Author Topic: Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils  (Read 65990 times)

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Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« on: January 21, 2009, 04:13:37 PM »



Join us as we continue our discussion of the Raj Quartet.
We will be reviewing and finishing Towers of Silence,  the third book of the Raj Quartet.
       

               



Discussion Leader ~ straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2009, 04:25:56 PM »
From Traude:

Great news:  Thanks to SeniorLearn we've found a new home from which to resume our discussion of The Raj Quartet. My thanks also to you, previous readers, for your participation and input.  A WARM WELCOME back to you. New readers are cordially invited and always welcome, of course.

⁋ At its apogee the British empire was the largest in history and India its most precious Jewel in the Crown. The first novel opens in 1942 when war raged in Europe; the Japanese had advanced into Malaya, Singapore and Burma, threatening to invade India.  Ghandi had called on the British to "Quit India", and anti-British rioting had broken out in the fictional city of Mayapore, where the river forms a natural border between the British cantonment and  the Indian part of town.   
This is the backdrop for the impossible,  hopeless, heartbreaking love story of Daphne and Hari. Then there is the story of Edwina Crane, the superintendent of a Protestant missionary school, and there is Ronald Merrick, the superintended of the Indian Police, surely one of the most loathsome villains in literarture.
⁋ The setting of volume 2, The Day of the Scorpion, is Pankot, a hill station where an Indian army regiment, based in Ranpur in the valley, spent the  hottest months of the year.  Both towns were located in a nominally independent princely state, the fictional Mirat, which sought to maintain its relative autonomy. The Layton family is introduced, their friends, and other new characters, all vividly sketched,  for example Count Bronowsky, a White Russian emigré and adviser to the Muslim ruler of Mirat and, memorably, Barbie Batchelor, a retired missionary and former friend of Edwina Crane, who became the live-in companion of Mabel Layton, the matriarch, known as Mrs. Layton Sr., of Rose Cottage.
Ronald Merrick, now a Captain in intelligence. He becomes a room mate of Teddy Bingham who is engaged to Susan Layton. He is given 72 hours furlough and marries Susan in Mirat earlier than planned because they will be sent into combat. A rock intended for Merrick is thrown at the limousine carrying the two men to church, and it is Teddy who is wounded. Teddy dies in combat and Merrick is gravely wounded.

⁋ Volume 3, The Towers of Silence, is told essentially through the impressions, thoughts and perceptions of Barbie. When our discussion site disappeared in October, we had only 87 pages to review of its last part =   Part 5 "The Tennis Court". I’d like to do so now.

⁋¶  Nicky Paynton's husband is killed in action. She plans to  return to England where her two boys are in school and arranges to auctions off her belongings; the auction turns into a farewell party, which is attended also by Susan Layton, remarkably improved after treatment by a new doctor about whom the British community knows nothing.
Mildred, Susan’s mother, had told all that "the job of an RAMC analyst  is not one which normally can be taken seriously". The bridge club friends have made up their minds about "the Jew-boy trick-cyclist" (!!).  But their preconceived notions are shattered when they meet Captain Samuels who has come to pick up Susan.  Isobel Rankin, wife of the area commander, interrogates him but he parries well.
A furious Mildred discovers that Sarah is pregnant and orders Aunt Fenny to take her back to Calcutta “to get rid of it”. Before leaving, Sarah says goodbye to Barbie in the hospital.

After her discharge, Barbie returns to the church bungalow. She packs up the apostle spoons and, with Clarissa’s consent, asks one of the rectory servants to take them to the Commander's House.  An acknowledgement from Colonel Trehearne with an invitation to dine with him on Ladies' Night arrives the next month. She looks at her emaciated body and declines.
Another letter comes from the Mission in Calcutta, asking if she Miss Batcherlor would accept a temporary position in Dibrapur to fill in for the Eurasion teacher who is getting married --  Dibrapur, where Edwina had visited on the day of the riots.   Barbie realizes that Sarah has visited the Mission while in Calcutta to plead for her without telling her so. Just as Barbie is about to tell Clarissa of the astonishing offer,  Captain Coley, Mildred’s emissary and lover,  comes to inform Barbie that her trunk must be removed from the Mali's shed as soon as possible.

The following day she hires a tonga-wallah, "an enclosed dilapidated man with a curved nose and predatory eyes, a starved bird with folded wings."  The tonga is old, so is  the bony horse.  The gate of Rose Cottage is unlocked, the trunk sitting on the front steps. A man in civilian clothes stands  on the veranda, looking down into Mabel's famous rose garden,  all torn up and being turned into a tennis court.  She challenges him and he turns around.  It is Ronald Merrick.

The left half of his face is horribly disfigured by a violet burn mark, the left eye half closed, the left arm has an artificial hand. He has come to Pankot for fittings of the artificial limb at the hospital, and to Rose Cottage to see the Laytons who, the Mali told him, are in Calcutta.
There's a mutual careful appraisal.  Barbie watches how Merrick handles the cigarettes and holds his coffee cup. In turn he watches her intently, the gloved hand supporting his chin. They talk about Barbie's plan to go to Dibrapur; about the transport of the trunk on the waiting tonga (which Merrick emphatically discourages), about Edwina's words in the letter she left  behind before immolating herself :
"There is no God, not even on the road from Dibrapur"; about  Lady Manners; Daphne; the child; about man-bap = “I am your mother and father”, the maxim of the British rulers; about Merrick's  unshakeable conviction of Hari’s guilt.
Barbie opens the trunk, is surprised to find the butterfly lace shawl, takes out the picture (the same one Edwina had) showing Queen Victoria on her throne with angels overhead and representative Indians clustering at her feet. Barbie calls it the picture of the Unknown Indian and spontaneously presses it into Merrick's artificial hand.
Again Merrick warns the load is too heavy a load, the road too steep. But the trunk is loaded on the back of the tonga and roped.  Barbie puts the butterfly lace shawl on her head and climbs up to sit next to the tonga wallah.

“The equipage moved slowly out of the compound of Rose Cottage.  The valley lay under a thin blanket of cloud. The sun had gone in. The first spots of a chilly November rain.  The tonga gathered momentum. The old man began to apply the brake. Once or twice the horse slipped. For some reason she wished she had the picture back. The rain was coming down harder. As they passed the club, a flurry of tongas was climbing up the hill and about  to turn in there. The old man's hands were knotted in the reins. One of the other wallahs shouted an insult.
'Hold your tongue!’, Barbie shouted back. She began to sing.
Behind the equipage a peculiar light glowed on and off - winter lightning. Something troubled her. The lightning
brought it closer.  It was Mildred's face, eyes hooded, mouth turned down, quirked  at the corners; glass held under chin in droop-wristed hands.

The horse slid, stumbled, righted itself. It raised its tail. There was a smell of stable. The horse stumbled again. The old man jerked the brake harder. She thought she smelt burning. She glanced at him. His eyes at last were wide open. He looked at her for an instant before redirecting his own troubled gaze at the road ahead and at the trembling flanks of his old horse. There was Mildred's face again, just for the split second it took for it to dissolve and reform and become the face of the man who regarded her closely, chin in hand,  thoughtful and patient, so purposeful in his desire for her soul that he had thrown away Edwina's.
She began to tremble. They were passing the golf course. People were running under colored umbrellas.

Sometimes, although rarely, these cold showers - penetrating the warmth of a Pankot November day - troubled the atmosphere and produced an imbalance, a rogue element of electric mischief that shattered the silence  like a child bursting a blown-up paper bag containing flashes of paper fire.
There was just  such an explosion now as the rickety old tonga entered he steepest part of Club Road. It blared across the valley, jerking alive the unliveliest members of the club, comfortably cushioned in upholstered wicker, and was accompanied by the brightest amalgam of blue and yellow light ever seen in the region. The horse screamed; its eyes rolled; it reared, thrashing the space between its hooves and the greasy tarmac and then achieved both gravity and momentum, dragging and rocking the high-wheeled trap with its load of missionary relics...

Barbie, covered in mud and blood, made it back to the rectory bungalow and said ‘I’m afraid there’s been some trouble at the junction. Perhaps someone could kindly deal with it. I have seen the Devil...’
The driver survived too. But the horse had to be shot.”

Coda.
In December 1944 Barbie Batchelor was admitted to the Hospital of the Samaritan Mission of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. She lapsed into silence, communicating in writing.  Unaware of where she was,  she sat at the barred window and watched big birds no one else saw circling in the distance.
She did not recognize the fair-haired visitor as Sarah  but wrote on her pad  “Birds”. The girl promised to find an answer and came back with it the next evening.
“The birds belong to the towers of silence. For the Ranpur Parsees”, and then wrote it down as if she thought Miss Batchelor might forget it.
Miss Batchelor wrote:Yes, I see. Vultures. Thank you.
She looked round the room, shook her head and wrote:I have nothing to give you in exchange. Not even a rose.
For some reason the girl put her arms around Miss Batchelor and cried. “Oh, Barbie”, she said, “don’t  you remember anything?”

It was August 6, 1945
The date meant nothing to Barbie. No date did. The calendar was a mathematical progression with arbitrary surprises.
She took her seat at the barred window. It was raining. She cold not see the birds. But imagined their feathers sheened by emerald and indigo lights.  She turned away and rose from the stool.  And felt the final nausea enter the room.
She stood, swaying slightly ... padded slippered to the secure refuge of her bed and sat, leaning her shoulder against the iron head.  She raised a questioning or admonishing finger, commanding just a short moment of silence for the tiny anticipated sound: the echo of her own life.
They found her thus, eternally alert, in sudden sunshine, her shadow burnt into the wall behind her as if by some distant but terrible fire.

Gumtree

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Towers of Silence
« Reply #2 on: January 22, 2009, 09:01:15 AM »
Thanks Traude - It's so good to have the Raj back. Will review my notes and come back.....
Reading is an art and the reader an artist. Holbrook Jackson

Frybabe

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Towers of Silence
« Reply #3 on: January 22, 2009, 12:45:23 PM »
I'm here. Running late today.

straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #4 on: January 22, 2009, 10:11:15 PM »
Welcome, Gumtree and Frybabe. It's GOOD to see you. A dream has become reality and I thank all those who made it possible.

As I composed, detracted from and added to my recapitulation, it occurred to me that a broad recap was necessary, and this is a good time for it - now that we are headed for the endgame and deo volente follow up with Staying On.
No summary, no matter how well-intentioned, could ever be as eloquent as the author's own words.  That's why I felt some of them had to be included in the recap.  The difficulty lies in how to begin one and how much to include.   Several essential details will become clear in volume 4,  A Division of the Spoils.  If there are any questions on context,  please do bring them here. 
 
And so to Volume 4, A Division of the Spoils.

BOOK ONE: 1945 
starts with the chapter An Evening at the Maharanee's , "when the peace in Europe is almost a month old; only the Japanese remain to be dealt with."  The political situation in India  demands immediate action, amid confusion and disunity between members of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League.  It may be helpful to define who's who in our own glossary. 

An enormous amount of detail is contained in 107 pages, and we'll have to  proceed slowly. We'll meet a new character, Guy Perron, an eminently worthy counterbalance to the ubiquitous Ronald Merrick.

Thank you.

Frybabe

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2009, 12:21:30 PM »
I don't remember Guy Perron.

straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2009, 08:09:40 PM »
Frybabe
Guy Perron is a new and fascinating character in the fourth volume, which covers the period of 1945-1947.
A slightly cynical upper-class English historian whose specialty is India, he enlists (because he wants to explore the country in person) and becomes a sergeant in the Intelligence Corps (later to match wits with Merrick), a marvelous chance for traaveling to many arts of India. He has refused all offers of a commission, and his rank gives him cover and flexibility.
It is Perron who temporarily prevents the suicide of a countryman who has discovered and annunciates a truth which will be fleshed out :  that Britain's "moral obligation" to Victoria's Jewel in the Crown was in reality an obligation to property, a concept that is no longer viable.

In this volume we meet the Laytons again, other English  military men and diplomats and several Indian politicians, among them the scrupulous Mr. Kasim (MAC), whose young son Ahmed is the aide (and the ears of) Count Bronowsky in the principality of Mirat,  where Teddy and Susan got married, and whose older son Sayed, a commissioned officer in the Indian Army, is captured by the Japanese and turns to fight on their side, because he believes it will lead to Indian independence faster.

The chapter "A Visit at the Maharanee's" opens in June 1945 with a description of the political background.

In volumes 1-3 we read about the growing sentiment of nationalism in India; Ghandi's demands; rioting;
violence; bloodshed. Now the focus is more sharply on the Indian leaders of both sides : Ghandi, Nehru, Jinnah; Kasim, Bose. All of them wanted independence for India but disagreed violently on how to achieve most expeditiously.  What Kasim wanted most and abelieved to be an absolute requirement was Indian umity, i.e. unity between Hindus and Muslims -- which was never to be. 
Instead, the country was partitioned in two  a little over two years later on August 24/25 1947.

Talking about dates,  Staying On returns to the former hill station of Pankot twenty-five years after partition.  The protagonists  are Lucy and Tusker Smalley, relatively minor characters in The Day of the Scorpion.
They were the childless couple who did not live in a bungalow but in rented rooms in the Smith Hotel, unsuitable for party-giving.  At the end of parties they attended, they always stayed behind waiting to hitch a tonga ride with others  back to the hotel.  Lucy was good at note-taking during meetings presided over by the imperious Isobel Rankin, the station commander's wife.
The couple literally stayed behind long after everybody had left, still in the old Smith Hotel, whose Indian owner has higher aspirations.










straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #7 on: January 25, 2009, 10:34:30 PM »
Sorry to be late.  My granddaughter was here to work on a school project on my computer which, apparently, has more bells and whistles than her own. I stand in awe ...
Back to the Divison of the Spoils.

The first chapter takes us to Bombay. It's June 1945, the monsoon season, characterized by sudden heavy downpours which leave lawns  lusciously green.  An  armada of British ships has gathered in the harbor and rumors are swirling that they are to sail any time now to re-take Malaya. Even the name of the operation has been bandied about: Zipper - a severe breach of security
 
Guy Perron, a Field Sergeant with Intelligence, is attached to the rifle company of an infrantry regiment, waiting to be deployed and housed in a muddy, dreary camp in Kalya outside of Bombay, where new airborne troops are expected. To keep the newcomers and those already there 'entertained' is somewhat of a problem.

On August 5 Perron is ordered to attend a party at the house of a Maharanee in the company of a Captain Purvis.  Since Capt. Purvis is too ill,  Perron goes alone - without any idea of what to what to look for. The mist over the harbor has cleared and Perron notices more ships at anchor.

To be continued

straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #8 on: January 27, 2009, 12:00:22 AM »
To continue.

The  "defense of property" mentioned by Captain Purvis, one of the characters in Volume 4, warrants
a quick look at history.

By the middle and toward the end of the fifteen hundreds, trade was well established between England and the Indian subcontinent, and beyond - with China. The Honourable East India Company, HEIC,  an early joint-stock company, became the most influential  trader  and was granted the Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth I on December 31, 1600.

East India Company traded  mainly in cotton, silk, indigo dye, salpeter, tea and opium.
It also began to make inroads into coastal territories and to rule them administratively as well as militarily with large native armies.  The Bengal lancers would become famous.
There were skirmishes and a minor mutiny in 1764, quelled fairly easily.  A far more violent, bloodier rebellion  broke out in 1857,  that took a much greater effort.  Under the Government of India Act of 1858,   the British Crown assumed the administration of India  in the new British Raj.

A British Viceroy , also called Governor-General, became the direct representative of the Monarch.
Lord Wavell is Viceroy as Volume 4 opens in th summer of  1945.  The last Viceroy was Lord Mountbatten. He and Lady Mountbatten had a cordial relationship with Pandit Nehru.

("Pandit" is the honorific for a Brahman leader and scholar. In volume 1 we met Pandit Baba, the mover and shaker  behind the scenes, who keeps Merrick in the crosshair.  The stone that hitTeddy was meant for Merrick, and the woman's bike Teddy finds outside the quarters he and Merrick share is another warning.)

Hindus, the majority, founded the Indian National Congress (INC), also called Congress party.  It rules India
to this day. The Muslims, in the minority, founded the Muslim League.  At this point in our story, many Muslim League leaders have already gone over to the INC, but not Mohammed Kasim (MAK). His twin goals are freedom and unity.
Both parties have long wanted freedom and independence for India but cannot come to terms with each other about the specifics.  The first joint conference organized by Lord Wavell comes to naught and he travels back to confer with Whitehall.
That is the situation as the book opens.  Bombay is a hotbed of swirling news and rumors. It appears that the Indians know a great deal more about "Zipper" and military planning than the British soldiers - and that includes Guy Perron,  who, after all, IS Field Intelligence and due to ship out with the armada.  Captain Purvis fears a major breach in security.

To wear the uniform to the party would be a dead give-away, but Perron has a more neutral outfit (and civilian) shoes in his backpack. It identifies him as affiliated with the Education Department. Captain Purvis is quartered in a large modern building,  the same one in which Aunt Penny lives, and Perron is to change there and have the briefing. At the entrance Purvis runs headlong into an Indian servant, almost hurting a young woman coming out behind him.  Perron apologizes for Purvis. 

Let's play fly on the wall and see what happens.

To be continued


straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2009, 12:50:28 AM »
We've been buffeted by high winds and new snow, followed by sleet. Not even the postman made it up the driveway (!) which looks and is treacherous. Until I get sand, I'll be housebound.

To continue.
The grasp of the Raj Quartet is vast and deliberately all-encompassing. Literally hundreds of characters populate the pages, fewer than twenty carry the plot forward. 
One of several continuing threads is the crucial role class distinction played at the time.
Class distinction not only between the enlisted men and the commanding officers, and within the civil  administration, but also, and more so, a racial separation  between the British and the millions of Indians they governed under a system later to be called apartheid in South Africa.

The insurmountable gulf is exemplified by two characters, Hari Kumar, the young Indian raised and educated in England at an elite private school,  the fictional Chillingborough, where he is a brown gentleman on the cricket field, a monument to British virtgue. 
The lower middle-class Ronald Merrick went to India in search of power, hiding his racial hatreds, his homosexual tendencies and his insecurities.  It is in India that the twain meet under radically different circumstances,  when Hari, suddenly penniless,  must return to a country he does not remember, and literally becomes  the personified "invisible" Indian.

Merrick meanwhile has attained a position of considerable influence  as superintendent of the Indian police, and it is he who is responsible for Hari's arrest,  his torture in prison and  subsequent incarceration.After about two years,  Hari's case is brought secretly to the personal attention of the British governor by Lady Manners, Daphne's aunt. Hari  is interrogated by a British lawyer (Captain Rowan, also an alumnus of Chillingborough) and an Indian lawyer and soon after quietly discharged.
Though nothing is heard from him directly after that,  but he is referred to again and again by other characters, especially by Merrick.

Another continuing thread is the extreme Indian climate and the presence of  (and white males' susceptibility to) one particular tropical disease, amoebiasis, a parasitic infection which, when undiagnosed as that, can lead to death.  Captain Rowan, Hari's interrogator, and Captain Purvis in volume 4, are afflicted with it.

Under those precarious circumstances it became customary for British parents to send their children  to be educated in England at about age five, to live either with family members or in boarding schools, where they
stayed for years - with a rare parental visit - until school was over and they returned  to India.
"Orphans of the Raj", they've been called.  Kipling was one of them and has written about his unhappy experiences.

To be continued

kidsal

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #10 on: January 30, 2009, 06:23:12 AM »
HI!  Just found you.  Will dig out my book.

straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #11 on: January 30, 2009, 12:06:02 PM »
Kidsal,, GOOD to see you!

Gumtree

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #12 on: January 30, 2009, 11:24:34 PM »
Traude You are indefatigable and your summaries are electrifying. Thank you.

Guy Perron is like a breath of fresh air coming into the claustrophobic RAJ world where both British and Indian societies are virtually closed to each other. Apartheid indeed - how amazing that the world condoned it in India (and elsewhere) at that time.
  Despite his education at Chillingborough Perron is cast in a different mould from those who were trained for the ICS. By the time he arrived on the scene I had become rather impatient with the Raj men who were unable to change their ingrained attitudes. The women too,  except for Sarah Layton and Barbie Batchelor

Barbie Batchelor is beautifully drawn - what a tragic figure and in many ways how alike  she and Edwina Crane become. Her doubts and gradual disintegration are perfectly illustrated - so too, are Mabel's quiet decline and demise.

M.A.K.  is his own man and can see  a viable way forward for India - though he cannot convince others.

Count Bronowsky, so intelligent and across everything that happens. I disliked him intensely at the beginning and took him for a villain but he grew upon me. Maybe it was his old world courtesy or maybe his fundamental honesty.

And then, Ronald Merrick, so intelligent and able but twisted and vicious.  He's up there with all the great villains of literature.

I have only read the Raj through once, and slowly, though perforce backtracking here and there for clarification. When we're finished here I intend to go back and re-read it all. It is something to be savoured.

Stay safe in all that ice and snow.  We are in heatwave conditions here.
 

Reading is an art and the reader an artist. Holbrook Jackson

straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #13 on: January 30, 2009, 11:42:04 PM »
Thank you, gumtree.  I so appreciate your and Kidsal's  being here with me.   It is comforting not to be alone on this journey. I hope to be able to complete it,  deo volente.
I am grateful.

Eloise

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #14 on: January 31, 2009, 10:08:45 AM »
Traude, I only read the Jewel in the Crown but I would like to participate in your discussion  The Division of the Spoils that I ordered today from Amazon. P.S. is a masterful writer, I know I will like the book.

"When we're finished here I intend to go back and re-read it all. It is something to be savoured." I reread a good book sometimes but only because I read it too fast the first time.

Hello Gumtree, Kidsal and Frybabe, I look forward to your posts.

Frybabe

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #15 on: January 31, 2009, 12:55:29 PM »
Welcome Eloise. Our little group is expanding. I have been relying on Traude's synopsis' for the Quartet since my volumes seem to have disappeared after I read them. I have Staying On so I can read along if and when we get to that followup.

Has anyone read Scott's Six Days in Mayapore? I am considering ordering it.


straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #16 on: January 31, 2009, 10:51:34 PM »
Éloïse, WELCOME, welcome. Good to have you with us here. 

What I'd like to convey is the continuity of the story which is presented from different view points of different characters yet all conceived in the ingenious mind of Paul Scott.  He died young at 58: he had contracted amoebiasis while in India, he was a heavy smoker and drinker. One might dare to say that his life was like a candle lit on both ends.

Fryebabe,  I had the same disappearing experience.  Despite intensive searching, volumes 3 and 4 simply could not be found and, to my horror,  volume 2, The Day of the Scorpion, was in a terrible condition,  dog-eared and with coffee stains. Whoever mistreated the book  probably absconded with volumes 3 and 4.  It all worked out for the best,  though; volumes 3 and 4 came in a larger paperback format and more readable font size.
No, I have not read Six Days in Mayapore but plan to get to it after Staying On.

During the briefing of Sergeant Perron, Captain Purvis, an economist by trade, makes observations worth pondering:

" Has it ever struck you, Perron, that there is nothing more gullible in the whole animal world than a human being?  One has this hysterical belief in the non-recurrence of the abysmal, I suppose.  One always imagines one has reached the nadir and that the only possible next  move is up and out."

Gumtree, I agree.  Edwina and Barbie are cut from the same cloth,  they had the same noble intentions, and both came to doubt and despair of the effectiveness of their mission. The character of Barbie may have been drawn in admiration of and as a tribute to someone he knew. It is a truly moving portrayal.


To be continued

kidsal

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #17 on: February 01, 2009, 10:34:36 PM »
I have Six Days in Maypore -- started reading it but got distracted.  I believe it is worth reading.

straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #18 on: February 02, 2009, 11:54:00 PM »
Kidsal, "Six Days in Mayapore" is definitely on my list.

A few more things must be explained to understand Chapter 1 of this volume.

~~~ The British Indian Army aka IA consisted of all-Indian regiments, Indian officers and the rank and file,  led by British (Officers.  Created for the  protection of the regions under direct control of the Raj in India, those regiments fought on the side of the  British also in other regions of the world loyally faithfully and with distinction,  notably in World War I.

~~~  The hopes of Indian leaders in Congress in Delhi that some degree of self-government might be their  eventual reward were dashed.  There was outrage among the Indian leaders that in 1939 the British Viceroy declared war on Germany without  informing Indian leaders beforehand.  That was the beginning of an ever-widening  national movement, and Ghandi was one of the spokesmen, but a cautious one, compared with more radical leaders in Congress, particular one Chandras Bose.

In our story,  the hill station of Pankot is the home of the Pankot Rifles and Colonel Layton its regimental Commander.  Fighting in North Africa, he and members of the regiment were taken prisoner by Italians and  later transferred to Germany.  The sepoys (privates) and havildars (sergeants) were housed separately, of course.

~~~ As early as 1939, Chandras Bose, member of the Indian Congress, took matters into his own hands, fled India and sought an alliance with Germany and later with Japan, believing (erroneously) that fighting on the side of the Japanese would lead to Indian independence sooner.  That is how the idea of the Indian NATIONAL Army (INA) was born.

~~~ The prestige of the Raj suffered a blow with the fall of British Malaya,  the massive surrender at Singapore,  and  the humiliating retreat from Burma.  Countless Indians, officers and men, were taken prisoner by the Japanese, among them Sayed, the elder son of M.A.K.,  a commissioned officer and his men.  Sayed was one of those who joined the Japanese and  the Indian National Army, convinced some of his men to join him. It made him a traitor.

At this point in our story, August 5, 1945, the war in Europe was over, but yet no end to the war with Japan.  The British and Indians held prisoners  in Germany had been released.  Guy Perron, a member of the Field Service, knew that a boat load of disgraced Indian officers, NCOs and sepoys had arrived  in Bombay from Bordeaux.

~~~ Perron and his officer were charged with keeping their ears to the ground  for anything that might be cause for suspicion that a popular movement was afoot in Bombay to storm the docks and whisk the prisoners from under the noses of those in charge of them off into the bazaars or into the hills, where in the past many a band of irregular horsemen had melted away to live on and fight again.

~~~ British Intelligence initially did not believe that the Indian NATIONAL Army was a substantial force to be reckoned with but even so was aware of misinformation on the subject and  of the infiltration of INA spies. Tensions were high, therefore, especially in view of the fact that the Indian population knew more about the British boats in the harbor and where they were headed than the British grunts in camp Kalyan did, many newly arrived and at a loss to understand  whatever for.

~~~ About a week before August 5,  Captain Purvis had been invited to and attended a party at the same Maharanee's and told her about two bottles of rare Scotch he had brought from Britain. He insisted on bringing her one of them. And she had invited him to come back. Unfortunately he told a colleague the next day that he was suspicious of the guests at the party and how much more they knew about "Zipper".  He was promptly ordered to go back but, as we have seen, he was too ill. Perron was delegated to go in his stead.

Bottle and note in hand Perron arrived at 7:30 p.m. as ordered. No one answered the bell for a long time, nor could the sound of one be heard. A young girl finally opened the door, the niece of the Maharanee, as it turned out. The Maharanee and servants were still resting. The girl waved aside his apologies and his offer to return at a later time. She announced his arrival to her aunt and was then called to her chamber. He presented her with the bottle of Scotch.  The Maharanee (who could not remember Captain Purvis !) then ordered the girl to wake the servants, have them unlock (!) the liquor cabinet and make the arriving guests comfortable.

As Perron stepped out into the hall, there were guests arriving - and some unexpected surprises.

To be continued






straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #19 on: February 08, 2009, 12:44:18 AM »
To continue

My apologies for having been absent for a few days - the weather is the culprit.  I have spent many a cold snowy winter in Massachusetts, but none has affected me as much as this one has, and I wished I had a furry, old-fashioned muff to warm my stiff arthritic fingers. Mercifully, for the first time in more than a week the temperature on Saturday rose above the freezing point and my fingers are serviceable again.

While offline I read the first chapter once again.  It is difficult to really adequately summarize the very detailed information contained in 106 1/2 pages, including
 
the political developments in India since May 1945;
the increasing tensions between the Congress party and the Muslim League and their irreconcilable plans  for the future of the country;
the uncertain plans of the British military on whether, when or if, to set out to retake Singapore (the Zipper project);
the precarious situation of the princely states (here, Mirat);
the repatriation of Indian prisoners held in Germany, with their leader, Colonel Layton;
the role of British intelligence in Indian cities;
the fate of the Indian soldiers who went over to the Japanese  and the Indian National Army(Sayed, the elder son of MAK).
British intelligence referred to as JIFFS, who are to be prosecuted as traitors.
The pejorative is taken from the acronym JIFC = short for Japanese-Indian (or Indian-inspired) Fifth Column.
;
and the case of the havildar in Col. Layton's regiment who became a traitor and now is being held separately under the control of the ubiquitous, sadistic Merrick.

For a comparison I took out the video of the Granada TV series and watched the first episode on disk # 3, which has the same title as the first book chapter.

For obvious reasons, many of the long speeches in the book have been shortened;  some were left out altogether; what is shown to have happened at the Maharnee's party is quite different from the book;  the character of Captain Purvis is fused with another character, and a viewer who has not read the book may be forgiven for feeling a bit confused.
Since I found no shortcut, I'll continue summarizing the chapters as best, and as briefly, as I possibly can.

When Perron came out of the Maharnee's room, new guests had come in and were shown to the cloak-room, and he suddenly found himself within yards from the English girl he had seen earlier in the day at the entrance of Captain Purvis' quarters. 
Wondering about her reaction to his miraculous transformation from a sergeant in the field service in jungle green to one from the education corps in khaki, he took the initiative and said,  "Good evening. We meet again."  After a quick glance at his left shoulder tab she answered "Sarah Layton" , and without any other word followed Aneila, the Maharanee's niece, into the cloak room.

Perron continued along the passage and reentered the living room where a bearer was presiding over the cocktail cabinet and where he had another and rather more devastating shock.

To be continued





The pejorative term is derived from the acronym JFC

Gumtree

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #20 on: February 08, 2009, 01:23:31 AM »
Traude Sorry you're having such a bad time with arthritis - hope your weather keeps warming. We are just the opposite here with oppressive heatwaves which sap all energy.  Bushfires are raging throughout south-eastern Australia and have claimed many lives (about 40 confirmed to date) and there are many serious burn victims. At the same time 60 percent of Queensland is under water from floods - many places evacuated or isolated. And here at home on the west coast we too have fires.... some lit by arsonists.

You relieved my mind by saying that the first 106 1/2 pages of this volume are so detailed. I thought I was the only one who found it a bit much. It really is daunting as it needs such careful reading and evaluation lest one becomes lost.

It certainly helps  to have the pertinent issues listed as you have done - my notes are so scrappy and now almost indecipherable - not worth the paper I scribbled them on - your clear and concise presentation is just what the doctor ordered ...

I have deferred watching the series until we have finished with the books. Bearing in mind that films so often take shortcuts and liberties with the given text and have a habit of amalgamating characters and events I thought it better to wait. So I'm glad you mentioned the shortcomings of the series.
Reading is an art and the reader an artist. Holbrook Jackson

Gumtree

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #21 on: February 08, 2009, 01:45:27 AM »
I keep meaning to find a copy of Six Days in Mayapore. I will, deo volente
Reading is an art and the reader an artist. Holbrook Jackson

hats

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #22 on: February 08, 2009, 09:48:15 AM »
Hi Traude and Gumtree,

I am so sorry not to have kept up with this series. Traude always is so well prepared and writes so clearly what I can't understand. I just got lost on book I. For some reason, time was pressing. I didn't catch up again. :'(

Gumtree

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #23 on: February 08, 2009, 10:24:06 AM »
I had to come in again this evening - our bushfire toll keeps rising and is now around 100 dead, 750 homes razed to the ground, countless hectares of land are burnt to a cinder and some fires still rage out of control...  the death toll is sure to rise as many are still unaccounted for.
Reading is an art and the reader an artist. Holbrook Jackson

Gumtree

  • Posts: 2741
Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #24 on: February 08, 2009, 10:25:42 AM »
You're here now Hats - that's what matters...it's always good to see you  :)
Reading is an art and the reader an artist. Holbrook Jackson

straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #25 on: February 08, 2009, 10:31:49 AM »
Sunday morning here and milder.
Thank you for your post, Gumtree.

It's a great pleasure to have you here again, Hats.  Thank you. 
I am truly grateful and will be back later.


straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #26 on: February 08, 2009, 10:09:11 PM »
Gumtree, our media have covered the wildfires in Australia and reported that they are the worst ever. The toll in lives lost and homes destroyed has risen since you posted earlier today. One despairs at the extent of such devastation and personal tragedy.  The fires are occurring in Victoria state.  I seem to remember reading somewhere  that you live in the western part of the continent.
What can one say except send prayers?

Hats, I have been drawn to Paul Scott's work as if by a magnet. Every time I open one of the books, I find something that makes me see more clearly, understand more fully.  Please stay with us. I've always enjoyed your company, and am happy you joined the new Writers' Nook in Seniors & Friends.

More to come.


Gumtree

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #27 on: February 09, 2009, 08:50:37 AM »
Traude Thank you for your concern. And you were right - I do live on the west coast but here  the bushfire threat is also high and  there are fires burning but contained for the moment .
The bushfire toll in the east seems to grow by the hour as do the heartrending stories of near escapes and sadly those who were unable to find safety.
We have extended family and more distant relatives in the affected areas so can only hope and pray for their safety. My son and DIL live on Sydney's North Shore where an arsonist lit a fire for fun! They're OK.
This is a big country - vast areas now lie in ashes - recovery will take years.
Thanks again...Gum
Reading is an art and the reader an artist. Holbrook Jackson

straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #28 on: February 12, 2009, 11:24:08 PM »
To continue

About to enter the living room Perron hesitated momentarily at the sight of three men who were observing him:
an elderly gentleman in white ducks wearing an eye patch and leaning on an ebony cane; a good-looking young Indian in well-cut civilian clothes, and a British officer he had met once before -  and that was the shock:

In the dead of night Perron and his officer were standing dockside with a group of military police and witnessed the arrival of Indian officers and men formerly imprisoned in Germany as they shuffled past, in oddly assorted uniforms -
the remains (it turned out later) of Colonel Layton's famed Pankot Rifle regiment. But the night was not over yet.

Perron and his officer were summoned to the security shed where a major in a Punjab uniform with a badly burned face and one gloved hand was staging the interrogation of a havildar from the group of returnees suspected of treason. The major - none other than the diabolical Merrick, wanted Perron to closely observe and listen to every word of the interrogation conducted in Urdu,  a sadistic exercise described verbati at  some length.  After relentless grilling, Merrick abruptly ended the interrogation.

Then Merrick asked Perron what he thought of the man ("harmless", said Perron,  and then cleverly turned the conversation to Chillingborough and asked Perron whether he remembered an "Indian boy" named Harry Coomer ("he was good at cricket", Perron recalled).  Merrick told him of Hari's return to Mayapore and his arrest in connection with the evil deed in the Bibighar gardens and that he, Merrick, had made the arrest.
 
The same man was looking directly at him. The elderly man (Count Bronowsky) nterpreted Perron's brief hesitation as shyness and encouraged him to come in. The count made the introductions,  Ahmed Kasim, younger son of MAK Kasim, identified.  Sarah joined the group.  The count asked questions  about Perron's his field of studies and his plans for the future. Perron learned that Colonel Layton is in Bombay and concerned about the havildar whom he is planning to talk to.   Merrick gave no sign that he and Perron had met before. Later  he cornered Perron in the corridor and instructed him not to mention to Sarah that he and Perron had met, that he had interrogated the havildar nd that the man in Merrick's control.
Perron confirmed that he was officiaslly on duty at the party but refused to answer questions even under the threat of being exposed as field security.  In a test of wills Merrick ordered Perron to make an arrest of certain "sexually ambiguous" guests (who according to Captain Purvis were known to flock to the Maharanee's parties), when a very upset Aneila interrupted and summoned Perron back to the Maharanee's chambers.

Her highness was disturbed by the noise in the corridor, pronounced the wiskey "disgusting",  and wondered  whether the "Purvis creature" had intended to poison her.  She made Perron try some of the golden liquid, which he hugely enjoyed, explaining the quality and rareness of genuine malt Scotch.  But the Maharanee could not be pacified.  After asking about the guests she ordered  a wailing Aneila to  send them all home,  to lock the liquor cabinet and send the servants to bed.  Perron took the rejected bottle (a quarter of it gone) with him, apologizing profusely.

The count's limousine  took Sarah, Perron and Merrick back to the apartment building, Sarah and Merrick to Aunt Penny's apartment and Perron to Captain Purvis apartment upstairs.

To be continued

straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #29 on: February 15, 2009, 11:34:00 PM »
My grandson visited today and monopolized my computer to work on an essay for school. He accomplished the mission and I have my computer back - now ready
to continue.

The mysterious, slightly paranoid and profoundly unhappy Captain Purvis makes only a brief appearance in this chapter.  It is impossible to know what Paul Scott meant him to represent in the framework of this novel. But we are certainly allowed to hazard a guess.

The economist had attracted the attention of unknown and unnamed people in London by writing a paper about the economy and  expounding certain implications and predictions.  In short order he was contacted, and promised a very important job (but given no details) and kept in virtual seclusion in an attic for months on end. He was also given a commission and, when he balked,  he was told that he had better not refuse - for his own good.

Eventually he was shipped to Bombay where he had arrived three months, two weeks and four days earlier. He suffered from an amoebic infection like countless British men in India.  Few of them, and apparently few army doctors, realized that amoebiasis could be fatal. They did know that drink alone brought relief.

Captain Purvis brought a goodly supply with him.  When the reader and Perron met him, he was down to two bottles of the rare Scotch wiskey, the genuine article,  one of which he sent with Perron as a gift to the Maharanee - who scorned it, as we have seen.

It is not too far-fetched to speculate that somebody wanted Purvis removed from his academic post, out of circulation,  and prevent him from repeating his theories and predictions, which may have made him a "danger".  That is supposition.  Yet that may quite possibly have been the reason why his character was so ignominiously combined in the TV adaptation with that of Major Beamish, of whom nothing more is heard.

The door to the Purvis apartment was closed when Perron came up the stairs (the elevator still out of order). For the first time he saw the name of the owner.
Hapgood. Hapgood, the banker, who was away with his family in a  more comfortable place. It explained the presence of the centuries-old Indian
paintings on the living room wall which Perron had noticed earlier.

He had to ring twice before the door was opened.  The servants were agitated, talking all at once. The living room was a scene of destruction:  bottles thrown at the walls and the priceless Moghul paintings, pillows tossed and the drinks table overturned.

A telegram had arrived, said the servants,  Purvis Sahib then made several calls shouting and drinking. Be put in a call to Delhi.  He drank while he waited.  He kept calling the operator, drinking,  shouting, cursing.  Yes, the call from Delhi came through, and Purvis Sahib became a wild man. Then the line went dead.

Perron read the telegram, an official military signal marked Secret and Urgent. 
It informed Captain Purvis of his secondment to the department of Civil Affairs and ordered him to report to  Headquarters, South-East Asia Command, by August 9.   Copies had been sent to an impressive list of authorities. No explanation was given but that was hardly necessary. In Ceylon, Purvis would find himself attached to a group of Civil Affairs officers bound for Malaya either with or in the wake of Zipper.

The door to Captain Purvis room was locked.  No sound came from within.   One of the servants produced the key to the adjoining room, (the room of the Hapgood's daughter "which smelt of stale powder and self-satisfaction"), its window kept open for airing.  The balcony was only steps from the balcony of Captain Purvis' room.  Perron jumped across the parapet.

Captain Purvis' room was empty. The bathroom door locked. 
Over the anxious protests of the bearer ("What will Hapgood Sahib say when he comes?"),  Perron broke down the bathroom door with the help of the cook, the sturdiest servant. It took five tries.

They found him in the bathtub, fully clothed, bleeding from several wounds in one arm.  Together they pulled him out and into his room.  Perron sent the cook down to the apartment of Major Grace asking for Major Merrick,  and began to resuscitate Purvis.  Eventually Purvis opened his eyes.

Merrick appeared with an English IMS officer who examined the patient and said to Perron, "Well done. You better go next door and have a bloody strong drink and get out of that wet uniform."

To be continued






Perron and the cook

Eloise

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #30 on: February 16, 2009, 08:05:49 AM »
My book arrived and I started it trying hard to bridge the gap between Book 1 and Book 4. Thank you Traude for giving us a resumé of the plot, it's a big help.

Frybabe

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #31 on: February 16, 2009, 04:15:59 PM »
Thanks, Traude. There certainly is a lot going on in this volume said and unsaid, I think.

There certainly are a number of ways to divert or shut up those whose ideas don't fit the power's-that-be political agenda. Captain Purvis may have been the victim of one such. I vaguely I remember thinking that the powers may have been interested in his thinking and wanted to get him closer to the "problem" to get further opinions or thoughts. It certainly doesn't follow, though, that they would send him on to Ceylon and hence to Malaya, if so. Maybe the powers that sent him to Bombay didn't order him on to Malaya, but simply bureaucratic processes that were set in motion by miscommunication or simple error. I do not remember whether it was just him or if the whole group he was attached to were being sent.

Everything about this section reeks of paranoia, spys, counterinsurgency, etc. Captain Purvis simply did not have the temperament for that arena, and, he ended up with amoebic infection (dysentery?) to boot.

straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #32 on: February 17, 2009, 09:52:25 PM »
Many thanks for your posts, Éloïse and Frybabe. I'll answer tomorrow because tonight I'm  all  "talked out".  The reason?
Earlier in the day the local book group met to discuss The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Since I had promoted the book, I needed to be especially well prepared, and I was.
I need not have worried - the meeting was wonderful.

Will continue tomorrow.



straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #33 on: February 18, 2009, 11:37:07 PM »
To continue.

Éloïse,  each volume of the Quartet enhances the reader's understanding of this ultimately tragic story because Paul Scott presents the arid historic events in human terms and from the perspective of fictional British and Indian in fictional locations.  He does so masterfully.

Volume 1, the Jewel in the Crown, was an overview of sorts of the daily lives of, on the one hand,  the British in their cantonment and, on the other hand, of the multitudes Indians in their segregated quarters, most of them in servitude.
There are cursory hints of tension between Hindus (a vast majority) and Muslims in  the fictional Mayapore.  The full extent of that conflict (and growing nationalism)  becomes more apparent with every successive volume.  There are "good", well-meaning characters (Lady Manners, widow of a former British provincial governor and aunt of Daphne;  Sister Ludmila;  Lady Chatterjee; Indian lawyer Gopal,  Edwina Crane who has despaired of her mission and the effect she had on the minds of young Muslim children, and more). Dozens of characters populate the pages, often nameless and some never reappear.
Only one character really prospers (for wont of a better word): the sadistic Merrick.

Volume 2, The Day of the Scorpion, focuses on the British hill station Pankot, where the Pankot Rifles regiment spends the least bearable months of the monsoon season, and on the fictional Mirat, one of a number of such princely states,  virtually owned by a ruler who is nominally autonomous but governs under the watchful eyes of the British.   Mirat, like Mayapore, has a large Hindu majority, but, thanks to the careful guidance of the Nawab by the astute Count Bronowsky, a cautious atmosphere of let's call it "good will"  prevails.

The reader is introduced to the characters of sisters Sarah and Susan Layton,  to Teddy Bingham, and to members of the British colony. The wives, known as ]i]memsahibs[/i], are the backbone of the families, vulnerable to tropic diseases, bearing signs of premature aging because of India's climate, and many of them alone, while  husbands  (like Colonel Layton) are fighting abroad. 

As outlined, volume 3, The Towers of Silence, is written from the perspective of another British missionary, who knew Edwina Crane, Barbie Batchelor. She too begins to doubt whether she had  been effective in her mission, and  her faith.

Frybabe, yes. Poor Purvis was being kept under wraps  quite deliberately, another "man who knew too much".  But some of those who pulled the wires in England had obviously managed to find a niche for themselves in Delhi, from what we can gather.

Even before the end of the war in Europe, Whitehall made plans for India, contingent upon developments in the east. One was a training course for British officers to encourage their staying on in India at the end of the war in Asia.   Sarah Layton's uncle Captain Grace was the head of one such program, elevated to Colonel and quartered with aunt Penny in a luxurious modern building with air-conditioning  (!) in Calcutta, the same building where Captain Purvis was billeted in an elegant,expensively furnished apartment owned by the Hapgoods.  It is easy to speculate that Mr. Hapgood, a banker, was planning to stay on.

Merrick returned to the Purvis apartment to take Perron downstairs where a dinner was laid out for him, adding that he had a "vested interest" in Perron's safe return to the camp and, when asked why, declared that he was going to ask to have Perron transferred to his department.

After a bath and change of uniform, Perron was introduced to a visibly tired Colonel Layton who had returned to the Grace's apartment alone. When presented with the now half-empty bottle of Scotch he was overcome. Sarah, Perron and Merrick ate alone.  Afterwards, with Perron politely declining an invitation to spend the night at the apartment, Merrick hailed a taxi to take Perron back to the lot that held Perron's jeep.  The guard commander promptly unlocked the gate, Perron went back to the waiting taxi and said "Everything is in order, Sir."

"Right", said Merrick. "I'll see you in Delhi. In a couple of days,  I expect." The cab drew away.
"Oh no, you won't", said Perron aloud. "You bloody well won't".

The brand new jeep did not start. Half an hour later, soaked to the skin again by a new downpour, Perron gave up on the electrical system and was given a room for the night.

Aslant one wall, there was a trestle table covered by an army blanket, with a neatly positioned telephone, blotter and pencil tray, and a triangular piece of wood with the name Capt. L. Purvis,
the lonely place where Purvis had waited for the call from Delhi that never came.  And, on the wall behind the desk, he had marked off with a blue crayon the days of his martyrdom.

To be continued tomorrow
with a new chapter, Journeys into Uneasy Distances. (96 pages).



Eloise

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #34 on: February 19, 2009, 02:32:37 PM »
This book, as any book I love to read, gives me a thrill each time a small sentence gives so much information without going into details. At the start of the book when Perron meets Sarah for the first time, she has to evaluate who he is, an 'inferior' or a 'superior' and these few words say more than meets the eye: "She studied his uniforme briefly, taking everything in at a glance as young English women in India were trained to do" With just a glance she knows instantly he is a mere sargeant, or if you will someone to be polite to but not someone to get closely associated with or at first at least.

But you can't help but have a sense that something is going to happen between those two. Paul Scott automatically knows what constitutes a good plot. Mind you I don't know that yet, I just assume it because of small hints we read to that effect.

I am hooked and it's going to be hard to put this book down.






straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #35 on: February 19, 2009, 08:51:46 PM »
Éloïse, thank you for the post. I feel exactly like you about Paul Scott's writing and the beauty of the style. The passage you mentioned is pertinent. Perron is clearly intrigued by Sarah :

"She was a bit thin, a bit bony, but she walked well. He judged her to be in her twenties but found it difficult to place her.  Accent, style of dress, forthrightness: these proclaimed her a daughter of the raj , but her manner had lacked that quality - elusive in definition - which Perron had come to associate with young memsahibs:  a compound of self-absorption, surface self-confidence, and, beneath, a frightening innocence and uncertainty about the true nature of the alien world they lived in. They were born only to breathe that rarified, oxygen-starved air of the upper slopes and peaks, and so seemed to gaze down, from a height,  with the touching look of girls who had been brought up to know everybody's place and were consequently determined to have everybody recognize their own."

Perron's (perhaps slightly cynical) observations were accurate, and they could all be applied to Susan, (whom he had not yet met, only heard about). Sarah was made of a different mold; she did not fit the stereotype.  Sarah was older by one year.  At a young age the sisters were sent to England to be educated, which was the long-established custom. During the school year they stayed  with an aunt in London, and during vacations with great grandfather Layton. They returned ("came out", as it was called) to India when school was over.  Susan would be married, widowed, bear a son and become emotionally unbalanced,  all in the space of a few months.  Merrick was the last-minute substitute as best man at Susan's wedding to Teddy Bingham,  which took place in Mirat. Teddy took the stone that had been meant for Merrick.  From that day forward their destinies were inextricably linked.

During the imprisonment of Colonel Layton Sarah became the rock. handled the servants, managed household affairs, and quietly settled the bridge debts Mildred Layton, the emotionally barren mother, had incurred and forgotten about in the alcoholic fog of her days.

To continue.
Sarah had come to Bombay to meet her father and accompany him on the train home.  Colonel Layton had been told told one of his havildars (whose father had been a decorated soldier in the Pankot Rifles) was suspected of treason and being held in Delhi.  Incredulous and anguished,   attermpted through channels to arrange a personal encounter with the havildar, convinced he could straighten everything out.  But Merrick in his zeal successfully argued against it. 
On the next day, there was no incident in Delhi, where Merrick saw Sarah and her father off on the train to Ranpur and Pankot.  The Colonel had been "docile, good-humored and quietly intent on the morning papers with the reports of the "devastating power" of the bomb the Americans had dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Monday morning."

To be continued






 




straudetwo

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Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #36 on: February 25, 2009, 11:12:54 PM »
Éloïse, I did not want to go forward too quickly but think you probably are right in step, so
to continue.

The  first 2-1/2 pages of the new chapter (which is subdivided by Roman numerals and asterisks)  are not a linear continuation of the preceding chapter but, like the beginning of volume 1,  narrated by a traveler on a train journey, in this case a journey yet to come, but through  familiar terrritory, radically changed and now barren, desolate, and in ruins: evidence of a mass exodus.   A second train journey, also still to come (but in the opposite direction) is remembered. - in effect foreshadowed.
This narrative detour is baffling and out of context. But patience will be rewarded.  :)

The last paragraph in part I holds valuable information :

"The train is cautious in its approach to Premanagar ⁜ . Tracks converge from the east, coming from Mayapore. To the left , some miles distant, is the fort, no longer a prison, infrequently visited by tourists; peripheral to the tale but a brooding point of reference and orientation.  To the south lies Mirat with its mosques and minarets. North, a few hours' journey, is Ranpur⁜⁜ where a grave was undug, and farther north still, amid hills, Pankot, where it was dug in too great a hurry for someone's peace of mind. ...

⁜ Premanagar was known for its fort in which Hindu leader and Congress member Mohammed Kasim was held in solitary confinement. He like many other Indian leaders had been arrested in the wake of the Mayapore riots.
⁜⁜ The italizing is mine. The reference is to the grave of Mabel Layton,  hastily interred in the  Pankot cemetery per the instructions of Mildred Layton, despite Mabel's express wishes to be buried in Ranpur  (headquarters of the Pankot Rifles regiment) near her second husband, Colonel Layton's father.  All pleas by Barbara Batchelor, Mabel's companion, were ignored and Barbara ordered to leave Mabel's Rose Cottage.

To be continued tomorrow


 

straudetwo

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  • Massachusetts
Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #37 on: February 28, 2009, 12:22:01 AM »
Continuing (a day late, sorry) subsection II of Chapter Two.

On the train to Pankot

Sarah had often rehearsed the circumstances of her father's return, but she had not pictured them like this, with the two of them traveling alone from Bombay to Pankot.  He said he had done the same thing, but that there was always a moment when his imagination failed, the moment following the actual reunion --  probably because the scene of reunion was not determinable in advance: a railway station; a dockside; even an airport; the old house in Ranpur; the front verandah of Rose Cottage; the compound of the grace and favor bungalow in the lines of the Pankot Rifles depot. The reunion itself was the important thing, he said. He never thought beyond it.

He told Sarah that a fellow POW, a Catholic, had shocked a padre by confessing that he always wondered what - after creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh - God had done on the eighth.  The day of reunion was like the seventh day. But a reunion is only a moment in a day, and Sarah had  already had that moment with her father in Bombay.

There were many questions she would have liked to ask her father:   how he was treated, whether he was ever punished, perhaps for trying to escape, but she said nothing.  She saw his restlessness, his anxiety to be occupied and how easily he could get upset.   She had seen him pocket bits of bread: the prison camp habit of saving the 'unexpired portion' - the mark of a man who has seen hunger.  He was uninquisitive about affairs at home; he had not mentioned the death of Teddy Bingham, the son-in-law he never knew.

With the treasures packed in the hamper Aunt Fenny had handed them in the Bombay train station, Sarah prepared a breakfast she knew her father would like, with cold bacon sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs. Col. Layton relaxed. But he insisted on rinsing the tea cups and picking up the egg shells.  He left the toilet cubicle spotless while Sarah wondered how he could have done it without any cleansing articles on hand. The Colonel had already scandalized Aunt Fenny's and Uncle Arthur's servant Naziruddim by polishing his own shoes, drawing his own bath.

Col. Layton checked his watch regularly, satisfied that the train was running on time. He and Sarah took turns standing by the open window breathing in the famliar air.  Father and daughter changed into their uniform for the arrival. A third strips had been added to Sarah's uniform and her father noted it with pride. In response Sarah cast down her eyes - they had never been a demonstrative family.

Tomorrow The Arrival



Eloise

  • Posts: 247
  • Montreal
Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #38 on: February 28, 2009, 04:37:40 PM »
Yes Traude I am following the same chapters as you. Your post gives me insight as to how the story develops. I don't have anything to add at this time, but I am enjoying the book.  Thanks for giving me something new to learn about the history of that period. I am especially interested because Quebec was a British colony at one time

straudetwo

  • Posts: 1597
  • Massachusetts
Re: The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott -- Division of the Spoils
« Reply #39 on: March 03, 2009, 10:59:27 PM »
Ḗloïse, thank you for mentioning the connection between Canadian and British history.
As best I recall from history classes, the province of Québec was part of a Grand Coalition in British North America; so were  the provinces of  Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Ontario.  I don't remember in what year Canada as a whole became a British  Dominion, but I  recall that there were five dominions, all of them colored  pink in my old history atlas (pre-WW II status, of course), like the  other English possessions elsewhere in the world. 

It is astounding what a disproportionately small number of British military and administrative personnel accomplished in the immense Indian subcontinent over a few centuries. The fall of the Empire was a tragedy by any measure.  The outcome is a known fact, but told in Paul Scott's work by and from the perspective of  people, though they are fictive characters, it becomes more vivid, immediate and comprehensible.

This chapter centers on Sarah's lengthy observations and introspections.  Therefore I am attempting to compress the pace of the narrative into shorter, more concise "capsules" (for wont of a better word).

The Arrival
Col. Layton's requests had been followed scrupulously - there was no clamorous crowd a the station, no welcoming committee.  Present were only the depot adjutant, Captain Kevin Coley, an NCO  and a truck to take the small group of Indian soldiers back to the lines. (Re-reading this passage I wondered exactly where those "lines" were).
 
Few words were exchanged between father and daughter on the ride up Club Road past all the old familiar places.  When the driver changed gears for the final uphill climb to Rose Cottage,  Sarah had the sensation that she had no longer any personal involvement in her father's homecoming.  He had been informed by letter of Mabel's death and her burial in Pankot (instead of in Ranpur); now she worried how he would take the other visible changes, how he would feel looking down at the tennis court from the verandah and whether he'd miss the abundance of roses over which Mabel had labored until her last day.  Neither of them seemed eager and anxious to peer out of the window, both  leaning back,  passive and reluctant.

Before the last bend in the road Col. Layton asked the driver to stop and told Sarah he would walk the rest of the way. After a few minutes she told the driver of the staff car to go on ahead.  She too walked up.  Her mother, no loner financially strapped, had put her own imprimatur on the surroundings and the house itself, ordered new furniture and a new rug for the entrance hall.   Mabel's old wooden marker "Rose Cottage" was half hidden by wild growth on the bank.  Its identifying function had been usurped by neat white boards on each of the stone pillars, announcing respectfully in bold black lettering the  number of the house, 12 Upper Club Road, and the name of its occupier: Col. J. Layton.

"It would be better for you and daddy", she had said to her mother earlier, "to be alone for a bit when he gets here. Ill be in the garden with ayah and Edward."   Thus, she thought,  the true climax of his homecoming had been delayed, transferred from the scene with his wife to the scene with his daughter who had a grandson to present. And a dog. But no husband. Instead, the ghost of the soldier she had married. The ghost, and the living likeness of the child.

To be continued