When passing the Town Hall, I often glance at our visitors resting for a while as they explore the beauties of our small town. Sometimes they (especially if I am waiting for a bus) strike up a conversation with me and I have met people from as far away as Burma and the USA.
The other day, I was planning to go to Marlborough and onwards to Salisbury but as normal, I had cut it fine and was rushing for my bus. It was as I was passing the town hall that I noticed a middle-aged man reading a book by the Indian poet Toru Dutt (1856-1877). I would have liked to have stopped and asked him if he had purchased the book at the Arcade as the edition was not that modern. Alas, the blue Marlborough bus was behind me and I was unable to stop and chat.
I first came across Toru Dutt when I was studying Rabindranath Tagore at college and what impressed me about her was the amount and the quality of the work that she had managed to produce during her short life. But what of Toru and why have I chosen her as the subject of this short article? Well she was one of these people who died young and managed to leave us a considerable legacy. John Keats and Aubrey Beardsley also spring to mind but whereas they are very well known, Toru Dutt outside of India has been somewhat forgotten.
Born in 1856, Toru’s family converted to Christianity in 1862 and by 1871 Toru was at Cambridge and immersing herself in her French Studies.
It was here that she met Mary Martin the daughter of the Reverend John Martin of Sidney Sussex College. This was a natural and lasting friendship that continued even after Toru’s return to India.
My researches indicate that a number of their mutual letters have survived as well, as a number of Toru’s letters to her cousins which were written whilst she was in England (1871-73).
It is interesting to note that the French poets Rimbaud and Verlaine were in England at roughly the same time but the contrast between Toru and the dissolute poets could not be greater.
Toru had a natural aptitude for languages and was fluent in both English and French as well as Bengali (she later became proficient in Sanskrit).
During her short time with us, Toru wrote two novels Bianca or The Young Spanish Maiden (written in English although unfinished) and Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers which was written in French. I have never read either of these works so I cannot pass comment on them but I have read some of her translations and poetry.
In 1876 she published A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields which was a volume of French poems that she translated into English with her elder sister Aru. Her Sanskrit translations Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan which were published five years after her death, attracted the attention of Edmund Gosse who reviewed her work very favourably in the Examiner.
Gosse noted that Toru brought with her from Europe a store of knowledge that would have sufficed to make an English or French girl seem learned, but which in her case was simply miraculous. I cannot say that I have read everything that she wrote, but I have had the pleasure of reading Our Casuarina Tree (published in 1881). Although not well known in the UK, it remains very popular in Indian literature. In short, Toru celebrates the tree of the title and remembers her childhood days spent beneath it with her beloved family. The poem is autobiographical and was written when she was abroad and one can sense that she is pining for her homeland and searching for her recent childhood.
Toru lost her brother Abju in 1865 and her beloved sister Aru in 1874 and I will quote a few lines of the poem which will give you a flavour of the work.
Therefore I fain would consecrate a lay
Unto my honour, Tree beloved of those
Who now in blessed sleep, for aye repose
Dearer than life to me, alas! were they!
May’st thou be numbered when my days are done
With deathless trees – like those in Borrowdale
The reference to Borrowdale is interesting as this is the valley near Keswick in the Lake District which Wordsworth mentions in his work Yew-Trees (1803). It is interesting to see the genesis of Toru’s poem and how the theme was suggested to her.
When one thinks that Toru was just twenty-one when she died on the 30th of August 1877 (I believe she was a victim of TB) it is astonishinghow much this young lady actually achieved. Toru was like Mozart and others and was one of these people who even at a young age displayed talents well beyond their tender years.
Like Mozart, she died young and it is interesting to think that if these talented people had lived into old age what they would have achieved.
We will never know the answer to that question but it is interesting nonetheless.
Although books of her poetry are a little scarce there is plenty to find out about her on the internet. I would like to have thought that my mystery man had rummaged through the books in the book section in the Arcade and had found a volume of Toru’s work.
In ten years I have rarely found books on Indian poetry let alone anything on Toru Dutt but this chap might have been lucky and found a book.
Like all things, I will most likely come across her work when I am not looking for it but that is life.
If, however you do come across a book of her work then consider yourself privileged as she was a talent that only shone for a very short period and left the world a poorer place when she died.
