reversal of conventional gender relations, Barbara Leah Harman suggests that Gaskell is making an unspoken claim through Margaret’s public self-display that women belong in the public realm (368). John Pikoulous describes this scene as “one of the most thrilling moments in Victorian literature, representing as it does the first time that a woman has convincingly established herself on the public stage in her own right” (cited in Harman 366). Isolated in the moment of unfolding action, Margaret’s sudden appearance and subsequent intervention in the strike scene appear to challenge long-held notions on female exclusion from the public sphere, implicitly asserting that women belong there too.

Instead of making a gesture of ‘social idealism’ as suggested by Pikoulous, the potential significance of Margaret’s foray into the public sphere is ambiguous and superseded by the heroine’s attempt to reinstate herself within the conventional framework of Victorian constraints. As Rosemarie Bodenheimer points out, while Margaret might “deliberately overrun the separation between men’s and women’s spheres” her response is moulded by “conventional domestic ideology” (62). Contemplating her actions and analysing her feelings after the strike, Margaret agonises to herself, “I, who hate scenes – I, who have despised people for showing emotion – who have thought them wanting in self-control – I went down and must needs throw myself into the melee, like a romantic fool! (190). Knowing full well that female participation in public life would compromise a woman’s virtue (Harman 357), Margaret seeks to restore her femininity by legitimising her actions as “woman’s work” (191). This “woman’s work” is guided by an innate female duty to protect rather than a desire to make a political or, as some characters misinterpret, a sexual statement. Margaret makes this clear when she rebuts Mr Thornton’s proposal, “Why, there was not a man – not a poor desperate man in all that crowd…for whom I should not have done what little I could more heartily” (195). The fact that the heroine feels a “deep sense of shame that she should be the object of universal regard” (191) illustrates Margaret’s mortification that she has left the protection of the private sphere and subjected herself to unwomanly publicity. Nonetheless, there is a danger in assuming Gaskell is advocating any one set interpretation of Margaret’s endorsement of Victorian notions concerning a woman’s place. Pearl L. Brown suggests that Gaskell may be promoting the value of extending womanly moral influence into the public world (355). However, even if this is the case, rather than emerging as a supporter for female liberation, Margaret only briefly transgresses into public life before retreating into the confines of acceptable behaviour.

Margaret is further exposed to the public realm of men when she passionately denies being at the train station and lies to a police officer in order to save Frederick from prosecution, an act which challenges femininity by compromising Margaret’s moral purity and reputation. Although said out of love and a desire to protect, Bodenheimer sees Margaret’s lie as an act “visibly and directly in the male world,” implicating Gaskell’s heroine “with the moral ambiguity of action in the public realm” (62). Conventionally a woman, “by her offer and place… is protected from all danger and temptation,” but when Margaret enters the “open world” she “must encounter all peril and trial” (Vicinus 126) and act like a man. The police officer is stunned by Margaret’s seemingly hardened and imperious nature, : “She never blenched or trembled. She fixed him with her eye… showed no emotion, no fluttering fear, no anxiety” (273). However, Gaskell does not glorify this challenge against male authority and Victorian ideology, instead presenting the action as an instinctive, though flawed move on Margaret’s part to protect her brother; “Oh, Frederick! Frederick! What have I not sacrificed for you!” (283). Like the strike scene, once Margaret has contemplated her actions and analysed her feelings, her response is directly influenced by domestic ideology. Unable to act in the public sphere without “guiltily repenting of her own violation of the [moral] law” (Harman 370), Margaret regrets how she has “stained her [feminine] whiteness by falsehood” (280). She would not disagree with Mr Thornton when he asks himself, “How could one so pure have stooped from her decorous and noble manner of bearing!” (279). Fixated on her sin, Margaret holds an “innate conviction that it was wrong” (399) to lie even though it had the potential to save Frederick. In a society which linked femininity with moral purity in the form of truthfulness and innocence (Vicinus ix), Margaret’s transgression into the public sphere through lies and deceit is denounced by both Gaskell and the heroine.

The contradictory nature of not only Margaret’s characterisation but also her most intense emotional experiences in Milton-Northern complicates any straightforward categorisation of the heroine’s actions as either direct challenges against or clear endorsements for Victorian gender ideals. While Gaskell depicts Margaret as an independent young woman, dissimilar from the stereotypically feminine Edith, she still promotes her female protagonist’s role in the private sphere as a guiding force for the Hale family. Although the ‘masters and men’ dialogue extends the nature of ‘proper’ female socialisation in debating political issues, Margaret doesn’t challenge Victorian standards as the conversation takes place within the confines of the private sphere. Instead what Gaskell seems to be endorsing is the value of a woman’s moral influence on male rationality. Nonetheless, Margaret’s explicit public actions, during the strike scene and lying scene, directly challenge the Victorian concept of ‘separate spheres.’ However, what becomes clear is that once Margaret has ‘analysed her feelings,’ particularly after the strike, she re-conceptualises her actions in an attempt to place them within the boundaries of acceptable “woman’s work” (191). Critics often see Gaskell’s portrayal of Margaret as a sign of a conservative spirit (Harman 374). It is true that Margaret is no champion for female emancipation; yet, as demonstrated by this essay, while Victorian society was still not ready for the ‘Margaret Hales’ of Great Britain to take the public stage, Gaskell’s heroine passionately demonstrates the ability of intelligent middle-class women to exert moral influence on the industrial world of the North within the confines of femininity and the private sphere.

Copyright Lydia A. Martin (2014)

Works Cited (MLA)

Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. Print. [Excerpt 53-68]

Brown, Pearl L. “From Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton to her North and South: Progress or Decline for Women?” Victorian Literature and Culture (2000): 345-58. Print.

Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Harman, Barbara Leah. “In Promiscuous Company: Female Public Appearance in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South.” Victorian Studies 31.3 (1988): 351-74. Humanities International Complete. Web.

Vicinus, Martha. Suffer and be Still. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972. Print.

The Tea Planter's Wife

The following stories are just a snippet of my Grandma’s (Glenda Winn) amazing life in India as a tea planter's wife. She has never written down any of her stories so I feel very privileged to be the first one to document parts of her life for posterity. 

I sit down with a cup of tea and a gingernut. Tendrils of steam rise from the floral teacup in my hand as I place the recording device on a stack of old books. A small wooden elephant stands rigid in the corner of the room, a brass coffee table with intricate detailing is just across from me, and decorative trinket boxes adorn the shelves, memorabilia harking back to the days of my Grandma’s life in India. I’ve heard many stories of black panthers, wild elephants, thieving servants and monsoon rains from my Grandma, but today I want to know more. I sip my tea and breathe in the wonderful aroma, and wonder – is this what India smells like? I lean over and press record, pull out my notes and prepare to ask my first question, “Grandma, how on earth did you end up on an Indian tea plantation?”                                   
She pauses before answering, “Well, it was 1955...”

Meeting my Husband

It was 1955 and I’d just had my 21^st birthday. I was travelling to England to continue my singing studies so I was very excited! Even though I’d completed my diploma of music in Adelaide there were no paid music careers available in Australia. I was travelling with a friend named Norma. She was a singer, a bit older than me, about 25 I think. We set sail from Adelaide and I met Gordon ten days later. Now this is a story!

A week or so into the trip we berthed in Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka). It was my first sight of anything other than Australia and the first place we visited, so it was very exciting. You had to get on a little ferry to go to the mainland and on the mainland there were passengers waiting to embark on our ship. Apparently Gordon was amongst these people with two other bachelors. These men were all tea planters from India and they’d travelled across India to Ceylon to board the ship for England. They were waiting to embark on the ferry when they saw us. Gordon told me later that he had been praying for a wife. He’d had a dream about the girl he was going to marry, and when he saw me he knew I was the one he’d dreamt about. Sounds a bit far-fetched but he assures me it was true! Now, they had booked their passage on the ship in tourist, but I was on first-class. Gordon talked to the purser and asked if they could swap to first-class. The purser said yes, so the three bachelors were moved to new cabins in first-class just so Gordon could meet me.

Meanwhile, Norma and I were in Ceylon for the day. When we came back on board, about 5 o’clock, we went up to the bar to get a soft drink. We were hot and tired but happy because we’d had a lovely time. It was an open bar and I noticed a table with young men dressed in white shirts and white pants, I’d never seen this before but I guessed they were tea planters. I had read novels about tea planters and I had an idea of what they were like – Somerset Maughan type of stories – and I was a bit wary because we were young and travelling on our own. 

Anyway, these young men spoke to the steward and invited us to join them at their table, but I didn’t want to do that. However, I suggested that they join us. So they did. And that’s how I first met Gordon – he sat next to me and asked lots of questions! I wasn’t attracted to him immediately; there was another young man I quite liked. 

After dinner we went upstairs for coffee, you always went for coffee in the lounge after dinner; they came and joined us and we got talking. I think there might have been a movie on that night, Moulin Rouge, and I sat next to Gordon in the movie. After the film he wanted to explore, so I showed him all over the ship. We got to the top deck but as we were coming down the stairs I slipped and ended up in his arms! So he caught me, and that was that! The next day flowers arrived at the cabin with a little note asking me if I’d go and have afternoon tea with him in the restaurant. We went up for afternoon tea and we had cucumber sandwiches and little cream cakes. We talked and talked. I suddenly realised that we had a lot in common. It was lovely, he was just like a good friend and I felt very comfortable with him. 

On Sunday we went to church on the ship and I wrote down after the church service – because I’d noticed how much he’d enjoyed it and how much we had in common – “Is this the man I’m going to marry?” And this was only after the third day! Two days later we went on shore together in Naples. He had a bit of money so he was buying me little gifts and writing me notes, a tradition he carried on right throughout our married life. In Naples, he proposed to me. I think we’d known each other just five or six days. He said to me, “When we get to England may I buy a ring for the third finger of your left hand? Would you wear it? Would you accept it?”

Getting Married

I didn’t say yes straight away, there was so much riding on my decision.  

When we got to England, Gordon’s sister, Barbara, was encouraging me to say yes. I remember we went to dinner near the Thames and during a walk along the river Barbara tried to get me to make a decision. I did say yes eventually and Gordon wrote to my parents who were then on their way to England to live with me while I was at the London Conservatorium of music doing my singing training. In his letter, Gordon said we wouldn’t get married for a couple of years and I was to go on with my singing. Gordon returned to India but found he was too lonely without me. After a few months he wrote and told me he couldn’t wait for another two years. So just after my parents arrived in England I received a letter saying that Gordon was planning on coming home in November. It was very hard for my parents knowing that he was coming back to marry me and then we’d leave England. My mother took it very badly; she didn’t even want to meet Gordon.

It was hard giving up my career but I knew firmly it was what I had to do. I very much wanted marriage and I didn’t have a strong ambition in my heart to be a singer.  A lot of the ambition was my mother’s which she’d sown in me as a young person. She would have loved a singing career, and she was actually more gifted than I was. It was a stressful time and my mother was very sad, but I’ve never regretted the decision I made.

Arriving in India

We arrived in India a week before Christmas in 1956. The first thing that stood out was the smell! All the streets and pavements were splattered with what I assumed was blood. 

I thought “Oh no, all these poor people are suffering from some terrible lung disease!” 

But Gordon laughed and said no, it was beetlejuice. The Indians chew it and then they spit it everywhere. Children were following us, asking for, “Bakshee, bakshee!” which means money in Hindi. My heart went out to all these beggar children, they were poor and dirty. Those were my first impressions of India – absolute horror at the poverty! 

We stayed at the famous hotel - The Taj Mahal in Bombay (now Mumbai). It was beautiful, it’d been built in the time of Queen Victoria and it was all marble and very luxurious, like a palace. 

We flew out from Bombay two days later to the Port of Cochin (in South India) in a very old aircraft, a Dakota I think. The plane didn’t get up very high and it had little vents in the floor where the wind whistled up under the seats, I remember hoping it wasn’t going to crash. We landed twice on the way. There were no airport buildings, only a tree and oil drums to manually refuel the aircraft. The tree served as the only toilet. Gordon said he’d watch for me when it was my turn to go behind the tree. You had to queue up and oh it was disgusting! But I coped with that. When we arrived a car was waiting to drive us to the tea estate. On the way I was feeling terribly carsick and I never got carsick. But soon after I found out that I’d been sick because I was pregnant.

The Protocol of Colonial India

It was only a few years since India had been partitioned and established self-government so there were still elements of Victorian etiquette and protocol from the British Raj days. I saw the end of it really. But because we lived far away from the city, our community still practiced some of the protocol from colonial times. For instance, the senior people in the district, like the senior managers’ wives, didn’t mix with the junior wives. 

I was a junior wife when I arrived. We had things like separate tennis courts for the senior and junior wives. The senior wives were quite superior. But some of them were lovely, for example, when I first arrived the local senior manager’s wife came to visit. The process was that she would bring hers and her husband’s cards, which would have a name, the tea estate where they lived and telephone number on it. You had a tray on a table in the hall and she’d place her cards there. Gordon had to tell me all this because I didn’t know what to do, it was very old fashioned. She came to visit and we had afternoon tea and after she left I was supposed to phone her and invite her for dinner. There was another senior lady who actually visited me with hat and gloves on, which was never done in Australia, so I was quite surprised to see that.

The Servants

The servants spoke English but in a distinctly Indian manner, “Oh I am telling you madam that I am very happy to be here and you are such a good madam, yes madam, thank you, thank you, thank you.” They were educated to the point where they could communicate well and some of them were very bright. When I first arrived we had five servants, a cook, a butler, a sweeper, a matey (who helped the cook), and a gardener.  

One of the things I personally found hard, and couldn’t do at first, was giving orders to the servants. I felt it was very demeaning to them and I wanted to do the work myself, like the washing and the cooking. I wouldn’t ring the bell if I wanted a servant, instead I would go and look for them and ask for help. Gordon had to be very firm with me and explain that this was their livelihood and with it came a certain amount of dignity that they had a job in a European household. For them, working as a servant was a very good job which gave them clothing, food, healthcare and education for their children.

We had a cook, named Arithythian, and he made a wonderful dessert called a Chocolate Icebox Cake. He was a good cook, and when I employed him all my friends were envious because he was very clever at doing things and his icebox cake was well-known throughout the district.       

But Arithythian had a weakness – he liked beer. For some weeks my husband had been noticing that the beer was very flat every time he opened a bottle, so he’d send it back and get another one, and then that’d be flat so he’d send it back and finally he’d get a good one, so he never suspected anything. Until one day, after the same thing happened, he decided to taste it. Before, he had just opened the bottle and if it wasn’t fizzing he’d send it back to the kitchen, but he tasted this one and realised it was actually cold tea! Arithythian had been ciphering off the beer and replacing it with tea. Meanwhile, Gordon had been to the liquor shop and complained and got very annoyed with the poor owners who said, “So sorry master, so sorry, we not knowing, we didn’t do anything.” And they gave him a fresh lot. Once Gordon found out it was actually Arithythian he took some of the cook’s wages away.            

I had to lock all the food up in a storeroom. It was a big room with shelving because we bought in bulk as we didn’t go to the bazaar every week. I had stacks of tinned food and all sorts of lovely things in there. But I kept it locked for the servants own well-being as they had a real weakness for stealing things. In India there is also a huge bribery problem, they give gifts to get good things. Working for the Scottish company, Finlay’s Tea, we were told that we weren’t to take bribes. We were allowed to take fruit and things that the Indian’s had grown, but not jewellery, alcohol or money. A lot of Indians wanted to give bottles of whiskey, which were very costly and hard to get, but we had to say no.

On the Tea Plantation

We lived in the High Range, an area of extensive hill country surrounded by jungle in Southern India. All the flavoured, expensive teas are grown here as the higher elevation gives a better quality leaf. We had Orange Pekoe and Broken Orange Pekoe and Lapsang which were very costly. We received good prices for our tea.

I used to walk around the tea plantations, and they were lovely. There were lots of little roads and tracks so the labourers could get from one field to the next. The tea is grown in fields, and the bushes are so flat you’d almost think they’d been mown with a lawnmower, but the labourers actually have a stick which they lay on top of the bush and they pick two fresh leaves and a bud above the stick.  

The tea is picked every day and a tractor goes around on the little roads. There’s a gathering point at a certain time of day when all the women come with their big baskets and a staff member, called a conductor, will weigh their tea leaves and give them a receipt. The labourers don’t get paid by the hour, but by what they pick. Gordon was a very good manager and he wanted to increase production so he put in place incentives schemes. He had prizes for the top pickers and they loved that, they’d all work harder to win a competition. The labourers plucked all day and they’d take a little lunch container made of brass, and they’d have curry with rice and maybe a poppadum, and they’d sit in the fields to eat lunch. They carried big baskets on their backs with a headband to take the weight of the tea leaves. The women labourers would pluck until they were quite pregnant, and sometimes these women would give birth in the fields because they wouldn’t stop working.

Wild Elephants

There was an estate we lived on called Kadalaar, a very pretty estate, but it had been built on an elephant walk. Now, the local people who lived in the hills had warned the company surveyors against building a bungalow in this particular area but the company hadn’t listened and the bungalow had been built. After the monsoon, once the dry weather began, the elephants would come back to the hilly areas to feed on the sprouting bamboo. And one of the tracks they came up was, of course, right through our garden! Well we should’ve learnt shouldn’t we, we’d just planted our vegetable garden and spent ages building a new tennis court. I think the elephants used to have dances up there on the tennis court! They pulled down the wire and broke the net and stomp, stomp, stomp all over the court and through our vegetable garden.

One evening, at the end of the monsoon, Gordon had come in with a lot of leeches on him and he really wanted a hot bath. He’d asked Anthony, the butler, to run him a bath but Anthony had come back saying, “Oh master, no good, water not coming.” 

So Gordon sent the matey, Sevenandy, to see what had happened to the water. Now, we had a spring that fed our house, and the pipes to this spring were up a track at the back of the garage. Sevenandy went up with an umbrella, because we were still getting a little rain, and suddenly we heard this terrible noise! The trumpeting of an elephant! Down came Sevenandy, running as fast as he could, there was an elephant following him and it was very angry, trumpeting and crashing into anything in its way. Well, the elephant knocked down our garage, it was terrible! The story was, Sevenandy had gone up in the rain with his umbrella in front of him and he’d gone slap-bang into this elephant with the point of the umbrella! So the elephant had turned on him and charged! The reason the water wasn’t working was because the elephant had trodden on the pipe. So that was quite an experience for us and poor Sevenandy.

The Beauty of the Black Panther

One day we were travelling by car down a windy, narrow road through the jungle and I needed to go to the toilet. Gordon said we’d stop at the next bend, so we slowed down and pulled over to a stop. To one side of the road there was a concrete parapet, and suddenly onto this parapet jumped a beautiful black panther. Black ones are quite rare. The amazing thing about this sighting was that we were so close I could’ve put my hand out and touched him. We just looked at each other and I observed his eyes. I felt safe because we were in the car and the windows were up. I remember a blue butterfly flew past him as I watched. Of course Gordon wanted to take a photo so he quietly put his hand out to grab his camera but just that little movement and the panther was off. I shall never forget that experience and to this day it remains the most beautiful of pictures in my mind.

An Indian Hospital

My son David was born at the local Indian hospital. By that time the European doctor who’d delivered our daughter Penny had left the district and we had an Indian doctor, but he wasn’t available when I went in at 2 o’clock in the morning for David’s birth. That was a bit difficult because we lived about an hour from the hospital and my labour pains were coming very quickly. Gordon had to leave me standing outside the hospital in the middle of the night with the watchman, who was dressed in his night gear with a blanket over his head, and who couldn’t speak any English. Gordon left me there while he went to find a nurse to open up the hospital. The nurse came and she was lovely, but she didn’t speak any English either. Between Gordon and the nurse we managed to deliver David safely without the doctor. It was a very fast labour at the end and I must have been pushing back hard because I accidentally got my head caught in the bars of the iron bed. Gordon and the nurse were very worried about it but I said, “Don’t worry about me! Just deliver this child!” So I was in labour and my head was stuck between the bars of the bed! After the birth they had to get a carpenter to come. I think he tried to bend the bars but couldn’t, he had to cut one of them eventually. It was quite a business, and of course it was talked about in the district and there was a great deal of humour about it.

Losing Penny

One day, on the estate with the elephant walk, my daughter got lost. Penny was in the house, and she would have been 3 or 4 and David was 18 months, I said to her, “Go and tell Lily (the nanny) to come in for tea.” 

Now, earlier she’d seen Lily in the garden with David in the pushchair, so she went outside to find them. But when she couldn’t see them in the garden she decided to go down the drive. Meanwhile, Lily and David were inside, but Penny didn’t know that. She got down to the end of the drive and still couldn’t find them so she must’ve thought “Oh they’ve gone on.” There was a bridge over a big, rushing river and she went over the bridge, and on down the road still looking for Lily to call her for tea. When she turned the bend and went a little further on, she reached an intersection which forked in three different directions. It was just coming onto dusk so she must have got confused and didn’t know which way was back home. Meanwhile, Lily appeared at the door for her tea and I asked, “Where’s Penny?”

“Oh I not seeing her madam, I thought she was with you,” she said. “No,” I said, “I sent her to get you.” 

Gordon was listening and when he heard this he leapt from his seat and called the butler, Anthony, to come and look for Penny. My heart was pounding as we ran outside. The first thing we thought about was the river, so Gordon and I went down to the water to look for Penny, thinking somehow she had tripped and fallen in. Anthony ran off down the road, I didn’t know where he was going. It was terrifying because it was getting dark by this time and we couldn’t find her. But just a few moments later, Anthony came walking up the road holding Penny in his arms and calling to us, “Master, Master, missy here, missy here.” And there she was, safe and sound with only a few ant bites up her legs.

Labour Disputes

One day there was a fight on the plantation, it wasn’t a private thing; it was something to do with work. There were two factions who were fighting each other and a stabbing occurred in the area near the tea factory. Lily, the children and I had just come back from a walk, when I saw a man lying on our lawn. I could see he was in pain and when I got closer I realised he had blood all over his body. He’d been knifed in the chest. My immediate reaction was to do something, so I called Anthony and we used cloths and bandages to try and stop the bleeding. I didn’t know who the injured man was; just that he was hurt. I called an ambulance and he was rushed to the local hospital - we saved his life! Gordon finally came home and I told him what I’d done. He was a little concerned because he knew how the legal system worked in India. We were due to go on leave a couple of weeks after the stabbing but a court case ensued. The court said that I was a witness and that I’d interfered with this particular event so I was subpoenaed, I couldn’t leave. Our company lawyer had to intervene at a high level to get them to agree to release me. A bribe had to be paid before I was allowed to leave the country – that’s how the legal system worked in India. I was advised at that time to never touch or help people who are injured in India because you can get into all sorts of trouble as they will use you for their own ends. But I wouldn’t have done anything differently even if I’d known this.

Grandma folds another shirt she’s been ironing, and I check the recorder. We’ve talked for almost three hours. There are only a couple more questions left on my list. I consider making myself another cup of tea but I’m so engrossed in my Grandma’s life story that I abandon the idea. Instead I ask, “What did you miss the most about India when you left?”   Grandma contemplates my question for a moment before saying, “I think I miss the mystery of India the most. We lived in an amazing area in the hills, if was full of wildlife and excitement. There isn’t anything like that in New Zealand.”  

The Mystery of India, so that was the beauty of it. I get ready to ask my last question but I hesitate for a moment, I don’t want the storytelling to end. 

"Grandma, what was the biggest lesson you learnt while living on an Indian tea plantation?”

She smiles and replies, “I learnt to respect other people from different cultures to my own, to see their way of life and not try to put mine upon them. I learnt this right from the beginning when I wouldn’t use the bell to summon the servants because I thought that it wasn’t right. But I had to learn it was ok, this was something they’d accepted and in fact, felt quite proud and pleased about. So that’s what I learnt – to appreciate people of other cultures and respect their way of life.”   

I thank Grandma before hitting “stop” on the recording device. We sit in companionable silence for a few moments reflecting on everything that has been said this afternoon. Grandma breaks the silence first and chuckles, “Well, that’s not even half of it. I still haven’t told you the story of the senior wife who crossed paths with a tiger!” 

I laugh and reply, “Wait a minute! I’m just going to make us a cup of tea.”  

Charging elephants, blood-sucking leeches, thieving cooks, babies born in fields, knife-wielding employees; it’s just another day on an Indian tea plantation. 

Copyright Lydia Dawson (2013)