Mist of Midnight
Page 33
“But then we shall return home to Headbourne, is that right?” Mercy asked, a bit anxiously this time. I squeezed her hand. I, too, had once been an anxious, eager young girl pulling away from Southampton on my way to the unknown.
Her father gathered her in his left arm. “Yes, dearest, you needn’t fear. We shall return home.” He put his other arm around my waist, drawing me near. The water shimmered its release of day and embrace of night as gentle mists floated above the land in the distance; I closed my eyes in thankful bliss as Luke whispered Milton in my ear.
“Joy, thou, in what he gives to thee, this Paradise, and thy fair Eve.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I love Gothic romances, a little creepy around the edges, the kind of book wherein you devoutly hope the hero is who you want him to be, not who you suspect he might be. I especially love those with a historical and British bent, with a heroine who is both vulnerable and strong. I’ve fond memories of sharing Victoria Holt’s books with my grandmother.
My interest in this particular story ignited when I read a biography of the first wife of William Carey, the man often considered the Father of Missions. Dorothy Carey was an unwilling missionary. She did not want to leave England, but her husband persisted and planned to take their eldest son with him, perhaps forever, leaving her home with the younger children. Dorothy was finally convinced to accompany her husband (or perhaps was bullied into it). Suffering first from what we would call depression, she was an unhappy woman who was locked inside, crying, while her husband baptized their son and his first Indian convert. Her illness progressed and she ended her days in paranoia, psychosis, and misery after the death of their son Peter from dysentery, which she herself suffered from throughout her life. Carey, who seemed to have been both driven and a man seeking relief, as well as confinement, for his wife, went on to marry another woman after Dorothy’s death, a woman suited to mission work. They lived and worked together happily.
This interest next led me to the Mault family. Among the earliest missionaries from England to India, sent from the London Missionary Society, both Charles and Margaret Mault were admirably, happily suited to missionary work. They joined Margaret’s brother, Charles Mead, and his wife in South India. Mrs. Mead and Mrs. Mault worked together to open schools that taught both academic and practical subjects to girls in a state where girls never went to school. Mrs. Mault, an accomplished lace maker from Honiton, shared her skill. Lace making offered Indian girls financial freedom, dignity, and the ability to climb the social, if not the caste, ladder. Their lace was proudly displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London and sold throughout the world.
Although I drew from hard history and inspiration from those named above, conflating them in some ways, my story is (and my characters are) purely fictional. I did keep Mr. Mead’s true name, rather than fictionalizing him, to honor him. He was removed from the London Missionary Society after marrying an Indian Christian woman some years after his English wife’s death. He remained in India, serving, and died there.
There is no better lead than that to show the complexities of nineteenth-century missions. Many missionaries gave up lives of comfort and ease to follow a call to share their faith and their God, very often at great, lifelong, and final cost to themselves. And yet when you read the history, there are also serious cringe-worthy moments: the marking of others as “heathen” and high-handed paternalism among them. Sometimes missionaries arrived before, with, and after colonialists, which further complicated interpretation of motives. The story of missions is the story of Christianity writ small, striving to achieve and do good to others, and for God, often succeeding but also succumbing from time to time to the clay feet we all have.
To place in context the redeeming work of nineteenth-century missionaries to India, I offer some insight from Indian Christians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
In a 2014 interview in Christianity Today, Gary Gnidovic talks with Dr. M. A. Raju, who presides over an Indian hospital founded by Christian missionaries. Gnidovic acknowledges, “When it comes to the history of missions, we often think in terms of all the mistakes that have been done, in India and other places where there’s been cultural insensitivity.” Raju responds, “The missionaries came on the backs of the colonists. When the missionaries arrived, they didn’t find a unified India. They found nearly 70 major kingdoms, warring against each other.
“How did India get a new identity? Missionaries mastered the languages of India. In eastern India, William Carey and his associates mastered Bengali and Sanskrit. German missionaries mastered Tamil. English missionaries mastered Malayalam. American missionaries mastered Marathi. The first dictionary, for example, in Tamil and Bengali was written by missionaries. And they did it because they wanted to master the language in order to translate the Bible into the language. But they were also interested in teaching people to read and write.”
Raju continues, “So they taught Bengali. They taught Tamil in the south. They taught Malayalam in the south. In the west they taught Marathi. The languages developed, and people learned to read and write. They needed people to read the Bible, so they started schools. And they taught English, and the result was a highly Anglicized community of higher education of regional communities of language learning, codifying the script. So language and education went together.”
Later in the article, Raju says, “Christians also spoke against the caste system. Abolishing the caste system is a big blow to Hinduism, because if you abolish caste, you’re basically saying there’s no rebirth, and you’re allowing people to go up and down the social ladder. Low-caste people weren’t allowed to go into Hindu temples, but now they are allowed to go into them. There were all sorts of reforms to Hinduism because of Christianity.”
Finally, he highlights the “impact their [Indian Christians] missionary forefathers had, on language, education, Indian identity, health, and the treatment of women, outcasts, the poor.”
In A Forgotten History, by Joy Gnanadason, Dr. K. Rajaratnam proposes the following insights: “The entry of the Brahmins [in the tenth century] coupled with feudalism caused dissensions among the people. The oppression of the so called ‘low caste’ by the upper class people started. It was only by the end of the 19th century when the missionaries infused into them the spirit of dignity and courage through education and the Gospel message that they could shake off their bondage. Ironically, it is the same race of people who had enslaved India through the East India Company, who also helped the exploited to free themselves!”
Even before Protestant missionaries arrived, Catholic missionaries arrived, in 1510. Still earlier, it’s been reliably claimed, Jesus’ disciple Thomas arrived in Malabar, where he ministered and was later martyred. The miraculous story of the petals, as told in the book, has been faithfully handed down through the ages and can be found referenced in National Geographic magazine’s March 2012 issue, among other sources. Syrian Christians in India spring from Thomas’ ministry.
In the nineteenth century, many Indian people found their way to England, and most were in difficult circumstances upon arrival. According to the Open University on its website in its Making Britain section, the Ayahs’ Home “had been founded by a committee of women who had resolved there should be a place to house stranded ayahs in England.” The Ayahs’ Home appears to have been founded in 1825 in Aldgate by a Mrs. Rogers (according to an advert in The Times on December 1868, although there are conflicting reports about the exact date and manner of foundation). “It provided shelter for ayahs whose employment had been terminated upon arriving in Britain, and found employment and passage back to India for them with British families who were travelling there. The employer who brought the ayah to Britain usually provided the ayah’s return ticket, which was surrendered to the Home. The matron then ‘sold’ the ticket to a family requiring the ayah’s services and in the meantime, before the travel date, the Home would use the money to pay
for the ayah’s board and lodging.”
The Home was mission run for a number of years.
Poor Delia Dainley was in good company. There really was a fishing fleet of young women hoping to reel in a respectable husband, usually one posted to India, an area parched of young English roses. Women in the Victorian era were still dependent upon fathers, brothers, and husbands unless they were women of their own means or widows. Happily for our heroine, she caught the heart of Captain Luke Whitfield. Whitfield was loosely based on Lieutenant Frederick E. B. Beaumont, who was granted a patent for improvements to the Adams revolver.
Nineteenth-century India was a time and place of tumult, and there were indeed missionaries killed in the Uprising of 1857, though not the families I loosely based my book on. I read many accounts of the Uprising, but the one that most impacted my book was The Memsahib and the Mutiny, a firsthand account by R. M. Coopland. Although my book is fictional, I drew heavily on her writing, not only for accuracy but because I did not wish to imagine and then impute violent acts to any person or people who did not commit them. There were villains and heroes on both sides. I retained the name of the real Muslim bearer (butler), Musa, as well, in order to honor, these many years later, his selfless actions.
The Hussars have a reputation as horsed ladies’ men, but I must credit Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for the observation, put in the mouth of Michelene, that the men run away from them and the women toward them!
There really was a large-hearted man named John Pounds, of Portsmouth, who despite his own difficult circumstances reached out to impoverished and overlooked children. His actions led to the foundation of the “ragged schools,” which provided food, lodging, schooling, and trades for hundreds of thousands of the poorest children.
Finally, the portrayal of dear, shortbread-eating Mrs. Ross was inspired by my own interaction with who I believe to be a guardian angel in London (complete story on my website, www.sandrabyrd.com. In spite of my firm belief in the angels of Scripture, without that encounter I might not have had the desire to write one so directly on the page.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I feel thankful and blessed to have a number of wonderful people who graciously contributed their many talents to this book.
Jenny Q of Historical Editorial twice brought her pen and insight to the completed manuscript and I can’t envision writing an historical novel without her fine insight into story development.Special thanks to Dr. James Taneti, author of Caste, Gender, and Christianity in Colonial India: Telugu Women in Mission. Dr. Taneti offered guidance as the book was developing and read the manuscript to ensure the material was handled with accuracy and sensitivity. A huge thanks to Dr. Alex Naylor and Finni Golden, historical advisers and residents of Portsmouth, England (in a house dating to 1600!), both of whom were instrumental as I wrote and developed the novel. They not only helped keep my history straight, they helped me keep my English English, and not American.
Danielle Egan-Miller, Joanna MacKenzie, and Abby Saul of Browne and Miller Literary Agency are among the rare agents who are also great editors and this book was a skeleton of itself before they came alongside with excellent advice. Thanks, too, to the entire hardworking team at Howard Books who help bring these books to life and to market, including the careful attention of Senior Editor Beth Datlowe Adams.
Friends Serena Chase, Debbie Austin, Renee Chaw, and Dawn Kinzer deserve a healthy and thankful shout-out for their focused comments as the book developed and their friendship in the difficult patches. My newest editor-in-residence, Miss Parnel Bennetts, native of Hampshire, read the book both as a lover of Gothic romance and as a local expert. Special love and thanks to Ben Bennetts and the late, lovely M.M. Bennetts for all their help.
I could never have written this book without my wonderful husband, Michael, and all THREE of my children now that we’ve added a wonderful son-in-law to our family.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photograph © Studio B Portraits
Sandra Byrd is a noted author of historical fiction, including the first book in her Tudor series, To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn. She lives near Seattle, Washington. Visit SandraByrd.com.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Sandra Byrd
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First Howard Books trade paperback edition March 2015
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Interior design by Jaime Putorti
Cover design by Peachpie Design Studio
Cover images by Mark Owen/Arcangel Images and Shutterstock
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Byrd, Sandra.
Mist of midnight / Sandra Byrd.
pages cm
1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Inheritance and succession—Fiction. 3. Great Britain—History—Victoria, 1837–1901—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.Y678M57 2014
813’.54—dc23
2014007378
ISBN 978-1-4767-1786-9
ISBN 978-1-4767-1787-6 (ebook)