Miss Florence (‘Flossie’) Ross (left), newly engaged to Lieutenant Leslie Germain Lavie of the 20th Regiment Madras Infantry (right). At twenty-seven Lavie was considered young for marriage.
Grace Trotter, the girl who got away from her ‘tainted’ heritage.
Tiger shooting from an elephant: Grace’s sister, Mabel Trotter – hatted, corseted and gloved – with G. P. Sanderson, the Superintendent of Keddahs for the Maharaja of Mysore.
A bullock cart for use on roads, drawn by the white bullocks of Mysore.
Bethea Field and her mother – always known as Madre – in their garden in Poona in 1906.
Violet Field pictured by a river at Bhola, a noted beauty spot near Meerut, in June 1914.
Bethea when she returned to India aged nineteen, just after the Great War.
Jim and Violet in their courting days. Although Jim was a genial person, he could never manage to look cheerful in front of a camera.
The ‘wrong’ Major Williams, Arthur de Coetlogon Williams, who became Bethea’s husband.
Driving in a tonga along the road to the Khyber Pass, through a rocky, desolate landscape. In 1912, the year this photograph was taken by the twenty-one-year-old Lilah Wingfield, armed sentries guarded the heights in this dangerous territory between India and Afghanistan.
Leila Blackwell mounted on a yak on an excursion from Gilgit.
Mary Lloyd in a doolie – the Gulmarg version of both pram and carrycot.
Rosemary Cotesworth and William Redpath leaving the church after their wedding in 1936.
At seventeen, Iris Butler was presented at Court and almost immediately left for India, in the autumn of 1922. It was the start of an intensely social two years.
Gervase Portal in his ‘lungee’, or parade dress turban, brilliantly coloured in emerald, gold, deep blue and scarlet which was worn with a matching cummerbund on formal occasions, including at his wedding to Iris.
Iris Butler on her wedding day in 1927. She refused to carry the bouquet her father pressed into her hands at the last minute, describing it as ‘a tightly packed bunch of vegetation packed into a ham frill’ and snatched up an ostrich feather fan instead.
Billy Fremlin on her wedding day, aged twenty-two.
Ralph Fremlin on safari, with two porters.
‘The Smoking Concert’, held in the Durbar Hall, Mercara, in 1910. Pam and Billy’s father Ralph is in the centre of the top row, their mother Maud is the third woman from the right in the centre row.
Pam Fremlin, Billy’s older sister, arriving at the Bangalore Hunt Breakfast in 1935. The Fremlin plantation was seventy miles from Bangalore.
A meet of the Bangalore Hunt at 4-Mile Old Madras Road, in August 1935. Pam Fremlin, aged twenty-one, is second from left at the back.
Sheila Hingston, just before she came out to India in September 1929. She was just eighteen.
George Blackwood Reade, always known as Jerry, who became Sheila’s husband.
Lieutenant Colonel C.A.F. Hingston, Sheila’s father. ‘Hinkie’ was the most popular doctor in Madras.
Greenwood, the house in Ootacamund that belonged to Sheila’s mother Gladys. In front are the family car and driver and beside them Gladys and the eight-year-old Sheila, on her pony, held by a syce. In the background the ayah holds Sheila’s one-year-old brother Clayton.
Gladys Hingston entertaining in Madras: (from left to right) Rosita Forbes, the glamorous and well-known traveller, Gladys Hingston, Princess Nilufer – who was married to the second Prince of Hyderabad – and Sir George Stanley,
The Opening Meet of the Ooty Hunt. Since 1894, this had been taking place at the Maharaja of Mysore’s summer palace, Fernhill, presided over by the Maharaja as official host.
The ultimate goal for any Fishing Fleet girl was of course a wedding to the man of her choice. These could be lavish social occasions, such as this one in Poona in 1905 (above); for the Elgin wedding even the cake was larger than life. It stood 5 feet 7 inches high, weighed 650lbs and took two months to make.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My special thanks are due to the following: the Rev. Malcolm Acheson for permission to use An Indian Chequerboard by his grandfather James Acheson; Charles Arthur for the diary of his great-grandmother Grace Trotter; Keith Atkinson for the well-documented story of his great-great-grandfather Michael Edward Smith; Susan Batten and Lady Williams for the memoir by their mother Iris Butler; Malcolm Chase for the memoir of his mother Marian Atkins; James Collett-White for letters sent to his mother Patience Home and those sent by her to his father; Thomas Courtenay Clack for the memoir by his mother Marjorie Fremlin; Jessica Douglas-Home for letting me see the diary of her great-aunt the Hon. Lilah Wingfield; Simon Durnford for permission to use the memoir of his grandmother Bethea Field; Eric Evans for the letter and transcript of talk from his grandmother; Nick Phillips for A Year in the Gilgit Agency by his mother Leila Blackwell; Harriet and Toby Garfitt for permission to use their mother Annette Bowen’s memoir; Julia Gregson for her kindness and help, and Richard Gregson for the memoir by his mother Violet Hanson; Mary Gribbon for our long conversation together about her days in India as Mary McLeish; Sukie Hemming for the diaries of her grandmother Lady Elisabeth Bruce; Lyn Homan for the diary of her mother Hermione Claudine Gratton; Ann Jameson for the memoir by her great- grandfather Alfred Stowell Jones V.C.; Clare Jones for the memoir by her grandmother Honor Penrose; Charles Joynson for the memoir by his grandmother Cecile Stanley Clarke; Mary Lloyd for her reminiscences of Gulmarg; Jean Lovatt-Smith and Peter Whitestone for their kind permission to use extracts from the journal of their grandmother Florence Badgley; Katherine Prentice for talking to me at lengh and for lending me her memoir (written as Katherine Welford); Colonel Dan Raschen for Sam’s India, a memoir by his father Sam Raschen; Helène Reade for permission to use her parents’ letters and her unpublished story of her family’s connection with India; Andrew Redpath and his daughter Leila Redpath for the memoir of Andrew’s mother Rosemary Cotesworth and the journal of Alexander William Redpath; Caroline Saville for the letters of Lieutenant Leslie John Germain Lavie to his fiancée Florence Ross; Jonathan Scott for letting me see the diary of his grandmother Maude Bingham; Anne Storey for permision to use her aunt Kathleen Griffith’s memoir; Nicholas Thompson for letting me see the letters of his mother Jean Hilary; Stan Turner for his private book about his great-great-grandmother Mary, Mrs Templeman; Valerie Welchman for talking to me and for permision to use her memoir (written as Valerie Pridmore Riley); and Ralfe Whistler for the story of his mother Margaret Joan Ashton.
Among others I would like to thank are Keith and Nancy Atkinson, Joy Bailey, Barbara Durnford, Lord and Lady Elgin, Major John Girling, Richard Goodwin, Charles Greig, Mary-Clare Gribbon, Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, Dr Rosie Llewellyn Jones, David Lovatt-Smith, Professor Margaret Macmillan, Charlotte Martin, Penelope Mayfield, Nick Rander, Mike Waring, John Welchman, Ralfe Whistler, David Swain (then Secretary of the Oriental Club), the staffs of the London Library and the Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge, and last but not least, my wonderful editor Bea Hemming.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, Charles (ed), Plain Tales from the Raj (André Deutsch, 1976)
Allen, Charles, Raj: A Scrapbook of British India 1877–1947 (André Deutsch, 1977)
Allen, Joan, ‘Missy Baba’ to ‘Burra Mem’ (BACSA, 1998)
Anon., The Englishwoman in India (Smith, Elder and Co., 1864)
Aspinall, A., Cornwallis in Bengal (Manchester University Press, 1931)
Ballhatchet, Kenneth, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980)
Bamfield, Veronica, On the Strength: The Story of the British Army Wife (Charles Knight & Co., 1974)
Barr, Pat, The Dust in the Balance: British Women in India (Hamish Hamilton, 1989)
Barr, Pat, The Memsahibs (Secker & Warburg, 1976)
Battye, Evelyn Desirée, The Kashmir Residency (BACSA, 1997)
Beames, John Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian (Chatto
& Windus, 1961)
Beauman, Francesca, Shapely Ankle Preferr’d: A History of the Lonely Hearts Ad 1695–2010 (Chatto & Windus, 2011)
Beaumont, Penny and Roger, Imperial Divas: the Vicereines of India (Haus Publishing, 2010)
Bhatt, Vikram, Resorts of the Raj (Mapin Publishing Pvt, 1998)
Brendon, Vyvyen, Children of the Raj (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005)
Brown, A. Claude, The OrdinaryMan’s India (Cecil Palmer, 1927)
Buettner, Elizabeth, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (OUP, 2004)
Butler, Iris, The Viceroy’s Wife (Hodder & Stoughton, 1969)
Buxton, Meriel, The High-Flying Duchess (Woodperry Books, 2008)
Campbell-Martin, Monica, Out in the Midday Sun (Cassel & Co., 1951)
Collingham, E.M., Imperial Bodies (Polity Press, 2001)
Cunningham, H.S., The Chronicles of Dustypore (Smith, Elder & Co., 1875)
Dalrymple, William, White Mughals (HarperCollins, 2002)
Diver, Maud, The Englishwoman in India (William Blackwood & Sons, 1909)
Douglas-Home, Jessica, A Glimpse of Empire (Michael Russell, 2011)
Du Boulay, F.R.H., Servants of Empire (I.B. Tauris, 2011)
Fitzroy, Yvonne, Courts and Camps in India (Methuen, 1926)
Flaherty, Frances, Elephant Dance (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937
Forster, E.M., A Passage to India (Edward Arnold, 1924)
Gill, Anton, Ruling Passions (BBC Books, 1995)
Gilmour, David, The Ruling Caste (John Murray, 2005)
Godden, Rumer, A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep (Macmillan, 1987)
Hammerton, A. James, Emigrant Gentlewomen (Croom Helm, 1979)
Hilton Brown(ed.), The Sahibs (William Hodge and Co. 1968)
Howarth, David and Stephen, The Story of P&O (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986)
Hunt, R. and Harrison J., The District Officer in India 1930–1947 (Scolar Press, 1980)
Hyam, Ronald, Empire and Sexuality (Manchester University Press, 1990)
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UNPUBLISHED SOURCES
The diary of Sir William Adamson
The diary of Maude Bingham
The diary of Lady Elisabeth Bruce
The diary of Marjorie Fremlin
The diary of Claudine Gratton
The diary of Violet Hanson
The diary of the Hon. Lilah Wingfield
The journal of Florence Badgley
Journal extracts, Evelyn Barrett
The journal of Alexander William Redpath
Memoir: ‘An Indian Chequerboard’, by James Acheson
Memoir: Marian Atkins
Memoir: Frances Annette Bowen
Memoir: Iris Butler
Memoir: Bethea Field
Memoir: Kathleen Griffiths
Memoir: Alfred Stowell Jones, V.C.
Memoir: Honor Penrose
Memoir: ‘A Year in the Gilgit Agency’, by Leila Phillips
Memoir: Valerie Welchman (née Pridmore Riley)
Memoir: ‘Sam’s India’, by Sam Raschen
Memoir: Rosemary Redpath
Memoir: Katherine Prentice (née Welford)
‘In Search of Henry’, by Cecile Stanley Clarke
‘Mary, Mrs Templeman’, by Stanley Richard Turner
Letter and talk, Eric Evans
The letters of Harold Edwin Collett-White
The letters of Jean Hilary
The letters of Patience Home
The letters of Lieutenant Leslie John Germain Lavie (Caroline Seville)
Letters and unpublished transcript, Helene Reade
INDEX
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.
Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, 118
Acheson, Janet, 221
Acheson, Jim (later Sir James), 47–50, 50n, 62, 221, 223, 224, 226, 227, 253, 302
Acheson (née Field), Violet see Field (later Acheson), Violet
Acton, Dr, 14
Adamson, William, 18, 20, 21, 22
ADCs (aides–de–camp), 62–3, 64, 99, 109, 110, 111, 113, 135, 137, 138, 250, 265, 271, 272, 296
Aden, 18n, 28, 267
Adyar Club, Madras, 104, 162, 296
Adyar River, 102–3, 104
Afghanistan, 118–19, 226, 227
affairs, 151
Africa, 18
Aga Khan, 194
Agra, 48, 49, 50, 100–1, 147, 168, 243
Ahmednagar, 277
Ainley, Mrs, 144
Ajmer, 59
Alderney shingle, 195 and n
Aldous, Aline, 143
Aldous, Hugh (‘Bodie’), 143
Aldous, Louise, 143
Alexandra, Queen, 125, 191
Alexandria, 21, 22
Ali Khan (son of Nawab of Jaora), 155
Allahabad, 10, 118, 129
Allen, Geoffrey, 149, 247
Allen (née Henry), Joan see Henry (later Allen), Joan
All-India Muslim League, 170
All Saints College, 34
&n
bsp; All Souls, Langham Place, 301
Alwar, 77
Maharaja of, 77
America see United States
Amritsar, massacre of (1919), 170
Anchor Line, 267
Anderson (later Macdonald), Betsy, 90, 100–1, 142–3, 154, 250, 263–4, 284, 310
Anglo-Indians, 34, 35, 56, 166, 168, 308
Annaly, Lord, 206
Annamallais (Elephant Hills), 297–8, 300, 301
married life in, 302–8
Annamallais Club, 303
Annandale, 186, 190, 192
Anson, Jim, 208
Antigua, 293
Antrim, Lady, 133
Arabia, 39 and n, 49
Arabic, 49
Arcadia, 45, 47
Arkonam, 260, 261
Army see British Army; Indian Army
Army Cup Week, 146
Arnold, Dr, 57
Arrah House, 217–18
Arras, 78
arrivals, 72–84
Arthur, Sir Allan, 181
Arthur, Charles (Grace Trotter’s great-grandson), 175, 176
Arthur, Charles (Grace Trotter’s son-in-law), 181–3
Arthur (née Vincent), Dorothy Grace, 181–3
Ashley, Edwina, 51, 77
Ashton, Margaret, 82
Asquith, ‘Cis’, 228
Asquith, Lady Cynthia, 190
Assam, 58n, 276, 303
Astaire, Fred, 208
Astor, Nancy, 307
Atfe, 22
Atkins, Marian, 28, 87, 93, 101–2, 235–6
Attock, 230–1
Auckland, Lord, 261
August Week, 32
Australia, 32–3, 66
avalanche, 248–9
Babington Smith (née Bruce), Elisabeth see Bruce (later Babington Smith), Lady Elisabeth (Bessie)
Babington Smith, Henry, 109, 111, 112, 113, 115–16, 117, 118, 119, 120–4
Baden-Powell, Robert, 1st Baron, 291
Bahadur Khan, 269
Baillie, Captain D.G.H.O., 45
The Fishing Fleet Page 37