Trinidad News, Trinidad and Tobago
One man’s diary of indentureship
Review by Kevin Baldeosingh Sunday, October 5 2008
The First Crossing
Theophilus Richmond
The Derek Walcott Press, 2007
ISBN 978-906038-01-4, 175 pages
This book is a 19th century diary written by medical doctor Theophilus
Richmond, the Englishman who was the physician on the first ship to
bring Indian indentured labourers to British Guiana.
The book has a surfeit of editors ` novelist David Dabydeen, book
editor Jonathan Morley, historian Brinsley Samaroo, sociologist Amar
Wahab, and historian Brigid Wells ` who wrote the 61-page
introduction. The book itself is the first part of a project to
publish or re-publish defunct works relevant to the Caribbean under
the publishing company that carries Walcott’s name.
Richmond’s diary is notable not only for being the first account of
the indentured journey in 1837, but because there was a cholera
outbreak on the ship which resulted in 12 deaths among the 170 Indians
on board (as well as one crew member). It is a tribute to 22-year-old
Richmond’s dedication that he helped contain the outbreak. He died the
following year, two months after arriving in Demerara, of yellow
fever.
The journal reveals an attractive character. Richmond was curious
about the world around him, open to new experiences, and empathic to
persons of other races. His diary is begins with a dedicatory epistle
to his mother, and she is his implied audience throughout since, he
says, `I am writing this journal at your request and for your
amusement¦’ After landing in Calcutta, he apologises for the gap in
entries, caused by him being too busy settling in, but he promises to
`collect facts and look carefully about me.’
He takes note of the local fruits, records social habits such as
Indians leaving shoes by door, and says, `They are so bigoted that if
a European only looks into the pot in which they are boiling their
rice, they immediately throw it away.’
His Victorian mentality reveals itself in small details. Richmond
describes the wife of a Scottish clergyman as `a very pleasant and
pretty wife, whom I had before met in the days of her virginity’ and
used dashes for `damned’ when quoting a line from Shakespeare’s
Macbeth ` `Out, d”d spots!’
Yet he also has an eye for women. `The native ladies are not
particularly handsome and are but seldom seen out of their palanquins,
but the Armenian and Cashmere women are really beautiful; their
complexion is light and their feet and figures, especially of the
Armenians, are perfect,’ he writes. `The Cashmere woman is rather
inclined to en bon point¦All wear bangles and bracelets on their
arms and legs¦and enormous earrings of uncouth shapes, with
occasionally rings thro’ their noses, a fashion however chiefly
confined to the Hindoos.’
The `Cashmere’ are, of course, Kashmir, but it is not clear who the
Armenians are, and none of the book’s five editors clarifies such
issues. It is possible that Richmond is referring to Iranians, since
Armenians were once thought to have come from this region.
This is not the only deficiency of the editors. The book’s back-cover
blurb describes Richmond’s diary as bearing `light-hearted witness to
his exploits at sea, his infatuation with the Creole beauties of
Mauritius, and his escapades in India where, disdainful of Moslem and
Hindoo customs, he pokes fun at the natives¦’
This is unfair on several levels. First, the description takes no
account of the times that produced Richmond ` a defect for
professional historians; second, the claim that Richmond pokes fun at
native customs is an exaggeration.
For example, witnessing some dancing girls (called Nautch) at a party
put on by the local Rajah, Richmond writes: `I cannot say I thought
much of it, for it is not dancing but merely a series of postures
which they go through to the music of their own voice and of little
silver bells fastened about their persons¦Some of them were
exceedingly beautiful, for they were not veiled like the other native
women. Every Rajah or Chief has several of these Nautch girls attached
to his establishment, who are selected according to the excellence of
their voice, face and figure.’
What Richmond does is observe, doing so in a detailed fashion to hold
his reader’s interest, and express opinions which can be considered
politically incorrect only by modern standards.
However, the blurb also refers to Richmond’s compassion, and this
comes out when the cholera outbreak occurs. He describes the first
victim in the following words: `The state of the poor creature tho so
recently seized was dreadful and his suffering beyond all
description.’
And, when a five-year-old boy dies on the ship and his Indian parents
cling to the remaining younger sister and baby, Richmond writes, `It
would be difficult to find a more piteous and mournful sight than this
family exhibited during then afternoon of Sunday’, and speaks of `the
affectionate and wretched husband, whom neither threats nor endeavours
could keep away from those he loved so well¦’ And, when the danger
is passed, he says, `seldom have I experienced more sincere pleasure
than I did at the moment when I was first able to assure myself that
the crisis in both mother and child was past and that I was to be the
means of gladdening the Father’s heart with the intelligence that they
were out of danger.’
The editors’ introduction also at points abandons academic
professionalism in favour of ethnic trum-peting. `The half million who
left India for the Caribbean between 1838 and 1917 were the bravest
among the millions who inhabited the populous states of Uttar
Pradesh’, while Indo-Caribbean people are also described as retaining
the following aspects of Indian culture: `respect for learning, a
divinely ordained love for the land, a high regard for family life as
a firm foundation of nation-building.’ This is ideology, not
history. Richmond’s diary is therefore most enlightening as a record
of a typical middle-class Englishman observing foreign cultures at the
height of the Empire’s power, with the section on 19th century
Calcutta being particularly interesting for its mini-portrait of the
Raj. But, as a record of the indentureship experience, the book is
only a footnote.