Description
Penguin U Angels of Albion Women of the Indian Mutiny by Jane Robinson
Today the memsahib is largely seen in terms of caricature: a ridiculous, fiercely whaleboned figure composed of an unfortunate mix of arrogance and ignorance, who came to be, as Britain's virgin daughter, an angel of Albion sacrilegiously violated in the so-called Indian Mutiny of 1857.
Yet this image tells us nothing of what life was really like for the Victorian wife in British India. The story that emerges from the personal diaries and journals of the women involved in the Mutiny is very different indeed, as Jane Robinson shows in this absorbing and moving book.
Until now, the Mutiny has been seen largely as a military matter. But during the months of passionate turmoil that followed the outbreak of violence at Meerut, many hundreds of English women and their children were caught up in the rebellion. Not surprisingly, all those handy little guides written for the mid-nineteenth-century memsahib, with advice on etiquette and on how to prevent perspiration staining a silk bodice, did not mention what to do in the event of what was, after all, a domestic cataclysm. Suddenly their lives were transformed as they had to learn how to endure sieges, manage escape, give birth and care for children in impossible circumstances, and cope with the abrupt and vicious destruction of all that had made life civilized.
Only when their words are read (and many are here published for the first time) is an astonishing and poignant new picture revealed both of the memsahib and of the Mutiny. Angel of Albion is their story; it is one of courage, compassion, even humour, and an inspiring strength of spirit.