To bird or cat, - but most intelligent.
And ‘most intelligent’ she certainly was. Unimpeded by narrow national or linguistic inhibition and mental barriers, she drank deep in English and French literatures and later made creative use of them in an excellent manner.32 Govin Chunder also wrote of his elder son thus:
Most loving is my eldest, and I love him most,
Almost a man in seeming yet a child.
And thus of Aru :
My next, the beauty of our house is meek,
Not so deep loving haply, but less wild
Than her dear brother; … brow and blushing cheek,
Her nature shows serene and pure, and wild
An evening’s early star.
As the young Dutts grow older, the seeds of education bore an abundant harvest, and later on their studies were continued under the care of Babu Shiv Chunder Bannerjea, an elderly man of exemplary Christian piety and character. Moreover Govin Chunder also took care of their education and carefully supervised their studies. Toru’s childhood was spent in Calcutta and in the country hose at Baugmaree an extensive garden in the suburbs of Calcutta, covering many acres of land and shaded by fruit-trees and having in the centre a comfortable and spacious house, a perfect place for repose and a fitting place for poets. It was the delight of Toru’s childhood to spend her holidays there and to share rural sports with her brother and sister.
Her earlier years were very happy but little did she know that she would have to cherish their sweet and poignant memories and carry them to her grave. Fate grew jealous of her, and one after the other, she lost all those whom she loved excepting her father. The first calamity befell the family was the death of her elder brother Abju at the age of fourteen in 1865. After the death of Abju, Govin Chunder dwelt in perpetual fear of loss of his other children, and he never allowed them to be separated from him, but cherished every moment of their company.
Of Abju’s premature death, Govin wrote a sonnet that he often read out to Romesh Chunder in England when the Dutt Family Album was published. In heart-broken lines he cried:
And I am left heart-broken and alone
With weary mind to count the weary days.
But his faith, which later sustained him and his wife so magnificently is revealed even in those early days when the elder child was taken:
Love never dies, and there no parting’s known:-
The hour approaches, soon the morn must smile,
And I shall stand before the awful throne
With him my loved one, when the ransomed raise
The never-ending hymn of prayer and praise.
The same faith sustained Toru in her many sorrows and the whole of her writing are imbued with the hope of an eternal and ever happy life beyond the weary days on earth.
This tragedy created a great void in the life of the family; and Toru and her elder sister Aru turned to Paradise Lost, again and again; to recover from the emotional and spiritual trauma till it became a part of their poetic make-up. This is responsible for Toru’s poetry abounding in “fair phrase and sonority.”
With the exception of one year’s visit to Bombay, Aru and Toru Dutt spent their childhood in Calcutta, at their parent’s garden house. Here, in a mystical retirement more irksome to an European in fancy than to an Oriental in reality, the brain of this wonderful child was molded.33
Her mother fed her imagination with the old songs and legends of their faith, stories that it was the last labour of her life to weave into English verse. When she was thirteen years old her father decided to take his daughters to Europe to learn, English and French, in order to stimulate the marvelous faculties of Toru’s mind which was in a state of slumber. In 1869, the family left for Europe and the two girls went to school for the first and last time, at a French Pension. 34
Their missionary friend Mrs. Barton wrote— “They (the parents) were determined to give their two clever girls the best possible education. They took advantage to come to Europe that winter (1869), as we were returning home. By my husband’s advice, they came with us to Nice, where my parents were then living, and the Dutts spent three or four months there, if I remember aright. We introduced them to several residents at Nice, and they all soon learnt French.”35
Toru and Aru adored France, and next to their love for India, they were inspired most by France. The French also claimed Toru later as a French woman. Having set foot on French soil at the early age of thirteen, she learnt French with remarkable ease and speed and throughout her life absorbed and drank deep of French romantic literature and became an ardent lover of France.
Mr. James Darmesteter was most impressed by Toru’s association with French literature and says: ‘One would have liked to have had fuller details of their brief sojourn in France in France which had a wonderful influence on the ideas and imagination of Toru. French became her favourite language and France the country of her election.36
In Nice, the Dutts walked on the ‘Promenade des Anglais’ and loved the colourful Mediterranean scene. One can imagine how the poetic souls of the girls exulted in the beauty of the Cote d’Azur—the blue sea, the brilliant bougainvilleas and flowers, the freshly painted villas with red tile roofs, nestling in the slopes of terraced hills, the grape vines, orchards and promenades. But even this salubrious climate of the South of France did not suit Aru, more delicate than Toru. She fell ill, recovered and fell ill again. It was soon evident that the Dutts would have to move away from France. But the few months there had more than left their impression on the girls.
Finally they set out for England, via Italy, where Toru and Aru took lessons in music and became “good musicians.”37 By and by the girls began to turn their knowledge of both French and English into good account by translating French lyrics into English verse. In Toru’s translations lie not only her scholarships, but also the seed of her future poetry. Clearly the English language and literature absorbed the young poet’s attention from an early impressionistic age. They had company too English as well as Indian, and the talk was free. Their cousin Romesh Chunder Dutt was then in London, preparing for the Civil Services Examination. He used to call on them often and remove their loneliness.
Toru’s knowledge of French and English was ‘astonishing.’38 In the words of Sir Edmond Gosse “To the end of her days Toru was a better French than English scholar. She loved France best, she knew its literature best, she wrote its language with more perfect elegance.”39
In 1871, the Dutt family moved to Cambridge, where both the sisters attended, with great zeal and application, the lectures for women, and made friends with Miss Mary Martin, who was to be Toru’s life long friend and the recipient of most of her letters. Toru’s letters to this lady reveal the glimpses of her personal life and explain the growth of her poetic vision. To quote Mlle Bader, her letters reveal “a frankness, sensibility and charming goodness and simplicity,” and show “the native quality of the Hindu woman developed and transformed by Christian Civilization of Europe.’”40
In fact the free and fresh atmosphere of England helped the poet develop her intellectual and imaginative powers. Srinivas Iyengar rightly says- “In England, the nameless pressure of the ancestral place withdrawn and the gifts quickly matured in that atmosphere.” The first fruits were the translations from the French.
The family returned home in 1873 after a lapse of four years. Equipped already with a stock of knowledge, which as Mr. Gosse well says, “would have sufficed to make an English or French girl seem learned, but which in her case was simply miraculous”.
Now the sisters plunged into “a feverish dream of intellectual effort and imaginative production.”42 She translated the French lyrics –one hundred and sixty in all, by some seventy different poets into English verse. It was the time when both the sisters were able to face their own world with some self-assurance and maturity of understanding; complete poise and further growth in strength and security would have been theirs. She brought with her from Europe a store o
f knowledge that would have sufficed to make an English or French girl seem learned, but which in her case was simply miraculous.”43
In the performance of all domestic duties, Aru and Toru were exemplary. No work was too mean for them. They also divided their time between the city house at Rambagan and the garden house at Baugmaree. But the literary strain sustained by Aru proved to be fatal for her and at the age of twenty she passed on to the kingdom of death, adding to the tragic gloom in the life of her parents. It was a heart-rending calamity and an immitigable blow for Toru and her father. In her death Toru lost a reliable companion and loving sister. Her father Mr. Govin Chunder in his Prefatory Memoir remembers the two sisters- “Toru had read more, probably also thought more, and the elder sister generally appeared to follow the lead of the younger; so that I have often been asked by strangers which of the two is Miss Dutt. And yet there was no assumption of superiority on the part of Toru. It seemed perfectly natural to Aru to fall in the background in the presence of her sister. The love between them was always perfect.” 44
Aru was womanlier even than Toru-fragiler in her feminity.45 She had definite artistic leanings and she had in mind to illustrate a novel to be written by Toru but no page of this book did Aru ever see. It is pity that this gifted poetess has not left us any original work only a few pieces of translations from French to English. But what she has left is, by its sheer beauty and pathetic interest, enough to give her a place in the history of English literature by the side of her better-known sister.
Aru Dutt contributed 8 poems to A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields, which was largly, the work of Toru Dutt. She was both, a well-trained musician with full contralto voice and a very good painter. Her poem Morning Serenade is a wonderful example of her craftsmanship. It was this poem, which filled the English critic with ‘surprise and almost rapture’:
All look for thee, Love, light and Song;
Light in the sky deep red above,
Song in the lark of pinion strong,
And in my heart, true love.46
Truly, Aru has not overwhelmed us with an abundance of her work as many poets have done, but she lives in literature as one of those little significant ‘commas’ and ‘hyphens’ we cannot do without, whose power of suggestion could be potent and immense.47 Here we quote another example of her sensibility:
Thou so good, O thou so perfect,
Who lovest us with so much love,
With joy we hail thy birthday, Mother,
Day all other days above.
In exchange of all our presents,
Of our songs composed for thee,
Of our field flowers and our roses,
Give us kisses tenderly.
….. Embrace us then, O dearest mother,
Press us well upon thy heart,
Our place accustomed, now and ever,
In joys, and when those joys depart,
Oh, what is there so good or precious
As a gentle mother’s love?
On this earth, the only treasure
Sent us from the heavens above.48
It was Toru’s faith in God and His will that helped her to maintain her equilibrium, sunniness and optimism after such a heavy loss, she got ready for the press her rendering from French into English and these appeared in 1876,with the title A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields. Toru had also added notes on the French poets represented in the volume. This book attracted the attention of eminent critics and scholars not only in France, but also in England, and was reviewed jointly by Edmond Gosse.
Prompted by the success of her A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields, she declared her hope that she would be able to bring out another ‘Sheaf ’ not gleaned in France but in Sanskrit fields.49 Although Toru returned from time to time to the Sheaf to revise it or to add a piece or two in anticipation of a possible second edition. Already she was feeling the need for roots and father along with his daughter had begun to study Sanskrit, the Mother of Muses, the deep springs of India’s racial memory. Now Trou could feel her feet on hospitable soil and satisfy the secret longing of her spirit for roots in the consciousness of the race.50 The following extracts from her letter to Mary Martin tell an inspiring tale about the situation in which she began her reading in Sanskrit and about the courses she undertook there.
I have nothing to do, so Papa and I are going to take up Sanskrit. It is a difficult language, and it is hard to learn it perfectly in less than six or seven years; but I will try my best. My grandfather, Papa’s father, used to know and understand Sanskrit like a Pundit; and he only learnt it for two or three years when he was forty-two or forty-three years of age; so I hope my case will not be hopeless.”51
(23rd Nov. 1875)
“We have begun Sanskrit : The pundit is very pleased with our eagerness to learn ….., it is a very difficult language ….. especially the grammar, which is dreadful. It is not so difficult to read and understand it, for one who knows Bengali.”52
(4th Dec. 1875)
“We are going on with our Sanskrit lessons. When we have finished the book we are reading now, we shall take up Valmiki’s Ramayana.” 53
(13th Jan.1876)
“The Sanskrit is going on tolerably well; we are now reading the Ramayana.”54
(24th April 1876)
“Our Sanskrit is going on but slowly. We are now reading extracts from Mahabharata.” 55
(13th May1876)
“We are now reading Sakuntala in Sanskrit.”56
(7th August 1876)
“I am translating some small Sanskrit pieces”57
(26th August 1876)
“I hope I shall be able to bring out another ‘Sheaf ’’ not gleaned in French but in Sanskrit Fields; …………….. I have only as yet gathered two ears.” 58
(6th Sep. 1876)
These extracts also reveal the fact that she mastered this complex language in a very short time. The classical Sanskrit works she studied include The Ramayana, The Mahabharata, Sakuntala, The Vishnu Purana, and The Bhagavata Purana etc. These readings gave her woman’s imagination free play and she translated despite her failing health a few pieces from the original Sanskrit into English verse.
By 1877, Toru’s health had broken down and the repeated attacks of fever and cough spasm pushed her to the brink of nothingness and void. It is a harrowing tale indeed, but steeped in heroism. She has to tell the tale of lungs not once or twice but again and again and more than anything else her illness constantly preoccupies her, which she must have realized would prove as fatal for her as it had proved for her brother and sister. Despite her illness she managed to remain bright and cheerful, planning for the future, refusing to be cast down, acquiescing in what she knows was inevitable. 59
Her letters to Mary Martin show that she was already descended into the valley of the shadow of death and in one of her poems and in one of her poems, the dying poetess pours out her heart, seems as touching and as beautiful as any strain of Marceline Valmore’s immortal verse:
My hand was in my father’s and I felt,
His presence near me. Thus we often past,
In silence, hour by hour. What was the need
Of interchanging words when every thought,
That in our heart arose, was known to each,
And every pulse kept time. 60
She was obliged to keep within doors and became so weak that even writing letter was an effort she could not stand. Unable to write she continued to read, strewing her sick room with the latest European books and read the question with interest, which were raised by the printed transactions of a French book.61 At last on August 30, 1877, at the age of twenty one, her race was run. Toru paid her debt to nature and joined the majority, leaving her parents totally deserted and depressed.
Among “last words” of celebrated people that which her father has recorded, “it is only the physical pain that makes me cry.” Shows the strength of her character. “Her end was very peaceful and happy,” wrote Govin to Mary Martin, “and her mot
her and myself will never-never forget the expression that was on her face when all was over. Such a glory there was on it ….”62
Imagine then the two old parents, bereft of their three beloved children, awaiting death themselves, and living only in the memory of lost voices. Every tree and flower, the numerous servants, the beloved horses and cats, so lovingly tended by Aru and Toru were all still there; but where were the daughters, so beautiful, so talented? Where were Toru’s laughter and song, her learning and innocence? But she with Abju and Aru would once again be parted, as the Christian faith promised. Sustained with this belief the old father, though with shaking hand, found strength to trace out the hidden manuscripts of his daughter. Only in the memory and service of his children, and especially of Toru, could Govin Chunder survive the few years he managed to live after the passing of Toru.
On her death, her funeral rites were performed according to Christian traditions. She was buried in the M.S. Cemetery in the upper Circular Road, Calcutta near her brother and sister. On her tombstone appeared the following inscription:
TORU DUTT
YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF
GOVIN CHUNDER DUTT
BORN 4 MARCH 1856
DIED 30TH AUGUST, 1877
BE THOU FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH AND I
WILL GIVE THEE A CROWN OF LIFE
Rev. ii. 10
To this day the sad grave of Toru Dutt and her siblings give evidence of young lives snatched away before their time; with the poignant thought of what might have been.
After her death it seemed as though her unequalled promise had been entirely blighted, and as though she would be remembered only by her single book.63 But as her father examined her papers one completed work after another revealed itself. Govin Chunder set himself the task of publishing a new enlarged edition of the Sheaf and bringing out the other Sheaf that had been in Toru’s thoughts. The second Indian edition of the Sheaf came out in 1878 with a touching sketch of her death by her father. The third edition was issued in England by Kegan Paul and Company with a forward by Arthur Symons. The other Sheaf Gleaned in Sanskrit fields came out in 1882 with the title Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan and Sir Edmond Gosse who ranked this book as Toru’s chief legacy to posterity.64
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