Caroline Chisholm

by Sarah Goldman

  The sloop edged closer to shore. Caroline felt the heavy weight of the sun sear through her brocaded cotton dress. Turning her face towards the slight breeze off the sea, she noted other East Indiamen anchored close by. It was still only early morning, but on land the buildings were shimmering and glowing in the first rays of the sun, conjuring a fairy-tale town. Behind rose the imposing walls of the East India Company’s Fort St George.

  Madras had no harbour. The vessel dropped anchor in deep water off a long, white, sandy beach and was immediately surrounded by a flotilla of masoolahs — traditional Indian surf-boats — bobbing on the tide. Each small craft was crewed by dark-skinned natives, naked apart from a few yards of cloth wound about their nether parts, who were ready to convey passengers and luggage ashore. Caroline, like the other women on board, tried not to notice the bare bodies glistening in the hot sun, but the allure was almost too much. It seemed the more she tried to avoid watching the boatmen, the more her eyes were drawn to them.

  Then she was being ushered over the side of the boat and, clasping tight to the rope ladder, descending fearfully, slowly, a difficult matter in inadequate shoes and long skirts. Arms reaching up received her as she stepped down onto the lurching boards of the boat, then seated her next to other passengers. Twelve men at the oars rowed the boat through the rolling surf towards the shore.

  As the small craft pitched onto the sand, an army of natives hauled it up the beach. When Caroline rose unsteadily from the wooden bench, callused hands were thrust in front of her. Gingerly, she took hold of one and, carefully lifting the hem of her dress, just a little, climbed out of the masoolah.

  Finally, she was on dry land. Unsteady after months on the ship, she stumbled, almost tumbling to the ground as her shoes sank into the soft sand. A hand steadied her. “Why Mrs Chisholm, anyone would think that you were a drunken sailor for all your time at sea,” a soft Scottish voice whispered into her ear. She looked up into the glaring sun to find her Archie silhouetted against a brilliant cerulean sky. He was holding tightly to her elbow and smiling down at her. She turned and slid into his arms, all her fears and worries melting away. His arms closed around her and he held her tightly against him for a few seconds before releasing her to give her a chaste salute on her cheek. He drew her arm through his and his eyes lit up with a boyish grin. “Come along, Caroline, I have much to show you.”1

  Archibald was stationed more than one hundred kilometres west of Madras, at Vellore, but one assumes that he would have been there on the beach the day Caroline arrived. He must have felt that fortune was now firmly on his side: only a few months earlier he had been promoted to captain in the 30th Native Infantry, giving him not only greater responsibility but also an improved income of about £420 per year; and now his wife had finally joined him.2

  Caroline was now living the life that she had dreamt of since, as a little girl, she had played her colonisation game, with its boats crossing the oceans to carry her dolls from one foreign country to another. Madras must have been staggering for a young woman who had spent most of her twenty-five years in rural obscurity. The light in England had been soft, the weather damp and cold; the summer smelt of roses and honeysuckle, the food was mainly roasted meats and heavy puddings. Here the light was luxurious, even dazzling, the atmosphere was hot and breathless, and the perfumes of tropical flowers filled the air, along with the aromas of pungent spices, rich curries and fragrant rice. Nor was it just the vision of scantily clad locals that would have unnerved her: there were so many curiosities constantly assaulting her senses. According to Julia Maitland, the wife of a British judge then living and working in India, the snake charmers were amongst the most extraordinary sights: “One day we had eight cobras and three other snakes all dancing round us at once, and the snake-men singing and playing to them on a kind of bagpipes. The venomous snakes they call good snakes: one, the Braminee cobra, they said was so good his bite would kill a man in three hours.”3

  The most challenging aspect for Caroline, though, would have been personal. Apart from the emotional aspect of resuming married life with Archibald, Caroline found that she had been transported not just into a different culture but into an entirely different social world, which in many ways was at odds with her nature. British ladies resident in India, known locally as memsahibs, were generally a languid, phlegmatic bunch, who were taught that exertion was dangerous because their European constitutions were too delicate for the Indian climate. In reality, there was little need to expend much energy on anything. Nineteenth-century middle-class women in England, apart from the extremely wealthy, rarely engaged more than two or, at most, three servants. In a world of large families, before the mechanisation of many domestic chores, there was still much for women to do at home. In India, it was vastly different. When Julia Maitland first arrived there in 1836, she noted not just the ridiculous number of servants but that each had separate responsibilities: “one to sweep my room, and another to bring water. There is one man to lay the cloth and another to bring in dinner, another to light the candles, and others to wait at table.”4 It was not unusual for couples to have upwards of fifteen to twenty servants. Even the animals had attendants: “Every horse has a man and a maid to himself — the maid cuts grass for him; and every dog has a boy. I inquired whether the cat had any servants, but found that she was allowed to wait upon herself; and, as she seemed the only person in the establishment capable of so doing, I respected her accordingly.”5 Caroline would not have fitted easily into the lethargic role of an Anglo-Indian memsahib.

  Fort St George and the town of Madras, India, around the time Caroline arrived (Alamy)

  After Vellore, it appears that she and Archibald returned to Madras to take up quarters in Fort St George, or White Town as it was known. It was there that she found an antidote to her inactivity and the endless inanities of social visits and gossip that prevailed amongst the majority of the wives of the East India Company officers. Caroline saw that many of the daughters of the ordinary soldiers were left with few or no formal activities, thereby becoming prey to idleness and sloth as well as moral dangers. “In budding womanhood the playthings of passion, in their youth loathsome and abandoned, and in their prime the tenants of a premature tomb,”6 was how one of Caroline’s earliest biographers, Eneas Mackenzie, rather dramatically described their predicament. By contrast, as soon as their brothers were old enough they were taken into the army and given purpose, a career and an income.

  The sight of these girls, many little more than children, may well have reminded Caroline of the daughter that she had lost not so long ago. She noticed the girls hanging around the market place almost as though they were on show for any passing soldier. More observant and more caring than other officers’ wives, she became aware of how exposed these youngsters were to pregnancy and disease. Her personal experiences, without doubt, would have made her especially determined to help them. That decision would become her first venture into large-scale philanthropy. She opened a boarding school for girls.

  Despite the general indolence of most of the memsahibs, there were a number who, along with various missionaries and other senior civil servants, had already established schools throughout India, including Julia Maitland. Maitland’s school, though, like most of the others, was just for local boys; there was significant resistance in India to educating females.7 The children of British officers and gentlemen were already provided for and in any case most of those children were shipped off to boarding school back home by the time they were seven or eight years old.8 Caroline’s Madras school would be unusual on two counts: not only was it just for girls, but those girls were also the daughters of the common European soldiers, the sort of “riff-raff” usually ignored by the ruling class.

  Establishing the school provided Caroline with excellent experience in negotiating with powerful men and bringing them round to her point of view. Although Archibald was a well-respected captain, an approach by his wife for aid to found her school would certainly h
ave raised eyebrows amongst the elite. Other women who interested themselves in such activities either assisted their husbands in the endeavour or worked with the ladies’ committees of missionary and church institutions.9 In either case, very few of the women actually made it their business to facilitate or run the schools. Undaunted by either her sex or her background, Caroline sought out Henry Chamier of the Madras Secretariat and, through him, the Governor of Madras, Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Adams.10

  Caroline would have known of Sir Frederick well before she arrived in India. Some twenty-five years earlier, he had commanded the 3rd British Brigade at the Battle of Waterloo, twice leading his men into decisive attacks against Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. Though he lost close to a quarter of his soldiers, he was nonetheless hailed as one of the heroes of a battle that is still remembered more than two centuries later. Caroline probably had dual motives in appealing to Sir Frederick. She would certainly have needed some funds to start the project, but, just as importantly, where he led others were sure to follow; his backing would no doubt guarantee enough money for the school’s ongoing support. Caroline was obviously taking the advice of that unnamed friend back in Northampton who had advised that she needed influential backers and financial help to make the most of her philanthropic work.

  Was she intimidated by appealing to such a man? Maybe. Once again, though, her enthusiasm and confidence would win the day. Possibly the very boldness of Caroline’s approach would have struck a chord of recognition in an old soldier who knew the value of courage. As a Scotsman, too, he may have been more willing to support the wife of one of his Highland captains. Whatever the reason Sir Frederick “subscribed £20, and in five days 2,000 rupees were raised by a few officers and gentlemen”.11

  So Caroline had her boarding school, which she rather grandiosely named The Female School of Industry for the Daughters of European Soldiers. Although the actual date the school was opened is not known, it was probably sometime during the first few years that she was in India, when Archibald was either stationed in or near Madras. At first, she set it up within Fort St George, but she soon realised that there the girls were too close to the soldiers. So she moved not just the school but her own household too. Leaving the exclusive lodgings within Fort St George, Caroline relocated to Black Town, which was not far from the fort’s protective walls and inhabited by the families of the ordinary soldiers and other poor European settlers. Here, close to the beach, she re-established the school and stipulated that no male visitor was permitted without the sanction of one of the managers. Caroline’s conduct in moving to Black Town would have been considered by the other officers’ wives as radical, and it may be that they thought her eccentric, particularly as there were often reports of disease and immoral behaviour in Black Town. Whilst Caroline would still no doubt have been welcomed by the ladies back in the fort, it is unlikely that any of them would have sought to return the visit. There is no evidence, but it must have been somewhat difficult for Archibald to have had his wife display such a singular disregard for expatriate norms of behaviour. Yet Caroline had warned him how it would be if he married her. In this first venture into philanthropy she showed that she was willing to forgo her comfort if it meant she could connect directly with the people she sought to help. It was an approach that she was to replicate again in Sydney and London.

  Apart from banning men, Caroline wrote up other rules, including provisions for the girls to enjoy daily recreation on the beach, as well as prayers and religious teaching, although she didn’t insist that they follow any particular religion. It may have been that to garner financial support, particularly from Sir Frederick and other officers, she had to agree to instruction from the Church of England. But, as she was to prove again later in Sydney, Caroline, whilst being deeply committed to Catholicism herself, was no proselytiser. Her overarching code was moral rather than religious.

  A matron and a mistress were hired to supervise the everyday running of the school. The matron, in charge of teaching the girls domestic skills, was described as “an excellent housewife . . . more suitable for not being able to read or write” (thus the responsibility for compiling reports and calculating budgets fell on the young girls who were also being taught to read and write).12 The mistress would have been accountable for the rest of the girls’ education and the overall running of the school, particularly when Caroline was absent from Madras, accompanying Archibald on his tours of duty. Even when absent, Caroline was determined to maintain her influence, so she penned an address to the students, which the mistress read to them regularly. Within that address was a plea to the girls to maintain a loving relationship with their parents, particularly their mothers as they grew old. Maybe Caroline was thinking of her own lost daughter when she wrote, “You cannot, my children, think how dearly a mother loves, and the comfort she would feel in having a daughter for a nurse.”13

  Whilst most of the other schools in India taught English, some arithmetic and the Bible, Caroline’s school was primarily a vocational institution. In other words, she knew that learning to read and write and studying rudimentary mathematics and religion would not necessarily equip young women to support themselves. Her aim was, in modern terms, to “future-safe” the girls by providing them with the skills to earn a living.14 Caroline’s school therefore also offered practical lessons in such activities as needlework, home economics and caring for the sick. Children as young as eight were required to shop, cook and manage both finances and rations.

  One problem, of course, was that in India, where servants were so plentiful and cheap, there were few openings for British maids and there was no guarantee that these girls would be repatriated back to Britain, where they were more likely to find appropriate work. So, Caroline also made sure that the girls were trained to be competent mothers, housekeepers and wives, to make them more suitable candidates for a respectable marriage. Either way, Caroline was determined to help stop them falling into prostitution or ending up cohabiting with men who had no legal or financial imperative to take care of them.

  Modern feminists have vehemently criticised Caroline’s limited ambitions for her charges. In this respect, there is some substance to their condemnation, but only from a twenty-first-century viewpoint. Across the globe in the early nineteenth century, female education was woeful, as were the chances of women gaining and maintaining autonomy. What Caroline did for the forgotten European girls of Madras was to provide them not just with an elementary education but also with a range of basic skills, which would at least afford them some options in life.

  With the school securely underway, Caroline’s life was about to take another turn. By August 1835 she was pregnant again. Was she hoping for another daughter or was she afraid that she might lose this child too? Her second child, a healthy son, named Archibald after his father, was born in Madras on 4 May 1836. An army doctor may not have been present at the birth, as it was still considered immodest by many expats in India to have a man attend such an event, but there would certainly have been a European midwife there.15 Whatever the case, a doctor would have visited Caroline shortly afterwards and in succeeding days to ascertain her health, though more through conversation than examination. Medical science had not really progressed much in the five years since Caroline’s first pregnancy, and some bizarre methods were still being employed. One well-respected army doctor who published a book on raising children for European women in India devoted at least two chapters to breastfeeding. He suggested that if a woman suffered from lumps in her breast whilst feeding her infant then the nurse should suck the breast dry with “her own mouth” before rubbing it with oil and brandy, after which up to two dozen leeches should be applied to the lump. Then to make certain that the treatment was successful the lump should be “fomented with hot water, so as to encourage the bleeding”.16 No wonder doctors in India recommended that white women should not leave their beds or receive visitors for at least two to three weeks after delivering their baby.

  In
fact, except in the very first few days, European women were usually told not to suckle their infants themselves because of the oppressive climate. Instead, doctors advised that they should use local wet-nurses or amahs.17 “No infant thrives so well in India as those fed by these women,” said one authority. It was not unusual for doctors to offer to examine Indian women and their children before they were employed as amahs, to ensure that they were clean and healthy. It was, nevertheless, often the sort of close bodily scrutiny that the doctors would have thought indecent to give a British woman.

  However commonplace it was for European women to employ amahs as wet-nurses, it must have been difficult for Caroline to watch another woman breastfeed her baby. Very possibly she resented the close physical bond developing between the amah and her newborn son. It may have meant that she failed to bond as she might have done with her child, and possibly a vital connection between them was lost; she may also have been unaware that the lack of intimacy was retarding her love for the little boy. Certainly, in future years she would send her sons away so that she could concentrate on helping the women of New South Wales, and she would also withdraw them from school so that she would have enough funds for her immigration work. In each case, she was troubled about her actions, but went ahead with them. Caroline seems to have managed to avoid the classic twenty-first-century woman’s anxiety about the conflict between work and family.

  There would have been little time for soul searching in India, however. Within two months of the birth, and no doubt despite medical advice that she should rest, the family was on the move again. Archibald had been posted about 630 kilometres to the northwest of Madras, to Secunderabad, and then later further north again to Bowenpally. On the journey, Archibald would have ridden with his men, but Caroline and the baby and amah would most likely have travelled in a palanquin, a type of wheelless litter strung between two poles and carried by at least four men. At walking pace, it must have been a remarkably tedious journey, despite the exotic scenery.