BEGE-141

Understanding
Indira Gandhi National Open University
School of Humanities Prose

Block

3
BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Block Introduction 111
UNIT 1
Biography and Autobiography: An Introduction 113
UNIT 2
Gandhi: Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments 124
with Truth
UNIT 3
Bertrand Russells’s Autobiography 141
UNIT 4
Lytton Strachey’s –Queen Victoria 155
EXPERTS COMMITTEE
Prof Ameena Kazi Ansari Prof. Malati Mathur
Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi Director, School of Humanities
Dr Hema Raghavan IGNOU (ENGLISH FACULTY)
Principal (Retd.), Gargi College
Prof. Neera Singh
University of Delhi
New Delhi Prof. Nandini Sahu
Dr. Vijay Sharma Prof. Parmod Kumar
Principal (Retd.), RLA College Dr. Pema Eden Samdup
University of Delhi
New Delhi Ms. Mridula Rashmi Kindo
Dr. Anand Prakash Dr. Malathy A.
Department of English, Hansraj College,
University of Delhi
New Delhi

COORDINATION AND EDITING

Prof. Neera Singh
School of Humanities
IGNOU

COURSE PREPARATION
This course has been adapted from existing IGNOU material

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SOH, IGNOU

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September, 2021
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BLOCK 3 INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Block 3 of the course on Understanding Prose (BEGE-141).

In this Block we shall study biography and autobiography as literary forms of

prose.

Biography as a literary form is the written story of the life of an individual.

Broadly, it may be defined as a truthful account of the life of an individual,
written in prose. Biographical literature is a very old form of human expression.
It attempts to recreate the life of an individual by drawing upon either memory,
written or oral evidence, or even pictures. While biography is the record of
someone else’s life, autobiography is the story of one’s own life written in the
first person. It is a branch of biographical literature written in subjective prose.
It is unfinished as it is the story of a person who writes it himself/herself.

In Unit 1 we have provided you with a comprehensive introduction to the genre

of biography and autobiography.

In Unit 2 we have taken up Mahatma Gandhi’s An Autobiography or The Story

of My Experiments With Truth.

In Unit 3 we have talked about Bertand Russell’s Autobiography, and in Unit 4

we have dealt with Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey.

It would, of course, not be possible to give you the complete biographies or

autobiographies to study as that would take up far too much time. So we have
selected short passages from these, to give you an idea of the nature and
characteristics of biography and autobiography, their similarities and differences.

All the best.

Biography and Autobiography

112
 Biography and
UNIT 1 BIOGRAPHY AND Autobiography: An
Introduction
AUTOBIOGRAPHY: AN
INTRODUCTION
Structure
1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 What is Biography?
1.3 Origin and Development of Biography
1.4 Forms of Biography
1.5 Autobiography
1.6 Let Us Sum Up
1.7 Answers to Check Your Progress

1.0 OBJECTIVES
We shall discuss the characteristics of biography and autobiography in this Unit.
If you read this Unit carefully, you will be able to:
outline the various aspects of biography;
describe the origins and development of biography;
define the forms of biography and autobiography;
explain the features of autobiography:
describe the differences between biography and autobiography.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
We have already discussed some forms of prose in the previous Blocks. In this
Unit, we shall give you a brief introduction to biography and autobiography. We
shall discuss autobiography as a form of prose in some detail in the next two
Units by taking up passages from two-famous autobiographies. We will also
give you adequate exposure to a biography and will also highlight the differences
between the two.

Biographical literature is a very old form of human expression. It attempts to

recreate the life of an individual by drawing upon either memory, written or oral
evidence, or even pictures. While biography is the record of someone else’s life,
autobiography is the story of one’s own life written in the first person. In the
following sections you will find out more about the differences between the two
forms.

We expect you to read each section carefully and then attempt the exercises. You
can then turn to the end of the Unit to check if your answers are correct.

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Biography and Autobiography
1.2 WHAT IS BIOGRAPHY?
What is Biography?

We know that biography as a literary form is the written story of the life of an
individual. Is this story ‘true’ or ‘fictional’? Should it be written in prose or
verse? Are there any special methods by which this story can be written? Before
we examine these questions at some length, let us define biography. Broadly, it
may be defined as a truthful account of the life of an individual, written in prose.
A biography is the life of an individual as opposed to a group. While it may
depict several characters, these are depicted only in relation to the individual
whose life is being recreated. In short, the focus is always on the individual. A
biography must be a truthful account. But while a good biography must be factual
it must also be something more. It must have literary value. Now we might well
ask: in what does this literary value lie? We may locate it in the writer’s use of
language. Or in his/her imaginative selection and use of documentary evidence
so that the work emerges as a unified whole. Or in the writer’s use of literary
devices. However, we would like to point out that all these factors contribute to
the literary quality of a biography. To sum up, a biography must combine the
authenticity of history and the creativity of fiction.

Biography and History

Biography is closely related to history on the one hand and to fiction on the
other. It is related to history because like history, it deals with the past and it also
makes use of the same resources that a historian needs for research. Does that
mean that biography is a branch of history? No. The crucial difference lies in the
fact that history is a factual record of individuals and events. In biography, the
focus is not on the background but on the individual. The aim of the biographer
is not just to convey facts but to probe into the psyche of the individual and to
make him/her come alive. This imaginative rendering of personal experience
links biography to fiction. But fiction is primarily imaginative whereas biography
aims at truthful presentation of detail.

Biography and Fiction

Thus we see that the biographer needs to employ the methods of the historian as
well as of the writer of fiction. Biography uses the techniques of research to test
whether the material at hand is true or false. The biographer must also make a
selection of interesting and relevant incidents. By imposing a certain design on
the selected material the writer must transform the lifeless material into a living
experience. Thus biography has many aspects. It is historical, psychological and
aesthetic. It is historical because it provides a factual account of the life of an
individual. It is psychological because it probes into the mind of the individual.
And it is aesthetic because the writer imposes a certain design on his/her material
and renders it pleasing by his/her use of language and other literary devices. As
an art form, it not only aims to delight the reader but also to provide a certain
insight into the character of another individual. The reader is made to identify
with certain feelings and experiences of the characters who seem to come alive.

Biography as an Art Form

How can we distinguish between a well-composed and a sub-standard biography?
114 There are several ways in which a biography can be marred. Sometimes there is
an undue tendency to celebrate and praise the dead by suppressing unpalatable Biography and
Autobiography: An
facts. At other times, the author’s personality intrudes unnecessarily into the Introduction
narrative. At other times a biography suffers if the author starts with a certain
thesis or preconceived idea and bends facts to suit it.

On the other hand, a well-written biography, is an honest portrayal of historical

facts without suppressing any unpleasant truth. There are no unnecessary
digressions impeding the flow of the narrative and the events selected are apt
and to the point. A good biography is brief and gripping so that it might seem as
if one is reading an interesting novel. As Leon Edel puts it ‘The biographer may
be as imaginative as he pleases – the more imaginative the better – in the way in
which he brings his material together. But he must not imagine the materials. He
must read himself into the past, but then he must read that past into our present.
(Literary Biography. p.31) This clearly means that writing a biography involves
exhaustive research. But as a creative artist, the biographer must assimilate facts
and then present them in the most interesting manner possible.

Use of Time
Does a biography proceed in strict chronological sequence? This is a question
that you might well ask! As biography is not history it is not necessary to follow
the birth to death sequence. The biographer does not have to begin his/her account
of the individual’s life from the day s/he was born and conclude the narrative at
the death. The biographer can and often does use time in a flexible manner,
moving forward and backward in time. Thus an individual life is not portrayed
strictly by the clock. This method helps to make the person come alive, as Leon
Edel believes (Literary Biography, xvi).

Selection of Details
Lytton Strachey, an extremely successful practitioner of the form, suggests that a
biography must have ‘a brevity which excludes anything that is redundant and
nothing that is significant’ (Preface to Eminent Victorians). Does this mean that
a biography has to be brief? There are no hard and fast rules about the length of
a biography. It may run into hundreds of pages as we find in Boswell’s Life of
Johnson or it may be as brief as a character sketch. The idea is to make the
character come alive and to project an impression of unity in the work. The
length then becomes a matter of individual choice.

Why do we Read Biography?

Clearly different persons would have different reasons for selecting specific
reading material. Curiosity about the lives of others may be one reason for reading
biographies. However, the function of biography is not only to interest and delight
but also to stimulate our sympathy so that our understanding of the human
condition is enhanced and our sympathies extended. It is for this reason that
Lytton Strachey described biography as ‘the most delicate and humane of all the
branches of the art of writing’. H.W. Longfellow, the American poet has said:
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime
And departing leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time
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Biography and Autobiography By reading about the lives of others, we can draw some lessons that have a
relevance to our own lives. This is the didactic aspect of biography.

Reading Biography
When we read a biography critically, we must keep the following aspects in
mind:
there must be no redundant details. Only the relevant details must be
carefully selected by the author to advance the narrative;
a biography must be brief and to the point with no unnecessary
explanations, digressions and comments;
it should neither be too complimentary nor too critical but must be an
objective and detached presentation of facts;
the events must be arranged in an interesting manner so that the reader’s
interest is sustained;
the language must be used artistically;
the character portrayed must come alive;
there must be an impression of unity and the interest must never deflect
from the main character.
Let us pause for a while and answer the following questions before we move on
to the section on the origins of biography and how this form developed over the
ages.
Check Your Progress 1
Read the following questions and write your answers in the space provided. If
you need to refer to the previous section, do so by all means. But do write your
answers in your own words.

i) Define biography in about 4-5 sentences.

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ii) How is biography different from history on the one hand and fiction on the
other? Give your answer in about 100 words.
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iii) Why do people read biography? Give your reasons in about 4-5 sentences Biography and
Autobiography: An
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(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit.)

1.3 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF

BIOGRAPHY
Earliest Biographical Literature
The initial impulse towards biography can be found in the ancient sagas and
epics and elegies written to commemorate dead friends, relatives and public
figures. The first biography was written by the fifth century B.C. Greek poet, Ion
of Chios. He wrote brief sketches of his famous contemporaries such as Pericles
and Sophocles. The Church also began to record the lives of its early founders
and saints. This branch of biography is called hagiography or commemoration
of the lives of saints. At this point, another function was added to biography. At
the very beginning only the dead were commemorated, but now it became didactic
as well. The lives were recorded in order to provide ethical models of conduct
for others. While the history of biography is as old as human history, the word
biography was first used only in the seventeenth century to create an identity for
this kind of writing.

Development of Biography
Biography, as we now understand the term, began to appear in the sixteenth
century. Cardinal Morton’s Life of Richard III (circa 1513) and Cavendish’s Life
of Wolsey (1554-7) are two of the first biographies written. The more famous of
seventeenth century biographies are Bacon’s Life of Henry VIII (1612) and
Walton’s Lives (1640-78). Among the biographies written in the eighteenth
century, also known as the age of prose, Johnson’s Lives of the Poets (1779-81)
and Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1791) established the form beyond doubt.
Johnson’s contribution to the form consists in insisting that only the undiluted
truth be told. Boswell broke the stiffness and formality of tone by speaking in his
natural voice. In the nineteenth century, primarily an age of the novel, there was
a decline in the form but the more famous biographies written are Lockhart’s
Life of Scott (1837-38) and Gilchrist’s Life of Blake (1863). In the Victorian age
the decline also occurred because of the undue tendency to eulogize.

Biography in the Twentieth Century

The twentieth century, however, has seen a flowering of the form. Lytton Strachey
found himself famous after the publication of Eminent Victorians (1918). This
set the trend for debunking or exposing the feet of clay of venerated public figures.
There was a change in point of view as well. The author was no longer the
admiring sympathetic underling in the service of the hero/heroine but an equal
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Biography and Autobiography who may admire or be critical according to his/her understanding of the situation.
The impulse to eulogize was replaced by the impulse to reconstruct the life as
vividly as possible. Instead of the tendency to praise or hero worship, the twentieth
century witnessed an increasing trend of presenting the characters in their human
dimension with all their positive and negative aspects. This Virginia Woolf termed
as the ‘new biography’. Another prominent example of this is Leon Edel’s
biography of the famous American novelist Henry James.

Another visible change in twentieth century biography was the reduced length.
Biography no longer ran into several volumes but was often the size of a novel.
The biographer was no longer a chronicler but an artist. Biography thus acquired
an aesthetic dimension. The biographer did not just portray the outer life of work
and activity but also the inner life of emotion and thought. There were no fixed
standards of morality to which the subject must conform. The interest was in the
individual as a human being with all his/her faults and idiosyncrasies. Biography
from its status as a hybrid form began to acquire an identity as a distinct genre.

Let us now examine some of the different forms of biography.

1.4 FORMS OF BIOGRAPHY

There are many kinds of biographies but let us broadly place them in two
categories – those compiled by first hand knowledge of the individual and those
compiled by research. Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1791) belongs to the first
category. Boswell was a friend and admirer of the great literary figure of his age,
Samuel Johnson. As such Boswell spent a lot of time with him observing him
and recording his conversations in his diaries. On the other hand, Lytton Strachey’s
Queen Victoria (1922) is a biography based on research. Also based on research
are reference biographies that we find in Encyclopaedias and dictionaries of
biographies. Their function is to provide factual information. However, we are
interested in biography as a literary form and will not discuss biographies used
purely for reference purposes.

Some biographies are written subjectively with the author’s personality intruding
upon the narrative while others are written objectively and with detachment. In
such cases, the author does not intrude with comments or explanations but recounts
the main events so that we have an effect of a life unfolding itself. This form of
biography is known as ‘standard’ biography. ‘Fictionalized’ biography, is another
form in which: conversations are imagined and materials invented without any
consideration for factual information. There is an attempt to fuse the appeal of
biography with the charm of the novel. Irving Stone’s Lust for Life (1959) is a
fictional account of the life of Van Gogh, the famous Dutch painter. Allied to this
form is fiction presented as biography – there is no attempt at authenticity. It is
simply a novel written as biography or autobiography. Somerset Maugham’s
The Moon and Sixpence (1919) does not attempt to project itself as a life. The
attempt is to evoke a life (the painter Gauguin’s in this instance) rather than to
recreate it.

In your course, you will find one passage from what we have just defined as
‘standard’ biographies. It is taken from Lytton Strachey’s famous work Queen
Victoria. We hope you will enjoy reading it.

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Check Your Progress 2 Biography and
Autobiography: An
Answer the following questions in your own words. Introduction

i) Describe the two main changes that took place in biography writing in the
twentieth century.
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ii) Name two famous biographies each from the eighteenth and twentieth
centuries.
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(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit.)

1.5 AUTOBIOGRAPHY
What is Autobiography?
Autobiography is a branch of biographical literature written in subjective prose.
It is unfinished as it is the story of a person who writes it him/herself. It is usually
written at a later stage in life. The events are recollected either in chronological
sequence or at random, moving back and forth in time. However, all
autobiographies are not written when the author is old. For example, Dom Moraes
wrote his autobiography entitled My Son’s Father when he was only twenty two!

An autobiography may appear biased which is justifiable because a personal

point of view is being presented. Details of personal experience are made
interesting so that regardless of the fame or obscurity of the writer, the reader’s
attention is engaged and curiosity aroused. Writers talk freely about themselves
making frequent use of the first person pronoun. The reader is expected to be
sympathetic rather than to sit on judgement. What is important in such a literary
form is not a rigid or strictly logical structure, but a spontaneous, easy and flexible
movement. Thus we cannot judge autobiography in the same way as we would
biography. In a biography, the objectivity of the writer is a major consideration
in judging its overall merit.

Informal Autobiography
Autobiographies can either be informal or formal. Informal autobiographies may
or may not be intended for publication. Letters, diaries and journals fall within 119
Biography and Autobiography this category. Letters of famous men like Byron are an index to their personalities
and therefore of great interest to the reader. The young Jewish girl Anne Frank’s
Diary created such an impact that it has often been staged as well as filmed.
Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals (1897) record her experiences providing us with
information about the little-known facts about her more famous brother, the poet
Wordsworth. All these books represent a self-conscious form of revelation. But
they are not important only for the information that they provide but are also
aesthetically pleasing. Memoirs are another form of informal autobiography. Here
the emphasis is on the events and experiences remembered rather than on the
personality of the person who remembers.

Formal Autobiography
Formal autobiography attempts to reconstruct a life through recollection. The
autobiographer has the advantage of first-hand experience of his/her own subject
i.e. him/herself. The problem that the author faces is that of striking a balance
between sounding too modest or too aggressive. What are the other types of
autobiographies? There are religious autobiographies like St. Augustine’s
Confessions (circa AD 397 to AD 401) and intellectual ones such as J.S. Mill’s
Autobiography (1873). (Mill’s autobiography was published posthumously).
Fictionalized autobiographies like James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young
Man (1916) transpose the actual experiences of the author onto a fictional plane
and as such do not come under the category of biography.

Autobiography and Memoir

An autobiography is distinct from a memoir. As Roy Pascal puts it, ‘In the
autobiography, proper attention is focused on the self, in the memoir or
reminiscence on others’ (Design and Truth in Autobiography RKP, 1960, p.5).
These two forms may be in the same book or even the same page. But the
difference lies in the focus. In an autobiography the emphasis is always on the
self. It is clear that the individual does not live outside society. And thus even in
an autobiography, it is essential to portray people and places. But in general the
interest remains mainly on the self.

Biography and Autobiography

We have discussed some different types of biography and autobiography. Let us
now look at the main differences between the two:

1) In autobiography, childhood is portrayed prominently. On the other hand,

in biography the author concentrates on the active period of the individual
especially his/her success.

2) The biographer places special emphasis on the death of the individual while
in an autobiography, needless to say, death does not figure at all.

3) Autobiographies often feature the relationships with parents and

siblings, biographies, on the other hand, deal with relationships with friends
and colleagues who directly or indirectly contributed to the person’s success.

4) A biographer has to rely on external evidence. He may have a close

relationship with the subject. Or he may reconstruct his/her life by culling
evidence from documents, diaries or letters. An autobiographer does not
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 need to rely on such evidence. S/he can take recourse to his/her memory. Biography and
Autobiography: An
But that does not mean that the autobiographer does not make use of Introduction
documentary evidence. As you read on, you will discover that Bertrand
Russell made extensive use of letters in his Autobiography.

5) The main difference, as we know, lies in the point of view. In biography the
life is recreated by a third person narrator, who may or may not be objective.
In autobiography, the first person narrator is mainly subjective.

Why do we read Autobiographies?

The reasons for reading autobiography are as manifold as those for reading
biography. One reason could be curiosity and the other could be the desire to
gain insight into the lives of people like ourselves. Another could be simply
delight in the book as a work of art.

Autobiography, as you know is the most personal of literary forms. What are the
ways of reading autobiography? One can read it as a historical record or as a
work of art. A literary autobiography is read as a work of art. Here one would
keep in mind the idea behind the writing. For example, how does the writer
perceive his or her own nature and development and how does s/he give form to
this perception? To put it simply, how does s/he shape his/her material? Another
relevant question at this point would be: how effectively does s/he use language
to convey his/her experience to the reader?

You will read two passages taken from the autobiographies of Bertrand Russell
and Gandhi in this Block. You will notice the different styles, different experiences
and the different cultures from which they arise. They are fine specimens of the
autobiographic form and you will find that they make interesting reading.
Check Your Progress 3
Answer the following questions in about 100 words each.

i) What is autobiography? Name some forms of autobiography.

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ii) What are the differences between biography and autobiography?

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(Check your answers with those given at the end of the Unit.)
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Biography and Autobiography
1.6 LET US SUM UP
In this Unit, we have discussed:
biography as a truthful account of the life of an individual;
autobiography as a first-person unfinished account of the life of an
individual;
the differences between biography and autobiography;
the origin of biography in early sagas and epics;
the development of biography over the ages; and
different forms of biography and autobiography.

1.7 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress 1
i) Biography is a truthful account of the life of an individual. It is written in
prose. While it is based on facts, a biographer uses his/her imagination to
present a lively and interesting picture of the person portrayed.

ii) History is a factual record of individuals and events while in biography the
focus is not on the background but on the individual. Fiction is independent
of facts and operates solely in the realm of the imagination. While a
biographer must be imaginative, s/he cannot lose sight of facts.

iii) Curiosity about the lives of others may be one reason. Another may be to
draw lessons that may have some relevance to our lives. By reading about
the lives of others, our understanding of the human condition is enhanced
and our sympathies extended.
Check Your Progress 2
i) In earlier times, there had been a tendency to praise the subject. In the
twentieth century, a ‘new’ biography developed wherein one can find that
the biographer is not an admiring subordinate but a critical equal who
examines the character from all angles – positive and negative. Biographies
also became almost as short as the novel. The interest shifted from a mere
depiction of outer events to the states of mind of the character.
ii) 18th century :
Boswell’s Life of Johnson
20th century :
Lytton Strachey’s Queen Victoria
Check Your Progress 3
i) An autobiography is a branch of biographical literature. It is the story of
the life of a person written in his/her own words. It is usually written at a
later stage in life and events are recollected either in chronological sequence
or at random. Autobiographies are either formal or informal.
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ii) A biographer has to rely solely on external evidence but an autobiographer Biography and
Autobiography: An
uses memory as a major source. The biographer also makes use of Introduction
documentary evidence. A biographer concentrates on the successful middle
years of a person’s life while in autobiography childhood is portrayed
extensively.

123
Biography and Autobiography
UNIT 2 M.K.GANDHI’S:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OR THE STORY
OF MY EXPERIMENTS WITH
TRUTH
Structure
2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 M. K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
2.3 Text “A Month with Gokhale”
2.3.1 Chapter 17
2.3.2 Chapter 18
2.3.3 Chapter 19
2.4 Glossary
2.5 Discussion
2.6 Let Us Sum Up
2.7 Answers to Check Your Progress

2.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit you will be able to:
read and comprehend “A Month With Gokhale - I,II,III” from M. K. Gandhi’s
Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927);
appreciate Gandhi’s art and craft of autobiography.

2.1 INTRODUCTION
In this Unit we will be taking up passages from Gandhi’s Autobiography which
will give you a good idea about the art and craft of Gandhi’s autobiography.

Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth is the autobiography

of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (or Mahatma Gandhi) and covers his life from
early childhood through to 1920. It was initiated at the instance of Swami Anand,
Jeramdas and other close co-workers of Gandhi, in his mother-tongue Gujarati
entitled Satyana Prayogo athva Atmakatha published in two volumes – Vol. I in
1927 and Vol. II in 1929. It was translated into English by Mahadev Desai and
first appeared serially in Young India before being published in book form.

In this unit you are going to read three short chapters from Part III of Mahatma
Gandhi’s autobiography, which describe his month long stay with Gokhale in
Bengal when he was on a visit to India from South Africa in 1901 in order to
plead his cause for improving the condition of Indians settled in South Africa.
You must remember that at this time in his life, Gandhi did not have the title of
‘Mahatma’ nor had he yet conceived of the idea of an independent India or of
becoming a national leader in this cause. At the time of which you will read, he
was a loyal British subject, a young lawyer in South Africa, who had been struck
124
by the injustice meted out to the Indians there. So you will gain some insight into Gandhi: Autobiography or
The Story of My Experiments
the making of a great leader and get a glimpse of some of the important people With Truth
who influenced and shaped his thoughts.

Read the text carefully. You may not know about some of the places and people
mentioned but give an uninterrupted first reading. You may consult the glossary
later in subsequent readings.

Before you proceed to the text, we will quickly refresh your memory about the
life of Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of our nation.

2.2 M. K. GANDHI (1869-1948)

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the youngest son of Karamchand Gandhi
and Putlibai. Karamchand Gandhi was the Diwan of Porbandar State for some
time, and later became the Diwan of Raikot State. Of his mother, Putlibai, Gandhi
once said, “If there is any purity in me, it is all due to my mother.”

Born in Porbandar in the present day state of Gujarat in India on October 2,

1869, he studied law at University College, London. In 1891, after having been
admitted to the British bar, Gandhi returned to India and attempted to establish a
law practice in Bombay, but with little success. Two years later, an Indian firm
with interests in South Africa retained him as legal adviser in its office in Durban.
Arriving in Durban, Gandhi found himself treated as a member of an inferior
race. He threw himself into the struggle for elementary rights for Indians in
South Africa.

Gandhi remained in South Africa for twenty years, visiting India twice, in 1896
and 1901. When pleas and petitions failed, Gandhi began to teach a policy of
passive resistance to, and non-cooperation with, the South African authorities.
He was inspired by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy and the 19th century American
writer Henry David Thoreau, especially by Thoreau’s famous essay “Civil
Disobedience.” However, Gandhi considered the terms passive resistance and
civil disobedience inadequate for his purposes and chose another term,
Satyagraha. In Part IV, chapter XXVI of his autobiography, Gandhi relates how
the term came into being:

“...I could not for the life of me find out a new name [for passive
resistance], and therefore offered a nominal prize through Indian
Opinion to the reader who made the best suggestion on the subject. As
a result, Maganlal Gandhi coined the word ‘Satagraha’ (Sat=truth,
Agraha=firmness) and won the prize. But in order to make it clearer I
changed the word to Satyagraha...”

Gandhi returned to India in 1914 and launched his movement of non-violent

resistance to Great Britain. In 1920, witnessing a massacre of Indians protesting
against the Rowlatt Act at Amritsar by British soldiers, Gandhi proclaimed an
organized campaign of non-cooperation. As a consequence, Gandhi was arrested
but the British were soon forced to release him.

Economic independence for India, involving the complete boycott of British

goods, was made a corollary of Gandhi’s Swaraj (which means “self-rule” in
Sanskrit) movement. British industries had brought about extreme poverty and
125
Biography and Autobiography the virtual destruction of Indian home industries. As a remedy for such poverty,
Gandhi advocated revival of native Indian industries and the production of Khadi
was one step in this direction. Gandhi therefore, did not dream of an India free
from the British rule but also free from poverty, social injustice and religious
evils. Indians revered him as a saint and began to call him Mahatma.

In 1921 the Indian National Congress, the group that spearheaded the movement
for nationhood, gave Gandhi complete executive authority, with the right of
naming his own successor. The British government again seized and imprisoned
him in 1922.

After his release from prison in 1924, Gandhi withdrew from active politics and
devoted himself to propagating communal unity. Unavoidably, however, he was
again drawn into the vortex of the struggle for independence. In 1930, he
proclaimed a new campaign of civil disobedience, calling upon the Indian
population to refuse to pay taxes, particularly the tax on salt. This campaign was
the famous Dandi march, in which thousands of Indians followed Gandhi from
Ahmedabad to the Arabian Sea, where they made salt by evaporating sea water.
Once more the Indian leader was arrested, but he was released in 1931, halting
the campaign after the British made concessions to his demands. In the same
year Gandhi represented the Indian National Congress at a conference in London.

In 1932, Gandhi began new civil-disobedience campaigns against the British.

Arrested twice, the Mahatma fasted for long periods several times; these fasts
were effective measures against the British, because violence might well have
broken out in India if he had died. In September 1932, while in jail, Gandhi
undertook a “fast unto death” to improve the status of the Hindu Untouchables.
Although he was himself a member of the Vaishya (merchant) caste, Gandhi was
a great leader of the movement in India dedicated to the eradication of the injustice
of the caste system.

In 1934 Gandhi formally resigned from politics and was replaced as leader of
the Congress party by Jawaharlal Nehru. Gandhi travelled through India, teaching
ahimsa (non-violence) and demanding eradication of “untouchability.” A few
years later, in 1939, he again returned to active political life because of the pending
federation of Indian principalities with the rest of India. His first act was a fast,
designed to force the ruler of the state of Rajkot to modify his autocratic rule.
Public unrest caused by the fast was so great that the colonial government
intervened and the demands were granted. The Mahatma again became the most
important political figure in India.

By 1944 the Indian struggle for independence was in its final stages, the British
government having agreed to independence on condition that the two contending
nationalist groups, the Muslim League and the Congress party, should resolve
their differences. Gandhi stood steadfastly against the partition of India but
ultimately had to agree, in the hope that internal peace would be achieved after
the Muslim demand for separation had been satisfied. India and Pakistan became
separate states when the British granted India its independence in 1947. During
the riots that followed the partition of India, Gandhi pleaded with Hindus and
Muslims to live together peacefully. On January 13, 1948, he undertook a fast in
New Delhi to bring about peace, but on January 30, 18 days after the termination
of that fast, as he was on his way to his evening prayer meeting, he was
assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a fanatic Hindu.
126
Gandhi’s death was regarded as an international catastrophe. A period of mourning Gandhi: Autobiography or
The Story of My Experiments
was set aside in the United Nations General Assembly, and condolences to India With Truth
were expressed by all countries. The teachings of Gandhi came to inspire non-
violent movements elsewhere, notably in the U.S. under the civil rights leader
Martin Luther King, Jr. and in South Africa under Nelson Mandela.

Gandhi was not just a lawyer, a politician or even a social reformer; he was a
man who thought hard about life and humanity and eventually gave a whole new
philosophy of life and governance. He did not claim either this philosophy or
himself to be perfect; as the title of his autobiography states clearly, he saw his
life as a series of experiments. You will now take a closer look at his quest, his
search for the true path by reading the following extract from his autobiography.
Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Part III, Chapters 17,
18 and 19. (Trans. Mahadev Desai, Ahmedabad: Navjivan Publishing House,
2005. pp. 213-220).

2.3 TEXT: “A MONTH WITH GOKHALE”

2.3.1 Chapter 17
A Month with Gokhale-I
From the very first day of my stay with him Gokhale made me feel completely
at home. He treated me as though I were his younger brother, he acquainted
himself with all my requirements and arranged to see that I got all I needed.
Fortunately my wants were few, and as I had cultivated the habit of self-help, I
needed very little personal attendance. He was deeply impressed with my habit
of fending for myself, my personal cleanliness, perseverance and regularity,
and would often overwhelm me with praise.

He seemed to keep nothing private from me. He would introduce me to all the
important people that called on him. Of these the one who stands foremost in my
memory is Dr. (now Sir) P. C. Ray. He lived practically next door and was a very
frequent visitor.

This is how he introduced Dr. Ray: “This is Prof. Ray who having a monthly
salary of Rs. 800, keeps just Rs. 40 for himself and devotes the balance to public
purposes. He is not, and does not want to get married.”

I see little difference between Dr. Ray as he is today and as he used to be then.
His dress used to be nearly as simple as it is, with this difference of course that
whereas it is khadi now, it used to be Indian mill-cloth in those days. I felt I
could never hear too much of the talks between Gokhale and Dr. Ray, as they all
pertained to public good or were of educative value. At times they were painful
too, containing, as they did, strictures on public men. As a result, some of those
whom I had regarded as stalwart fighters began to look quite puny.

To see Gokhale at work was as much a joy as an education. He never wasted a

minute. His private relations and friendships were all for public good. All his
talks had reference only to the good of the country and were absolutely free from
any trace of untruth or insincerity. India’s poverty and subjection were matters
of constant and intense concern to him. Various people sought to interest him in
different things. But he gave every one of them the same reply: “You do the
127
Biography and Autobiography thing yourself. Let me do my own work. What I want is freedom for my country.
After that is won, we can think of other things. Today that one thing is enough to
engage all my time and energy.” His reverence for Ranade could be seen every
moment. Ranade’s authority was final in every matter, and he would cite it at
every step. The anniversary of Ranade’s death (or birth, I forget which) occurred
during my stay with Gokhale, who observed it regularly.

There were with him then, besides myself, his friends Prof. Kathavate and a
Sub-Judge. He invited us to take part in the celebrations and in his speech he gave
us his reminiscences of Ranade. He incidentally compared Ranade, Telang and
Mandlik. He eulogized Telang’s charming style and Mandlik’s greatness as a
reformer. Citing an instance of Mandlik’s solicitude for his clients, he told us an
anecdote as to how once, having missed his usual train, he engaged a special
train so as to be able to attend the court in the interest of his client. But Ranade,
he said, towered above them all, as a versatile genius. He was not only a great
judge, he was an equally great historian, an economist and a reformer. Although
he was a judge, he fearlessly attended the Congress, and everyone had such
confidence in his sagacity that they unquestioningly accepted his decisions.
Gokhale’s joy knew no bounds, as he described these qualities of head and heart
which were all combined in his master.

Gokhale used to have a horse-carriage in those days. I did not know the
circumstances that had made a horse-carriage a necessity for him, and so I
remonstrated with him: “Can’t you make use of the tramcar in going about
from place to place? Is it derogatory to a leader’s dignity?” Slightly pained, he
said, “So you also have failed to understand me! I do not use my Council
allowances for my own personal comforts. I envy your liberty to go about in
tram-cars, but I am sorry I cannot do likewise. When you are the victim of as
wide a publicity as I am, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for you to go about
in a tramcar. There is no reason to suppose that everything that the leaders do is
with a view to personal comfort. I love your simple habits. I live as simply as I
can, but some expense is almost inevitable for a man like myself.” He thus
satisfactorily disposed of one of my complaints, but there was another which he
could not dispose of to my satisfaction.

“But you do not even go out for walks,” said I. “Is it surprising that you should
be always ailing? Should public work leave no time for physical exercise?”
“When do you ever find me free to go out for a walk?” he replied.

I had such a great regard for Gokhale that I never strove with him. Though this
reply was far from satisfying me, I remained silent. I believed then and I believe
even now, that, no matter what amount of work one has, one should always find
some time for exercise, just as one does for one’s meals. It is my humble opinion
that, far from taking away from one’s capacity for work, it adds to it.

2.3.2 Chapter 18
A Month with Gokhale-II
Whilst living under Gokhale’s roof I was far from being a stay at-home. I had
told my Christian friends in South Africa that in India I would meet the Christian
Indians and acquaint myself with their condition. I had heard of Babu Kalicharan
Banerji and held him in high regard. He took a prominent part in the Congress,
128
and I had none of the misgivings about him that I had about the average Christian Gandhi: Autobiography or
The Story of My Experiments
Indian, who stood aloof from the Congress and isolated himself from Hindus With Truth
and Mussalmans. I told Gokhale that 1 was thinking of meeting him. He said:
“What is the good of your seeing him? He is a very good man, but I am afraid he
will not satisfy you. I know him very well. However, you can certainly meet him
if you like.” I sought an appointment, which he readily gave me. When I went, I
found that his wife was on her death-bed. His house was simple. In the Congress
I had seen him in a coat and trousers, but I was glad to find him now wearing a
Bengal dhoti and shirt. I liked his simple mode of dress, though I myself then
wore a Parsi coat and trousers. Without much ado I presented my difficulties to
him. He asked: “Do you believe in the doctrine of original sin?”

“I do,” said I. “Well then, Hinduism offers no absolution there from, Christianity
does,” and added: “The wages of sin is death, and the Bible says that the only
way of deliverance is surrender unto Jesus.” I put forward Bhakti-marga (the
path of devotion) of the Bhagavad Gita, but to no avail. I thanked him for his
goodness. He failed to satisfy me, but I benefited by the interview. During these
days I walked up and down the streets of Calcutta. I went to most places on foot.
I met Justice Mitter and Sir Gurudas Banerji, whose help I wanted in my work in
South Africa. And about this time I met Raja Sir Pyarimohan Mukarji.

Kalicharan Banerji had spoken to me about the Kali temple, which I was eager
to see, especially as I had read about it in books. So I went there one day. Justice
Mitter’s house was in the same locality, and I therefore went to the temple on the
same day that I visited him. On the way I saw a stream of sheep going to be
sacrificed to Kali. Rows of beggars lined the lane leading to the temple. There
were religious mendicants too, and even in those days I was sternly opposed to
giving alms to sturdy beggars. A crowd of them pursued me. One of such men
was found seated on a verandah. He stopped me, and accosted me: “Whither are
you going, my boy?” I replied to him. He asked my companion and me to sit
down, which we did.
I asked him: “Do you regard this sacrifice as religion?”
“Who would regard killing of animals as religion?”
“Then, why don’t you preach against it?”
“That’s not my business. Our business is to worship God.”
“But could you not find any other place in which to worship God?”
“All places are equally good for us. The people are like a flock of sheep, following
where leaders lead them. It is no business of us sadhus.”
We did not prolong the discussion but passed on to the temple. We were greeted
by rivers of blood. I could not bear to stand there. I was exasperated and restless.
I have never forgotten that sight.

That very evening I had an invitation to dinner at a party of Bengali friends.

There I spoke to a friend about this cruel form of worship. He said: “The sheep
don’t feel anything. The noise and the drum-beating there deaden all sensation
of pain.”

I could not swallow this. I told him that, if the sheep had speech, they would tell
a different tale. I felt that the cruel custom ought to be stopped. I thought of the
story of Buddha, but I also saw that the task was beyond my capacity. 129
Biography and Autobiography I hold today the same opinion as I held then. To my mind the life of a lamb is no
less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of
a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature,
the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man. But he who
has not qualified himself for such service is unable to afford to it any protection.
I must go through more self-purification and sacrifice, before I can hope to save
these lambs from this unholy sacrifice. Today I think I must die pining for this
self-purification and sacrifice. It is my constant prayer that there may be born on
earth some great spirit, man or woman, fired with divine pity who will deliver us
from this heinous sin, save the lives of the innocent creatures, and purify the
temple.

How is it that Bengal with all its knowledge, intelligence, sacrifice, and emotion
tolerates this slaughter?

2.3.3 Chapter 19
A Month with Gokhale-III
The terrible sacrifice offered to Kali in the name of religion enhanced my desire
to know Bengali life. I had read and heard a good deal about the Brahmo Samaj.
I knew something about the life of Pratap Chandra Mazumdar. I had attended
some of the meetings addressed by him. I secured his Life of Keshav Chandra
Sen, read it with great interest, and understood the distinction between Sadharan
Brahmo Samaj and Adi Brahmo Samaj. I met Pandit Shivanath Shastri and in
company with Prof. Kathavate went to see Maharshi Debendranath Tagore,
but as no interviews with him were allowed then, we could not see him. We
were, however, invited to a celebration of the Brahmo Samaj held at his place,
and there we had the privilege of listening to fine Bengali music. Ever since I
have been a lover of Bengali music.

Having seen enough of the Brahmo Samaj, it was impossible to be satisfied

without seeing Swami Vivekanand. So with great enthusiasm I went to Belur
Math, mostly, or maybe all the way, on foot. I loved the sequestered site of the
Math. I was disappointed and sorry to be told that the Swami was at his Calcutta
house, lying ill, and could not be seen.

I then ascertained the place of residence of Sister Nivedita, and met her in a
Chowringhee mansion. I was taken aback by the splendour that surrounded her,
and even in our conversation, there was not much meeting ground. I spoke to
Gokhale about this, and he said he did not wonder that there could be no point of
contact between me and a volatile person like her. I met her again at Mr. Pestonji
Padshah’s place. I happened to come in just as she was talking to his old mother,
and so I became an interpreter between the two. In spite of my failure to find any
agreement with her, I could not but notice and admire her overflowing love for
Hindusim. I came to know of her books later.

I used to divide my day between seeing the leading people in Calcutta regarding
the work in South Africa, and visiting and studying the religious and public
institutions of the city. I once addressed a meeting, presided over by Dr. Mullick,
on the work of the Indian Ambulance Corps in the Boer War. My acquaintance
with The Englishman stood me in good stead on this occasion too. Mr. Saunders
was ill then but rendered me as much help as in 1896. Gokhale liked this speech
130 of mine, and he was very glad to hear Dr. Ray praising it.
Thus my stay under the roof of Gokhale made my work in Calcutta very easy, Gandhi: Autobiography or
The Story of My Experiments
brought me into touch with the foremost Bengali families, and was the beginning With Truth
of my intimate contact with Bengal.

I must needs skip over many a reminiscence of this memorable month. Let me
simply mention my flying visit to Burma and the foongis there. I was pained by
their lethargy. I saw the golden pagoda. I did not like the innumerable little
candles burning in the temple, and the rats running about the sanctum brought to
my mind thoughts of Swami Dayanand’s experience at Morvi. The freedom and
energy of the Burmese women charmed just as the indolence of the men pained
me. I also saw, during my brief sojourn, that just as Bombay was not India,
Rangoon was not Burma, and that just as we in India have become commission
agents of English merchants, even so in Burma have we combined with the English
merchants in making the Burmese people our commission agents.

On my return from Burma I took leave of Gokhale. The separation was a wrench,
but my work in Bengal, or rather Calcutta, was finished, and I had no occasion to
stay any longer.

Before settling down I had thought of making a tour through India travelling
third class, and of acquainting myself with the hardships of third-class passengers.
I spoke to Gokhale about this. To begin with he ridiculed the idea, but when I
explained to him what I hoped to see, he cheerfully approved. I planned to go
first to Benares to pay my respects to Mrs. Besant, who was then ill.

It was necessary to equip myself anew for the third-class tour. Gokhale himself
gave me a metal tiffin-box and got it filled with sweet balls and puris. I purchased
a canvas bag worth twelve annas and a long coat made up of Chhaya wool. The
bag was to contain this coat, a dhoti, a towel and a shirt. I had a blanket as well
to cover myself with and a water jug. Thus equipped I set forth on my travels.
Gokhale and Dr. Ray came to the station to see me off. I had asked them both not
to trouble to come, but they insisted. “I should not have come if you had gone
first class, but now I had to,” said Gokhale.

No one stopped Gokhale from going on to the platform. He was in his silk turban,
jacket and dhoti. Dr. Ray was in his Bengali dress. He was stopped by the ticket
collector, but on Gokhale’s telling him that he was his friend, he was admitted.
Thus with their good wishes I started on my journey.

2.4 GLOSSARY
Gokhale : Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866- 1915) was born at
Kolhapur in a humble Chitpavan Brahman family.
Graduating in arts from the Elphinstone College, Bombay,
in 1884, he joined as Professor of history and political
economy at the Fergusson College, Poona. Recognizing
his services, he was conferred Professor to Order. He was
one of the founding social and political leaders during the
independence movement against the British Empire in
India. Actively identified with the Indian National
Congress, he was for some years the Joint Secretary of
the Congress and in 1905, proclaimed its President at the
131
Biography and Autobiography Benares session. A few months before his death, he
declined a knighthood. Gokhale was a mentor to Mahatma
Gandhi when he returned from South Africa. In 1905 he
founded his Servants of India Society which aimed at
bringing about social reform. Though his last years were
clouded by illness, he was a powerful member of the Indian
Public Services Commission 1912-5.
perseverance: persistent determination.
overwhelm: overcome, as with emotions.
Dr. P. C. Ray : Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861-19428) was a
Professor of Chemistry in the University and a scientist
of international acclaim. His activities were concerned with
all spheres of human interest –educational reform,
industrial development, employment generation, poverty
alleviation, economic freedom and political advancement
of the country. He was a pioneer in social reforms in the
country. Ray was a voracious reader of literature, history
and biography. He knew half-a-dozen languages. He was
knighted (and became Sir P. C. Ray) by the British monarch
for his scientific achievements.

Ranade : Rao Bahadur (Justice) Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842-

1901) was an energetic social, political and religious
reformer. In the political sphere he founded the Poona
Sarvajanik Sabha, through which he frequently helped the
government with sound advice, and was one of the
originators of the Indian National Congress. Ranade
became a member of the legislative council of Bombay in
1885, and occupied that position until he was made a
justice of the High Court in 1893. He published books on
Indian economics and Maratha history. For this service,
he was appointed Companion of the Order of the Indian
Empire.

Telang : Kashinath Trimbak Telang (1850-1893) was a judge of

the Bombay High Court and one of the founders of the
Indian National Congress. Along with P.M. Metha, he was
the originator of the Bombay Presidency Association. His
translation of the Bhagavad Gita into English prose and
verse is a standard work. His intimacy with Sanskrit
enabled him to study and quote the Hindu law-books with
an ease not readily attained by European lawyers and
judges. He was nominated to the Bombay legislative
council in 1884, but declined a similar position on the
Viceroy’s council.

Mandlik : R. N. Mandlik was a member of the Executive Committee,

Satyagraha Sabha, Bombay.
solicitude : anxious concern.
versatile : talented, having many skills.
132
sagacity : ability to make good judgements Gandhi: Autobiography or
The Story of My Experiments
remonstrated : protested With Truth

derogatory : below one’s dignity/showing a low opinion.

inevitable : which cannot be avoided or prevented.
ailing : ill or prone to illness.
strove : struggle
doctrine of original sin according to Christian tradition, original sin is the
general condition of sinfulness (lack of holiness) into
which human beings are born because of the Fall. The
Fall refers to the first sin, committed when Adam and Eve
succumbed to the serpent’s temptation.

absolution : salvation from sin; the condition of being formally forgiven

by a Christian priest.

mendicants : beggars

sternly : strictly; in a severe manner

alms : money or goods given to the poor as charity

accosted : approached and spoken to by someone

exasperated : greatly annoyed or impatient

Brahmo Samaj : It is a social and religious movement of the nineteenth

century, founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy on 20th August
1828. Brahmo Samaj literally means the society of
worshippers of “One True God.” “Brahmo” means one
who worships Brahman, or the supreme spirit of the
universe, and “Samaj” means community of people united
together. It promoted belief in one God or monotheism,
support for the rights of women, and opposition to such
aspects of Hinduism as idolatry and animal sacrifice. The
organization attained considerable importance but began
to decline after the death of Roy in 1833. It was revived
by Devendranath Tagore in 1843 under the name of
Calcutta Brahmo Samaj. It got divided in 1866 under the
leadership of Keshab Chandra Sen, who formed the Adi
(original) Brahmo Samaj. In 1869, Keshab Chandra Sen
chose from amongst his missionaries, four persons and
ordained them as adhyapaks or professors of four old
religions of the world – Gour Govinda Ray for Hinduism,
Pratap Chandra Mazumdar for Christianity, Aghore Nath
Gupta for Buddhism and Giris Chandra Sen for Islam.
Adi Brahmo Samaj itself suffered a split on 15th May 1878
when the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj was formed, led by
Ananda Mohan Bose, Shibchandra Deb and Umesh
Chandra Datta.

133
Biography and Autobiography Pratap Chandra leader of the Hindu reform movement, the Brahmo
Mazumdar Samaj, in Bengal

Keshav Chandra Sen : Hindu philosopher and social reformer.

Debendranath Tagore : Hindu philosopher and religious reformer, active

in the Brahmo Samaj. Father of Rabindranath
Tagore.

Swami Vivekananda : The pre-monastic name of Vivekananda (1863-

1902) was Narendranath Dutta. He was one of
the most famous and influential spiritual leaders
on the philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga. He was
the first known Hindu Swami to go to the West,
where he introduced Hinduism, Yoga and Vedanta
at the World’s Parliament of Religions, in
connection with the World Fair in Chicago, in 1893.
It was there that he achieved world-wide fame by
drawing huge audiences in Chicago and then later
elsewhere in America. He was the chief disciple of
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and the founder of
Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission. He
died on July 4, 1902 at Belur Math near Kolkata at
the young age of 39.
sequestered : providing privacy or seclusion.
Belur Math : located in the bank of the River Hooghly near
Calcutta, has the Ramakrishna Temple, as well as
many other temples. In 1899, Swami Vivekanand
established it as the Mother House for all the monks
of the Ramakrishna Order who live in various
branch centres of the Ramakrishna Mission in
different parts of India and the world.

ascertained : find out or determine with certainty.

Sister Nivedita : Nivedita (1867-1911) was christened Margaret

Elizabeth Noble. She was an Anglo-Irish social
worker, author, teacher and disciple of Swami
Vivekananda, who gave her the name Nivedita
(which means one who is dedicated to God) on
March 25, 1898. She started a school for girls and
worked to improve the lives of Indian women of
all castes. Later, she took up the cause of Indian
independence. At the time when Gandhiji saw her,
Sister Nivedita was the guest of two ladies at the
American consulate. She was not, therefore,
responsible for “the splendour that surrounded
her”.

Chowringhee : Chowringhee Road is a major road in Kolkata. In

his book The Changing Face of Kolkata, David
William Martin says, “It represents the nearest
134
 equation in India to what Piccadilly is to London, Gandhi: Autobiography or
The Story of My Experiments
Fifth Avenue to New York and the Champs Elysees With Truth
to Paris. Nostalgic Londoners like to regard their
Circus as the centre of the universe. Kolkatans are
more reserved in their acclaim, although the fervour
they display for their city is perhaps unmatched.”

Indian Ambulance Corps : When the Boer war broke out in 1899, Gandhi
organized The Natal Indian Ambulance Corps of
1100 Indian men. Its task was to take the wounded
brought by the Natal Volunteer Ambulance Corps
from the battlefield and carry them to the railhead.

Boer War : It was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May

1902, between the British Empire and the two
independent Boer republics of the Orange Free
State and the South African Republic (Transvaal
Republic). After a protracted hard-fought war, the
Boers were defeated, and the two independent
republics were absorbed into the British Empire.
It is also known as the Anglo-Boer War (among
some South Africans) and in Afrikaans (the
language of the Boers), as the Anglo-Boereoorlog
or Tweede Vryheidsoorlog (“Second War of
Independence”). The Boers were descendants of
the Dutch colonizers of South Africa.

The Englishman : It was a newspaper begun by British merchants in

1821 by the name of John Bull in the East to support
the British rule in India. Stocqueler changed its
name to “The Englishman.”

Mr. Saunders : Mr. J. O’B. Saunders bought The Englishman after

1857 the first war of independence, and became
its editor.

foongis : monks

lethargy : inactivity; showing an unusual lack of energy

indolence : inactivity resulting from a dislike of work

sojourn : a temporary stay

wrench : painful uprooting or parting

ridiculed : subject to laughter or ridicule

Chhaya wool : wool from Chayya, a place in Porbandar State

noted for its coarse woollen fabrics

135
Biography and Autobiography Check Your Progress 1
i) Who introduced Gandhi to Dr. P. C. Ray and how?
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ii) What was Gandhi’s opinion about physical exercise?

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iii) Describe Gandhiji’s visit to the Kali temple in Calcutta.

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iv) Name the people whom Gandhi goes to meet and succeeds in doing so
during his stay with Gokhale.
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(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit.)

2.5 DISCUSSION
Gandhi begins the chapter by praising his host, G. K. Gokhale and his attentions
towards him. However, note that Gandhi observes the people he meets and then
comments on his estimation about them while at the same time trying to learn
from them what he deems to be good. Twice he is dissatisfied with Gokhale’s
conduct and voices his concern – first, when he sees Gokhale using an expensive
136
horse-carriage and second, when he complains that Gokhale’s ailments could Gandhi: Autobiography or
The Story of My Experiments
well be due to the lack of physical exercise. Gokhale’s explanation about the use With Truth
of the horse-carriage satisfies him but not his excuse for not exercising. It is
made quite clear that while he keeps an open mind to others’ ideas, he is a man of
strong convictions.

Another instance of both his open mindedness on the one hand and strong
convictions on the other can be seen when he insists on visiting Babu Kalicharan
Banerji. He does not dismiss the man simply because he has chosen to convert to
Christianity, but seeks to know what might have prompted such a decision. He
likes his simple dress and listens to Banerji carefully though in the end, he does
not agree with him. Again, his strong belief in Hinduism does not make him
blind to the evils practiced in the name of his religion and cannot condone the
lulling of sheep in sacrifice to Kali. We witness here his flair for making his
point, a skill essential for someone who is a lawyer by profession – when a friend
argues that the sheep feel no pain in the noise of the drum-beating, Gandhi opposes
such an outrageous excuse for cruelty and says “I told him that, if the sheep had
speech, they would tell a different tale.”

Notice also that Gandhi feels incapable of stopping this custom and wishes, like
the average person, for the birth of some great spirit to save the lives of the
innocent sheep. He does not yet think of himself as a leader of the people, or as
someone who could lead a revolution. He behaves just like you and me in wishing
that someone else should stop the cruelty. However, the difference in his wish
lies in the fact that he does not lament his helplessness but wishes to go through
self-purification and self-sacrifice in order to become capable of saving others.
He knows that before changing the world, you must first change yourself and rid
yourself of weaknesses.

It is quite clear from our reading of the text that Gandhi not only had a very deep
curiosity for knowledge and the desire to learn, but was willing to go through
substantial trouble, criticism and hardship to attain his goals. He decides to travel
third class in the trains on his tour of India, not to impress people or to make a
political statement, but simply to understand the conditions in which third class
passengers travelled and thereby gain knowledge about their hardships so that
he could then decide how the situation could be improved, if at all.

In Part IV, Chapter XI of his autobiography, Gandhi comments thus on the writing
of his autobiography:

“I understand more clearly today what I read long ago about the inadequacy of
all autobiography as history. I know that I do not set down in this story all that I
remember. Who can say how much I must give and how much omit in the interests
of truth? And what would be the value in a court of law of the inadequate ex
parte evidence being tendered by me of certain events in my life? If some
busybody were to cross-examine me on the chapters already written, he could
probably shed more light on them, and if it were a hostile critic’s cross-
examination, he might even flatter himself for having shown up ‘the hollowness
of many of my pretensions’.”

Gandhi is here emphasizing the fact that one cannot write down everything in an
autobiography. We have just read about a whole month of Gandhi’s stay with
Gokhale in a few pages and of course he does not describe every single moment
137
Biography and Autobiography of that stay: “I must needs skip over many a reminiscence of this memorable
month.” While we can easily dismiss descriptions of mundane activities like
eating or sleeping, he might have casually met many more people and seen more
places than the ones he mentions. Here we must understand that an autobiography
describes only those aspects of the author’s life that the author believes to be
important and worth reading by others. Also, the author might omit embarrassing
moments or events which he/she does not wish, to disclose to public knowledge.
And finally, there might be many things that he/she has simply forgotten although
his friends or acquaintances might remember them and judge them to be important.
All these omissions can lead us to question the truth of an autobiography and
Gandhi voices his dilemma of how to select material while writing about his life.
He says that he does not wish to distort the truth but he must be selective. He is
also aware that he cannot provide “evidence” or proof for some of the things that
he is writing. It is here that the role of the reader becomes all important for it is
up to the readers to interpret what they read according to their own judgement
and preconceptions.
Gandhi establishes a relationship with his readers by moving back and forth
between the past that he is describing in the autobiography and the time when he
is actually writing it down. For example, he says:
“I see little difference between Dr. Ray as he is today and as he used to be then.”
“I believed then, and I believe even now, that, no matter what amount of work one
has, one should always find some time for exercise…”
“I came to know of her books later.”
In the last sentence, Gandhi is talking about Sister Nivedita. He did not have a
very favourable opinion of her from his first meeting but the second meeting
made him admire her love for Hinduism and the reader is then told that he later
came to know more of her through her books. This movement in time reminds
the reader that this is not simply a chronological account of events but by writing
this autobiography, the author is engaging in a conversation with the reader about
his experiences and how he changed with time.
Check Your Progress 2
i) How were Gandhi’s days spent in Calcutta?
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ii) Briefly describe Gandhi’s impression of Burma.

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138 .......................................................................................................................
iii) Why did Gandhi wish to travel third class? What preparations did he make? Gandhi: Autobiography or
The Story of My Experiments
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(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit.)

2.6 LET US SUM UP

The narrative of Gandhi’s autobiography is structured by balancing contrasts of
praise and criticism, success and failure, past and present. He presents to the
reader both the positive and the negative opinions about the people whom he
meets and the customs and beliefs he encounters. He is successful in espousing
his cause in South Africa but fails to do anything to stop the cruelty that he
loathes in the Kali temple. Similarly, he succeeds in meeting many important
people but not Maharshi Devendranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda. There
are two clear times mentioned in the text – the past or the time of which he is
writing from memory and the present, i.e., the time at which he is writing the
autobiography. There is of course a third time – the time when you are reading
his words in the twenty-first century and have the advantage of knowing what
was to happen later in his life, a knowledge that he could not share or know
when he was writing in the 1920s.

2.7 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress 1
i) Gokhale introduced Gandhi to Dr. P. C. Ray by saying that Dr. Ray was a
man who devoted nearly all his salary for public work, keeping just Rs. 40
for his own needs. He had decided not to marry.

ii) Gandhi believed that no matter what amount of work one has, one should
always find some time for exercise, just as one does for one’s meals. Further,
he believed that physical exercise adds to one’s capacity for work and keeps
the body free from diseases.

iii) Gandhi’s visit to the Kali temple left a deep impression on his mind. He
was appalled at the sight of a stream of sheep going to be sacrificed to Kali.
He also did not like the line of beggars along the lane that led to the temple,
among whom were also present able-bodied sadhus and Gandhi was strongly
opposed to giving alms to those who could earn their own livelihood by
working. He talked to one such sadhu who refused to take the responsibility
of stopping the cruelty to the sheep. Inside the temple, he was exasperated
at the rivers of blood and it was a sight that he never forgot.

iv) The people whom Gandhi goes to meet and succeeds in doing so include
Dr. P.C. Ray, Babu Kalicharan Banerji, and Sister Nivedita.
139
Biography and Autobiography Check Your Progress 2
i) Gandhi’s days in Calcutta were spent in seeing important people regarding
his work in South Africa, and visiting and studying the religious and public
institutions of the city.

ii) Gandhi’s most important impression of Burma was that just as Bombay
was not India, Rangoon was not Burma and that the Indians had joined
hands with English merchants in Burma in making the Burmese people
their commission agents, i.e., Indians were equally responsible for the
exploitation of the Burmese. Gandhi was pained by the lethargy of the monks
or foongis and did not like the innumerable candles and rats in the golden
pagoda. However, he was charmed by the freedom and energy of the
Burmese women.

iii) Gandhi wished to travel third class in order to acquaint himself with the
hardships faced by the third class passengers. He was given a metal tiffin-
box by Gokhale which he got filled with sweet balls and puris. He purchased
a canvas bag worth twelve annas and a long coat made of wool. He also
carried a blanket and a water-jug.

140
 Gandhi: Autobiography or
UNIT 3 BERTRAND RUSSELL’S The Story of My Experiments
With Truth
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Structure
3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Bertrand Russell: Life and Works
3.3 Passage from Russell’s Autobiography
3.3.1 Text
3.3.2 Glossary
3.4 Discussion
3.4.1 Summary
3.4.2 Portrait of Russell
3.5 Russell’s Prose Style
3.6 Let Us Sum Up
3.7 Answers to Check Your Progress

3.0 OBJECTIVES
In this Unit, we shall read and discuss a passage from the Autobiography of
Bertrand Russell. After a careful reading of this Unit, you should be able to:
outline the life and works of Russell;
describe Russell’s childhood;
outline the different aspects of Russell’s personality;
critically appreciate the prose style of Bertrand Russell.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
In the first Unit, we introduced you to biography and autobiography as forms of
prose. In the previous Unit, we discussed a few passages from Gandhi’s
Autobiography. Let us now look at another passage from an Autobiography
written by one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, Bertrand
Russell.

Bertrand Russell was a multi-faceted personality who has written extensively on

mathematics, philosophy, sociology, politics and education. He is the perfect
example of the complete man who has had three ruling passions in his life—the
longing for love, the search for knowledge, and the unbearable pity for the
suffering of mankind (Autobiography, p.9).

Russell was a philosopher, a mathematician and an educationist, among other

things. However, it is primarily for Russell’s contribution to English prose that
we have selected this passage for you. Russell is universally known for his
tremendous capacity for expressing even the most complex ideas in a lucid and
elegant language that is easily comprehensible to the lay reader. His
Autobiography, first appeared in three volumes between 1967-71 and immediately
141
Biography and Autobiography became popular. It is frankly written, at times hilarious, at others deeply moving.
It provides a valuable insight into the various facets of this famous personality.

Let us briefly recapitulate what we read about autobiography in the first Unit of
this Block. An autobiography is a first-person account of a person’s own life. It
is usually, though not always, written at a late stage in life when one looks back
in perspective. In an autobiography we often find extended accounts of childhood
whereas in a biography the interest centres more on that period of life when one
has become successful and famous. At times an autobiographical account may
appear biased which is justifiable because a personal point of view is being
presented.

Details of personal experience are made interesting so that regardless of the time
or obscurity of the writer, the reader’s attention is engaged and curiosity aroused.
Writers talk freely and confidentially about themselves. The use of the first-
person pronoun is frequent. The reader is expected to be sympathetic rather than
to sit on judgment as an objective evaluator. What is important in such a literary
form is not a rigid or strictly logical structure, but a spontaneous, easy and flexible
movement. Thus we cannot judge an autobiography in the same way that we
would a biography. In biography, the objectivity of the writer is a major
consideration in judging its overall merit. On the other hand, an autobiography
is primarily subjective.

Let us first look at an outline of the life and works of Bertrand Russell before
reading the selected passage.

3.2 BERTRAND RUSSELL: LIFE AND WORKS

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was born in Wales. He was educated privately and
went to Trinity College, Cambridge to study maths and moral sciences. He
distinguished himself as a scholar and became Fellow of Trinity in 1895. A visit
to Germany resulted in German Social Democracy (1896) followed by An Essay
on the Foundations of Geometry (1897), books which point to his major
intellectual interests. He was a humanist reformer opposed to dogmatism and
intolerance. He wanted to establish a more liberal system of education and opened
a school in London in collaboration with his second wife Dora. He believed that
for the fullest development of the individual it was essential to provide freedom
of thought and action. He was a pacifist who refused to serve in the army during
the First World War and was consequently imprisoned. He started the anti-nuclear
movement popularly known as the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament)
in the nineteen fifties which subsequently spread all over western Europe. Along
with his philosophical treatises, Russell has also written short stories. In addition
to these, Russell has published more than two thousand papers and articles. In
1950, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in recognition of the ‘many-
sided and important work in which he constantly stood forth as a champion of
humanity and freedom of thought’.

Selected Works
Principia Mathematica 3 Vols. (written with A.N. Whitehead) (1910, 1912, 1913),
Political Ideals (1917), The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920), The ABC
of Atoms (1923), Marriage and Morals (1929), A History of Western Philosophy
142
(1945), Unpopular Essays (1950) Understanding History (1957), Wisdom of the Bertrand Russells’s
Autobiography
West (1959) The Collected Stories of Bertrand Russell (1972)

These are only a few of the numerous works written by this versatile writer. The
diverse titles indicate Russell’s wide range of interests.
Check Your Progress 1
Answer the following questions in your own words in the space provided.

i) Name five subjects that Russell has written on.

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ii) How would you define autobiography? How is autobiography different from
biography? Give your answer in 3-4 sentences.
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iii) What was Russell’s contribution to world peace? 2-3 sentences will do.
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iv) Name five titles of Russell’s books.

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(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit.) 143
Biography and Autobiography
3.3 PASSAGE FROM RUSSELL’S
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
In his Autobiography, we find Bertrand Russell looking back on his past life and
tracing his intellectual and emotional development. He inserts personal letters
and pages from his diary to stress the authenticity of his narrative. This is usually
the method adopted by a biographer. However, a writer can make the decision
either to include or omit such documents from his/her work. The passage you
will read is taken from the first chapter of his Autobiography entitled ‘Childhood’.
However, it would be well to remember that this is only an isolated passage that
we have selected to illustrate Russell’s style and technique. For a more complete
understanding of autobiography as a literary form, it would be advisable to read
the complete work.

Let us now read the text. Difficult words have been explained in the glossary at
the end of the passage. In case there are other words which you find difficult, do
keep your dictionary at hand.

3.3.1 Text
Throughout the greater part of my childhood, the most important hours of my
day were those that I spent alone in the garden, and the most vivid part of my
existence was solitary. I seldom mentioned my more serious thoughts to others,
and when I did I regretted it. I knew each corner of the garden, and looked year
by year for the white primroses in one place, the redstart’s nest in another, the
blossom of the acacia emerging from a tangle of ivy. I knew where the earliest
“bluebells were to be found, and which of the oaks came into leaf soonest. I
remember that in the year 1878 a certain oak tree was in leaf as early as the
fourteenth of April. My window looked out upon two Lombardy poplars, each
about a hundred feet high, and I used to watch the shadow of the house creeping
up them as the sun set. In the morning I woke very early and sometimes saw
Venus. On one occasion I mistook the planet for a lantern in the wood. I saw the
sunrise on most mornings, and on bright April days I would sometimes slip out
of the house for a long walk before breakfast. I watched the sunset turn the earth
red and the clouds golden; I listened to the wind, and exulted in the lightning.
Throughout my childhood I had an increasing sense of loneliness, and of despair
of ever meeting anyone with whom I could talk. Nature and books and later
mathematics saved me from complete despondency.

The early years of my childhood, however were happy and it was only as
adolescence approached that loneliness became oppressive. I had governesses,
German and Swiss, whom I liked, and my intelligence was not yet sufficiently
developed to suffer from the deficiency of my people in this respect. I must,
however, have felt some kind of unhappiness, as I remember wishing that my
parents had lived. Once, when I was six years old, I expressed this feeling to my
grandmother, and she proceeded to tell me that it was very fortunate for me that
they had died. At the time her remarks made a disagreeable impression upon me
and I attributed them to jealousy. I did not, of course, know that from a Victorian
point of view there was ample ground for them. My grandmother’s face was
very expressive, and in spite of all her experience of the great world she never
learned the art of concealing her emotions. I noticed that any allusion to insanity
caused her a spasm of anguish, and I speculated much as to the reason. It was
144
only many years later that I discovered she had a son in an asylum. He was in a Bertrand Russells’s
Autobiography
smart regiment, and went mad after a few years of it. The story that I have been
told, though I cannot vouch for its complete accuracy, is that his brother officers
teased him because he was chaste. They kept a bear as a regimental pet, and one
day, for sport, set the bear at him. He fled, lost his memory and being found
wandering about the country was put in a workhouse infirmary his identity
being unknown. In the middle of the night, he jumped up shouting ‘the bear- the
bear!’ and strangled a tramp in the next bed. He never recovered his memory,
but lived till over eighty.

When I try to recall as much as I can of early childhood, I find that the first thing
I remember after my arrival at Pembroke Lodge is walking in melting snow, in
warm sunshine, on an occasion which must have been about a month later, and
noticing a large fallen beech tree which was being sawn into logs. The next thing
I remember is my fourth birthday, on which I was given a trumpet which I blew
all day long, and had tea with a birthday cake in a summer house. The next thing
that I remember is my aunt’s lessons on colours and reading, and then, very
vividly, the kindergarten class which began just before I was five and continued
for about a year and a half. That gave me very intense delight. The shop from
which the apparatus came was stated on the lids to be in Berners Street, Oxford
Street, and to this day, unless I pull myself together, I think of Berners Street as
a sort of Aladdin’s Palace. At the kindergarten class I got to know other children,
most of whom I have lost sight of. But I met one of them, Jimmie Baillie, in 1929
at Vancouver as I stepped out of the train. I realize now that the good lady who
taught us had had an orthodox Froebel training, and was at that time amazingly
up-to-date. I can still remember almost all the lessons in detail, but I think what
thrilled me more was the discovery that yellow and blue paints made green.

When I was just six my grandfather died, and shortly afterwards we went to St.
Fillans in Perthshire for the summer. I remember the funny old inn with knobbly
wooden door-posts, the wooden bridge over the river, the rocky bays on the lake,
and the mountain opposite. My recollection is that the time there was one of
great happiness. My next recollection is less pleasant. It is that of a room in
London at No. 8, Chesham Place, where my governess stormed at me while I
endeavoured to learn the multiplication table but was continually impeded by
tears. My grandmother took a house in London for some months when I was
seven years old, and it was then that I began to see more of my mother’s family.
My mother’s father was dead, but my mother’s mother, Lady Stanley of Alderley,
lived in a large house No. 40, Dover, Street, with her daughter Maude. I was
frequently taken to lunch with her, and though the food was delicious, the pleasure
was doubtful, as she had a caustic tongue, and spared neither age nor sex. I was
always consumed with shyness while in her presence, and as none of the Stanleys
were shy, this irritated her. I used to make desperate endeavours to produce a
good impression, but they would fail in ways that I could not have foreseen. I
remember telling her that I had grown 2½ inches in the last seven months, and
that at that rate I should grow inches in a year. “Don’t you know, she said,
‘that you should never talk about any fractions except halves and quarters?—it
is pedantic!’ ‘I know it now, I replied. ‘How like his father!’ she said, turning to
my Aunt Maude. Somehow or other, as in this incident, my best efforts always
went astray. Once when I was about twelve years old, she had me before a roomful
of visitors, and asked me whether I had read a whole string of books on popular
145
Biography and Autobiography science which she enumerated. I had read none of them. At the end she sighed,
and turning to the visitors, said: ‘I have no intelligent grandchildren.’ She was an
eighteenth century type, rationalistic and unimaginative, keen on enlightenment,
and contemptuous of Victorian goody-goody priggery. She was one of the
principal people concerned in the foundation of Girton College, and her portrait
hangs in Girton Hall, but her policies were abandoned at her death. ‘So long as I
live’, she used to say, ‘there shall be no chapel at Girton.’ The present chapel
began to be built the day she died. As soon as I reached adolescence she began to
try to counteract what she considered namby-pamby, in my upbringing. She
would say: ‘Nobody can say anything against me, but I always say that it is not
so bad to break the Seventh Commandment as the Sixth, because at any rate it
requires the consent of the other party.’ I pleased her greatly on one occasion by
asking for Tristram Shandy as a birthday present. She said: ‘I won’t write in it,
because people will say what an odd grandmother you have!’ Nevertheless she
did write in it. It was an autographed first edition. This is the only occasion I can
remember on which I succeeded in pleasing her. Forrmidable as my grandmother
was, she had her limits. Once when Mr. Gladstone was expected to tea, she told
us all beforehand how she was going to explain to him exactly in what respects
his Home Rule policy was mistaken. I was present throughout his visit, but not
one word of criticism did she utter. His hawk’s eye could quell even her. Her
son-in-law, Lord Carlisle, told me of an even more humiliating episode which
occurred at Naworth Castle on one occasion when she was staying there. Burne-
Jones, who was also staying there, had a tobacco pouch which was made to look
like a tortoise. There was also a real tortoise, which strayed one day by mistake
into the library. This suggested a prank to the younger generation. During dinner,
Burne-Jones’s tobacco pouch was placed near the drawing-room fire, and when
the ladies retured from dinner it was dramatically discovered that this time the
tortoise had got into the drawing-room. On its being picked up, somebody
exclaimed with astonishment that its back had grown soft. Lord Carlisle fetched
from the library the appropriate volume of the Encyclopedia, and read out a
pretended passage saying that great heat sometimes had this effect. My
grandmother expressed the greatest interest in this fact of natural history, and
frequently alluded to it on subsequent occasions. Many years later, when she
was quarrelling with Lady Carlisle about Home Rule, her daughter maliciously
told her the truth of this incident. My grandmother retorted: ‘I may be many
things, but I am not a fool, and I refuse to believe you….’

At the age of eleven, I began Euclid with my brother as my tutor. This was one
of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined that
there was anything so delicious in the world. After I had learned the fifth
proposition, my brother told me that it was generally considered difficult, but I
had found no difficulty whatever. This was the first time it had dawned upon me
that I might have some intelligence. From that moment until Whitehead and I
finished Principia Mathematica, when I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my
chief interest, and my chief source of happiness. Like all happiness, however, it
was not unalloyed. I had been told that Euclid proved things, and was much
disappointed that he started with axioms. At first I refused to accept them unless
my brother could offer me some reason for doing so, but he said: ‘If you don’t
accept them we cannot go on’, and as I wished to go on, I reluctantly admitted
them pro tem. The doubt as to the premises of mathematics which I felt at that
moment remained with me, and determined the course of my subsequent work.

146
It would be completely misleading to suggest that my childhood was all solemnity Bertrand Russells’s
Autobiography
and seriousness. I got just as much fun out of life as I could, some of it I am
afraid of a somewhat mischievous kind. The family doctor, an old Scotchman
with mutton-chop whiskers used to come in his brougham which waited at the
front door while the man of healing spoke his piece. His coachman had an exquisite
top-hat, calculated to advertise the excellence of the practice. I used to get on the
roof above this splendid head-piece and drop rotten rosebuds out of the gutter on
to its flat top. They spread all over with a delicious squish and I withdrew my
head quickly enough for the coachman to suppose that they had fallen from
heaven. Sometimes I did even worse. I threw snowballs at him when he was
driving, thereby endangering the valuable lives of him and his employer. I had
another amusement which I much enjoyed. On a Sunday, when the Park was
crowded, I would climb to the very top of a large beech tree on the edge of our
grounds. There I would hang upside down and scream and watch the crowd
gravely discussing how a rescue should be effected. When I saw them nearing a
decision I would get the right way up and quietly come down. During the time
when Jimmie Baillie stayed with me I was led into even more desperate courses.
The bath chair in which I remembered my grandfather being wheeled about had
been lodged in a lumber room. We found it there and raced it down whatever
hills we could find. When this was discovered it was considered blasphemy and
we were reproached with melancholy gravity. Some of our doings, however,
never came to the ears of the grown-ups. We tied a rope to a branch of a tree and
learnt by long practice to swing in a complete circle and return to our starting
point. It was only by great skill that one could avoid stopping half way and
bumping one’s back painfully into the rough bark of the tree. When other boys
came to visit us, we used to carry out the correct performance ourselves and
when the others attempted to imitate us we maliciously exulted in their painful
failure. My Uncle Rollo, with whom for a while we used to spend three months
each year, had three cows and a donkey. The donkey was more intelligent than
the cows and learnt to open the gates between the fields with his nose but he was
said to be unruly and useless. I did not believe this and after some unsuccessful
attempts, I learnt to ride him without saddle or bridle. He would kick and buck
but he never got me off except when I had tied a can full of rattling stones to his
tail. I used to ride him all round the country, even when I went to visit the daughter
of Lord Wolsely who lived about three miles from my uncle’s house.

3.3.2 Glossary
Venus : goddess of love and beauty in Roman mythology. Here it
simply means morning star.
workhouse : a poorhouse where paupers were given work.
infirmary : a place where sick people receive care.
Aladdin’s Palace : a palace of fabled treasures in the stories of the Arabian
Nights.
Froebel : (1782-1852) German educational reformer who founded
the kindergarten system.
pedantic : excessively concerned with minor details.
priggery : smug or unthinking adherence to standards of morality
or propriety.
147
Biography and Autobiography namby-pamby : lacking in character or emotional strength.
Tristram Shandy : (1760-7) novel written by Laurence Sterne (1713-68)
Gladstone : (1809-98) English Liberal party statesman who had
several terms as prime minister: 1868-74; 1880-5; 1886
and 1892-94.
Home Rule : Gladstone advocated home rule for Ireland.
Burne-Jones : (1883-98) English painter and designer.
Euclid : Greek mathematician, often referred to as the ‘founder
of geometry
pro tem : (Latin) temporarily.
brougham : a four-wheeled closed carriage with the driver’s seat
outside.
Check Your Progress 2
Read the questions given below and write the answers in the space provided.

i) Describe in your own words some of Russell’s early childhood memories.

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ii) In 3-4 sentences, describe young Bertrand’s relationship with his

grandmother Lady Stanley.
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iii) What childish pranks did Bertrand play on the doctor’s coachman? Write a
brief answer in about 50-60 words.
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(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit.)
148
 Bertrand Russells’s
3.4 DISCUSSION Autobiography

You have just read Bertrand Russell’s reminiscences of his childhood from the
age of four to when he was roughly about twelve. The passage is full of intresting
anecdotes which are not arranged in strict chronological sequence. We begin at
a later period and move with Russell to his earliest recollections. This movement
back and forth in time lends a spontaneous and relaxed quality to the piece. The
selected incidents from his childhood are significant because they not only tell
us about the people and places that figure in Russell’s childhood, but also about
Russell’s personality. He has also created an effective picture of upper-class life
in Victorian Britian.

3.4.1 Summary
Lonely Childhood
At the very outset, we are told of the lonely childhood of Bertrand Russell. The
orphaned lad finds diversion in the sights and sounds of nature. He loved nature
in a contemplative way, appreciating it in all its aspects. He woke up early and
looked long and deep at the sunrise. The lonely child is left to his own devices.
As he had no one that he could communicate with, he turned to the companionship
of nature and books.

Lest we should conjure a gloomy picture of his childhood, Russell assures us

that he did not suffer from this oppressive sense of loneliness in his earlier days.
He remembers his German and Swiss governesses with affection and even though
he sometimes missed his parents, he was not desolate. He can vividly recall his
arrival at Pembroke and his fourth birthday with its party and the present he
received. His days at the kindergarten in the company of other children are recalled
with great delight. The longing for the company of other children surfaces clearly
at this point.
Lady Russell
Russell also describes his grandmother Lady Russell, his paternal grandmother
with whom he spent his childhood and his mother’s mother Lady Stanley whom
he met only when he was seven. He lived with Lady Russell who, he recalls, had
a very ‘expressive’ face that revealed all her emotions. She was very sensitive to
the mention of insanity and it was only later that Russell discovered that her son
was in an asylum. She does not seem to evoke any strong response in Russell
apart from a general feeling of affection.
Lady Stanley
On the other hand, Russell seems completely in awe of the formidable Lady
Stanley. He was afraid of her sharp tongue and the shy boy was often left tongue-
tied in her presence. The precocious little boy tried very hard to impress her with
his mathematical prowess but she only dismissed him as pedantic. She was a no-
nonsense educationist who had literary taste. She did not quite approve of Russell’s
weak ‘namby-pamby’ upbringing. The child who was rather intimidated by this
woman notices that she too could be intimidated by a person like the overpowering
Gladstone (prime-minister of Britain). The child relishes the episode when his
rather infallible grandmother had mistaken a tobacco pouch shaped like a tortoise
for a real tortoise.
149
Biography and Autobiography The Precocious Child
Russell was first introduced to geometry at the age of eleven. This was an exciting
discovery and the boy discovered that what others found difficult, appeared
perfectly simple to him. The doubts and questions that assailed him then shaped
the course of his future work. From these reminiscences, we gather that the child
was mostly in the company of grown-ups. He was close to neither of his
grandmothers. Even though he was provided with private education at home,
there is no indication that his grandmothers encouraged his passion for maths.

The Fun-Loving Child

It is clear that Russell’s primary passion was mathematics, but he did not miss
out on his share of fun and frolic like other boys of his age. The practical jokes
and pranks provided much hilarity to the boy and discomfiture to others. Pelting
the doctor’s coachman with snowballs and riding a spirited donkey bare-back
were some of Russell’s more memorable moments. These pranks, however, were
carried out more in a spirit of pure fun rather than malice.

These then are the impressions of a famous man looking back at his post. Russell
neither indulges the tendency to romanticize it nor does he feel nostalgic about
it. He is the objective observer who can now understand the prejudices and
preoccupations of his grown-ups. His tone is matter-of-fact and gentle and while
it recreates the bygone era, it also provides insight into his multi-faceted
personality.

3.4.2 Portrait of Russell

We have just read Russell’s account of his childhood. It provides a picture of the
young Bertrand in the context of his family. It also gives us an indication of the
times in which he grew up. At the same time we also get a glimpse into some
aspects of Russell’s personality. Most of the achievements and activities of famous
people are widely known. But it is only through an autobiographical account
that we are able to know the private person behind the public figure. Let us now
consider the portrait of Russell that emerges from our reading of this passage.

On the one hand, we have the lonely contemplative boy gazing wistfully at trees
and flowers and on the other, there is a mischievous boy dropping rotten flowers
on the unsuspecting coachman’s new hat. It is clear that Bertrand is like any
other boy of his age. But there is also the keen mathematician questioning the
aims and methods of Euclid. This scepticism is at the root of his intense quest for
knowledge. The quiet boy is keenly observant with a sharp memory that can
recollect the warm sunshine at the time of his arrival at Pembroke, so many
years later. It also indicates his deep love for nature.

Russell is free from prejudice against foreigners, and remembers his Swiss and
German governesses with affection. This affection and concern for other races
is probably at the root of his refusal to participate in the First World War. Here is
a portrait of an extremely precocious child who can ask for a novel like Laurence
Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1760-67) as a birthday present. Even though he does
not quite appreciate some of the foibles of the grown-ups, he does not sit in
judgement on them. His grandmother’s pronouncement that none of her
grandchildren has any intelligence is recorded with faint irony but without any
150
rancor or bitterness. Russell’s memories of the selected incidents seem to imply Bertrand Russells’s
Autobiography
a greatness of mind in which there is no room for triviality or pettiness.

Here then is a great man recreating his childhood for the interested reader. His
memories have not faded with time but are as clear and vivid as the prose in
which he conveys them. Let us now look at the features of Russell’s celebrated
prose style

3.5 RUSSELL’S PROSE STYLE

Brevity, Precision and Clarity
Bertrand Russell is well-known for his lucid and elegant prose style. His clarity
of expression reflects the clarity of his thought. Even in his philosophical works,
there is no abstract jargon nor do we find any flowery expressions in his literary
composition. Writing about how to avoid foolish errors, Russell says:

If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation
yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women
have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to
keep her mouth open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought
he knew. Thinking that you know, when in fact you don’t, is a fatal mistake,
to which we are all prone. (‘An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish’, Unpopular
Essays, Bombay: Blackie and Son, 1981).

He communicates his ideas in precise terms and even difficult concepts are easily
understood by the lay reader. Moreover, he does not believe in circumlocution
and tells us: ‘I wished to say everything in the smallest number of words in
which it can be said clearly’. Thus brevity, precision and clarity are the hallmarks
of his prose style.

Expression of Personality
Style is the expression of a writer’s personality. Russell’s warmth and sincerity
are communicated in his relaxed and mildly ironic tone. It is an urbane,
gentlemanly and frank mode of expression. Somewhat in awe of his grandmother
Lady Stanley, he tells us:

I used to make desperate endeavours to produce a good impression, but

they would fail in ways that I could not have foreseen. I remember telling
her that I had grown 2 inches in the last seven months, and that at that rate

I should grow 4 inches in a year’.

The enthusiastic boy is told that such detailed calculations were ‘pedantic’. Were
you not struck by its spontaneity and informality while reading the passage? You
may compare and contrast this style of writing with the passage from Gandhi’s
autobiography that you read in the previous Unit.

Description
Russell uses different varieties of prose. He is not only an observer describing
vividly but also a raconteur narrating effortlessly. When describing nature, his
151
Biography and Autobiography prose acquires a poetic quality. ‘I listened to the wind, and exulted in the lightning
has biblical cadences expressing a precise feeling. His detailed observation
recreates a scene so that we can actually see the ‘funny old inn with knobbly
wooden door-posts, the wooden bridge over the river, the rocky bays on the lake,
and the mountain opposite’.
Narration
When Russell recounts the bear anecdote which resulted in his uncle’s madness,
the prose becomes racy, acquiring a quick tempo. For example, let us look at
these sentences:

They kept a bear as a regimental pet, and one day, for sport, set the bear at
him. He fled, lost his memory, and being found wandering about in the
country was put in a workhouse infirmary, his identity being unknown.

A sense of urgency and quick movement is communicated. The situation is made

to come alive in the minimum words possible. Not an extra word can be traced in
the above sentences. Russell uses the same economy when making a general
statement. ‘Like all happiness, however, it was not unalloyed’, is terse and
epigrammatic. The rhythm is maintained by the use of the double negative ‘not
unalloyed’.

Irony
Along with the wisdom there is a subtle irony inserted in sentences ‘His coachman
had an exquisite top-hat, calculated to advertise the excellence of the practice’.
The tone remains even and controlled. Russell’s comment about his German and
Swiss governesses ‘whom I liked, and my intelligence was not yet sufficiently
developed to suffer from the deficiency of my people in this respect’, carries a
veiled satire directed against British chauvinism and prejudice against other races.
Even today, long after the sun has set on the British empire, this prejudice persists
in British society. In certain areas, bands of youth, known as ‘skinheads’ attack
coloured people, especially Asians.

Use of language
Russell’s use of colloquial expressions like ‘goody-goody’ and ‘namby-pamby’
catch the typical flavour of native speech. The repeated use of ‘I remember’
throughout the passage highlights the fact that Russell is relying on memory and
that a great deal of time has elapsed between the actual incident and the account
of it. The use of direct speech adds a dramatic dimension to the text. Russell’s
grandmother’s observation that ‘I have no intelligent grandchildren’, not only
lends variety to the passage that is predominantly written in reported speech but
also highlights the irony of the observation.

The varieties of prose used enriches the texture of the passage which seems to
flow from the pen of a man who means every word he says. The overall style is
personal and subjective very much in keeping with the form that we have been
examining i.e. autobiography.

152
Check Your Progress 3 Bertrand Russells’s
Autobiography
Read the following passage and briefly answer the questions given below. This
is an extract from Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s The Autobiography of An Unknown
Indian .

We did not believe in ghosts or ghostly existence. In fact, our one and
invariable criterion for dividing our companions into sheep and goats was
to put them the questions: “Do you believe in ghosts?” If anybody said that
he did, with us he was damned for ever. On the other hand, we also very
often received the perplexed query: “Do you not believe in ghosts?” And
when we said that we did not, we were set down in the same decided manner
as impious heretics. But in spite of the universal belief in ghosts we never
found any of our companions, or for that matter any of the credulous elders,
capable of putting forward any coherent rationale of ghostly existence, and
their only answer to our challenge was a sneering counter-challenge to pass
under a certain notorious tree or by the burning-ghat at night. They knew
for certain from their experience of the general cowardice they felt inside
and saw outside themselves that this bluff of theirs would never be called.

i) What impressions of the young Nirad do you gather from your reading of
this passage?
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ii) Comment briefly on the prose style.

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( Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit.)

3.6 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit we have
discussed a different prose form i.e. autobiography;
acquainted you with the life and some major works of Bertrand Russell;
read a passage on Bertrand Russell’s childhood from his Autobiography;
discussed the summary of the passage;
153
Biography and Autobiography sketched a portrait of Russell;
presented an analysis of Russell’s prose style.

3.7 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress 1
i) Mathematics, Philosophy, Sociology, Politics, Education.
ii) An autobiography is a first-person account of the story of a person’s life.
A biography is a third-person account of someone else’s life. While
objectivity is the major consideration in judging biography, an autobiography
is essentially subjective.

iii) He started the anti-nuclear moment popularly known as CND (Campaign

for Nuclear Disarmanent)
iv) You can select these from Section 3.2.
Check Your Progress 2
i) You may take into account his
a) loneliness
b) memory of Lady Russell’s son
c) arrival at Pembroke Lodge.
ii) He was in awe of his grandmother whom he tried desperately hard to impress.
The relationship is formal but the boy has a secret respect for the formidable
old lady.

iii) The coachman’s grand top-hat was pelted with rotten rosebuds picked up
from the gutter and hurled from the roof-top. At other times, Bertrand
bombarded him with snow-balls.
Check Your Progress 3
i) It is clear that young Nirad, unlike most boys of his age, is extremely sensible.
He does not believe in ghosts for the simple reason that no one had so far
given him a rational explanation of their existence. From childhood itself,
he has developed a keen incisive mind that questions and probes before
accepting facts.
ii) The discussion on style should include
a) clarity, brevity and precision
b) a formal tone
c) scholarly prose.

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 Bertrand Russells’s
UNIT 4 LYTTON STRACHEY’S – QUEEN Autobiography

VICTORIA
Structure
4.0 Objectives
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Lytton Strachey: Life and Works
4.3 Passage from Strachey’s Queen Victoria
4.3.1 Text
4.3.2 Glossary
4.4 Discussion
4.4.1 Stracheys Technique
4.4.2 Portrait of Albert
4.4.3 Portrait of Victoria
4.5 Prose Style
4.6 Let Us Sum Up
4.7 Answers to Check Your Progress

4.0 OBJECTIVES
You will now read a passage from Lytton Strachey’s famous biography Queen
Victoria (1921). While it is necessary to read the complete work to appreciate
Strachey’s achievement, this passage will give you an idea of his style and
technique and approach. We hope that after a careful reading of this Unit, you
will be able to:
identify and analyze the aspects of biography as a literary form;
outline the portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert:
explain the features of Strachey’s prose style.

4.1 INTRODUCTION
Biography, as we have already discussed is the truthful account of the life of an
individual written in prose. A biographer is not simply a chronicler of events in
the life of an individual but is a creative artist who makes the character portrayed
come alive. S/he does this by a careful selection of relevant details, an arrangement
of events to sustain the reader’s interest and by an artistic use of language. While
other characters and events are depicted, the interest is never allowed to deflect
from the main character. The biographer’s personality must not intrude upon the
narrative as this would deflect the focus from the main character. A good
biographer is neither too complimentary nor too critical. The individual is
portrayed as objectively as possible.
You must read each section carefully before you attempt the exercises. Do avoid
the temptation of looking at the answers that we have provided at the end of the
unit unless you have completed the exercises first.
Let us first take a brief look at the life and works of Lytton Strachey before we
turn to the selected passage. 155
Biography and Autobiography
4.2 LYTTON STRACHEY: LIFE AND WORKS
Life
Lytton Strachey was born in London on March 1, 1880 and educated first at
Liverpool and then at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a prominent member
of the Bloomsbury Group, a London-based group of intellectuals which included
other famous contemporary writers like, Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster. Strachey
was a literary critic and essayist but above all is known best as the inaugurator of
a new kind of biography. His first volume of four biographies entitled Eminent
Victorians started the trend for ‘debunking’ or exposing the negative traits of
otherwise admirable characters. By fusing fact and reflections, he was able to
raise biography to the status of a brilliant work of creative art.

Works
Landmarks in French Literature (1912) literary criticism;
Eminent Victorians (1918) biography;
Queen Victoria (1921) biography,
Books and Characters, French and English (1922) essays;
Pope, Cambridge (1923) criticism;
Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History (1928) historical biography;
Portraits in Miniature and Other Essays (1931) essays.

4.3 PASSAGE FROM STRACHEY’S QUEEN

VICTORIA
Queen Victoria is one of the great biographies of all times. Other biographies on
the Queen’s life have been subsequently written and have superseded Strachey’s
version with more up-to-date information, but they have not superseded its
continuing appeal. What then constitutes this appeal? But before we discuss that
question, let us find out about Queen Victoria.

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) came to the British throne in 1837 and ruled until
her death. In 1840, Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
(Germany), who died in 1861. Victorian England saw a period of peace and
prosperity. The Victorians believed that honesty and hard work would lead to
material prosperity. By the end of her reign, the British empire had reached its
highest point in terms of material and political achievement.

Strachey had to read extensively for three years before he could attempt to
construct the life of the Queen. This was especially difficult because her life was
shrouded under the veil of propriety. As you know, the Victorians were known
for being very prim and proper especially in public. They may have had their
moments of indiscretion in private! But that was a different thing. Queen Victoria
herself was the very picture of sobriety and decorum. In most of her portraits,
you will notice that she has a very, grim expression. Her style of dress was also
very staid. The Queen was often known to say “We are not amused”. Humour
was obviously not her strong point. So you can understand how difficult it must
have been for Strachey to penetrate these facades erected by this strict conformity
156 to decorum and propriety.
Apart from this extensive reading and research, Strachey had another problem. Lytton Strachey’s –Queen
Victoria
He was also ‘faced with eighty-one solid years, and each one of these years was
crowded with intricate and important events directly relevant to his subject’
(Nicolson, p. 148). Yet it goes to Strachey’s credit, that he did not include a
single superfluous detail. As such the Queen’s long and eventful life is portrayed
clearly and vividly within a space of three hundred pages.

What is Strachey’s attitude to his subject? As you know an author’s point of

view can be either adulatory or critical. Strachey avoids the two extremes and
assumes a mildly detached ironical tone. R.A. Scott James points out that ‘He
[Strachey] came to scoff, and remained to pray’ a very precise assessment. The
character of the Queen unfolds and develops in the course of the book and we
see an unexceptional young girl who gradually grows in stature to become a
powerful and beloved regent of her subjects. Queen Victoria contains a gallery
of vital characters such as Lord Melbourne, the young monarch’s powerful prime
minister, Disraeli and Palmerston who succeeded him, the Baroness Lehzen, the
Queen’s confidante and teacher and the royal consort, Prince Albert. Even though
these characters are portrayed in detail, the spotlight is always on Victoria.

The passage we have selected for you introduces us to Prince Albert when he
first left his native Germany to marry the English sovereign. From a weak non-
entity, the Prince emerges as a man of considerable talent, who ultimately becomes
the most powerful influence in the Queen’s life. His untimely death was mourned
by his wife for the rest of her days. In the present passage we shall read about
this relationship in its early stages.

4.3.1 Text
Albert had foreseen that his married life would not be all plain sailing; but he
had by no means realized the gravity and the complication of the difficulties
which he would have to face. Politically, he was a cipher. Lord Melbourne was
not only Prime Minister he was in effect the Private Secretary of the Queen, and
thus controlled the whole of the political existence of the sovereign. A Queen’s
husband was an entity unknown to the British Constitution. In State affairs there
seemed to be no place for him: nor was Victoria herself at all unwilling that this
should be so. “The English”, she had told the Prince when, during their
engagement, a proposal had been made to give him a peerage, “are very jealous
of any foreigner interfering in the government of this country, and have already
in some of the papers expressed a hope that you would not interfere. Now, though
I know you never would, still, if you were a Peer, they would all say, the Prince
meant to play a political part, I know you never would!” In reality, she was not
quite so certain; but she wished Albert to understand her views. He would, she
hoped, make a perfect husband; but, as for governing the country, he would see
that she and Lord M. between them could manage that very well, without his
help.

But it was not only in politics that the Prince discovered that the part cut out for
him was a negligible one. Even as a husband, he found, his functions were to be
of an extremely limited kind. Over the whole of Victoria’s private life the Baroness
reigned supreme; and she had not the slightest intention of allowing that
supremacy to be diminished by one iota. Since the accession, her power had
greatly increased. Besides the undefined and enormous influence which she
exercised through her management of the Queen’s private correspondence, she 157
Biography and Autobiography was now the superintendent of the royal establishment and controlled the
important office of Privy Purse. Albert very soon perceived that he was not
master in his own house. Every detail of his own and his wife’s existence was
supervised by a third person: nothing could be done until the consent of Lehzen
had first been obtained. And Victoria, who adored Lehzen with unabated intensity,
saw nothing in all this that was wrong.

Nor was the Prince happier in his social surroundings. A shy young foreigner,
awkward in ladies’ company, inexpensive and self-opinionated, it was improbable
that, in any circumstances, he would have been a society success. His appearance,
too, was against him. Though in the eyes of Victoria he was the mirror of manly
beauty, her subjects, whose eyes were of a less Teutonic cast, did not agree with
her. To them — and particularly to the high-born ladies and gentlemen who
naturally saw him most — what was immediately and distressingly striking in
Albert’s face and figure and whole demeanour was his un-English look. His
features were regular, no doubt, but there was something smooth and smug about
them; he was tall, but he was clumsily put together and he walked with a slight
slouch. Really, they thought, this youth was more like some kind of foreign tenor
than anything else. These were serious disadvantages, but the line of conduct
which the Prince adopted from the first moment of his arrival was far from
calculated to dispel them. Owing partly to a natural awkwardness, partly to a
fear of undue familiarity, and partly to a desire to be absolutely correct, his manners
were infused with an extraordinary stiffness and formality. Whenever he appeared
in company, he seemed to be surrounded by a thick hedge of prickly etiquette.
He never went out into ordinary society; he never walked in the streets of London;
he was invariably accompanied by an equerry when he rode or drove. He wanted
to be irreproachable and, if that involved friendlessness, it could not be helped.
Besides, he had no very high opinion of the English. So far as he could see, they
cared for nothing but fox-hunting and Sunday observances; they oscillated
between an undue frivolity and an undue gloom; if you spoke to them of friendly
joyousness they stared; and they did not understand either the Laws of Thought
or the wit of a German University. Since it was clear that with such people he
could have very little in common, there was no reason whatever for relaxing in
their favour, the rules of etiquette. In strict privacy, he could be natural and
charming: Seymour and Anson were devoted to him, and he returned their
affection: but they were subordinates—the receivers of his confidences and the
agents of his will. From the support and the solace of true companionship he was
utterly cut off,

A friend, indeed, he had — or rather, a mentor. The Baron, established once

more in the royal residence, was determined to work with as whole-hearted a
detachment for the Prince’s benefit as, more than twenty years before, he had
worked for his uncle. The situations then and now, similar in many respects,
were yet full of differences. Perhaps in either case the difficulties to be encountered
were equally great; but the present problem was the more complex and the more
interesting. The young doctor unknown and insignificant, whose only assets were
his own wits and the friendship of an unimportant Prince, had been replaced by
the accomplished confidence of kings and ministers, ripe in years, in reputation,
and in the wisdom of a vast experience. It was possible for him to treat Albert
with something of the affectionate authority of a father; but, on the other hand,
Albert was no Leopold. As the Baron was very well aware, he had none of his
uncle’s rigidity of ambition, none of his overweening impulse to be personally
158
great. He was virtuous and well-intentioned; he was clever and well informed; Lytton Strachey’s –Queen
Victoria
but he took no interest in politics, and there were no signs that he possessed any
commanding force of character. Left to himself he would almost certainly have
subsided into a high-minded nonentity, an aimless dilettante busy over culture, a
palace appendage without influence or power. But he was not left to himself:
Stockmar saw to that. Forever at his pupil’s elbow, the hidden Baron pushed him
forward, with tireless pressure, along the path which had been trod by Leopold
so many years ago. But, this time, the goal at the end of it was something more
than the mediocre royalty that Leopold had reached. The prize which Stockmar,
with all the energy of disinterested devotion, had determined should be Albert’s,
was a tremendous prize indeed.

The beginning of the undertaking proved to be the most arduous part of it. Albert
was easily dispirited: what was the use of struggling to perform in a role which
bored him and which, it was quite clear, nobody but the dear good Baron had any
desire that he should take up? It was simpler, and it saved a great deal of trouble,
to let things slide. But Stockmar would not have it. Incessantly, he harped upon
two strings: Albert’s sense of duty and his personal pride. Had the Prince forgotten
the noble aims to which his life was to be devoted? And was he going to allow
himself, his wife, his family, his whole existence, to be governed by Baroness
Lehzen? The latter consideration was a potent one. Albert had never customed to
giving way; and now, more than ever before, it would be humiliating to do so.
Not only was he constantly exasperated by the position of the Baroness in the
royal household; there was another and still more serious cause of complaint. He
was, he knew very well, his wife’s intellectual superior, and yet he found, to his
intense annoyance, that there were parts of her mind over which he exercised no
influence. When, urged on by the Baron, he attempted to discuss politics with
Victoria, she eluded the subject, drifted into generalities, and then began to talk
of something else. She was treating him as she had once treated their uncle
Leopold. When at last he protested, she replied that her conduct was merely the
result of indolence; that when she was with him she could not bear to bother her
head with anything so dull as politics. The excuse was worse than the fault: was
he the wife and she the husband? It almost seemed so. But the Baron declared
that the root of the mischief was Lenzen: that it was she who encouraged the
Queen to have secrets; who did worse: undermined the natural ingenuousness of
Victoria, and induced her to give unconsciously no doubt, false reasons to explain
away her conduct.

Minor disagreement made matters worse. The royal couple differed in their tastes.
Albert, brought up in a regime of Spartan simplicity and early hours, found the
great Court functions intolerably wearisome, and was invariably observed to be
nodding on the sofa at half-past ten; while the Queen’s favourite form of enjoyment
was to dance through the night, and then, going out into the portico of the Palace,
watch the sun rise behind St. Paul’s and the towers of Westminster. She loved
London and he detested it. It was only in Windsor that he felt he could really
breathe; but Windsor too had its terrors: though during the day there he could
paint and walk and play on the piano, after dinner black tedium descended like a
pall. He would have liked to summon distinguished scientific and literary men to
his presence, and after ascertaining their views upon various points of art and
learning, to set forth his own; but unfortunately Victoria had no fancy to encourage
such people, knowing that she was unequal to taking a part in their conversation,
she insisted that the evening routine should remain unaltered; the regulation
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Biography and Autobiography interchange of platitudes with official persons was followed as usual by the
round table and the books of engravings, while the Prince, with three of his
attendants, played game after game of double chess.

It was only natural that in so peculiar a situation, in which the elements of power,
passion, and pride were so strangely apportioned, there should have been
occasionally something more than mere irritation: a struggle of angry wills.
Victoria, no more than Albert, was in the habit of playing second fiddle. Her
arbitrary temper flashed out. Her vitality, her obstinacy, her overweening sense
of her own position, might well have beaten down before his superiorities and
his rights. But she fought at a disadvantage; she was, in very truth, no longer her
own mistress; a profound preoccupation dominated her, seizing upon her inmost
purposes for its own extraordinary ends. She was madly in love. The details of
these curious battles are unknown to us; but Prince Ernest, who remained in
England with his brother for some months, noted them with a friendly and startled
eye. One story, indeed, survives, ill-authenticated and perhaps mythical, yet
summing up, as such stories often do, the central facts of the case. When, in
wrath, the Prince one day had locked himself into his room, Victoria, no less
furious, knocked on the door to be admitted. ‘Who is there?’ he asked. ‘The
Queen of England,’ was the answer. He did not move, and again there was a hail
of knocks. The question and the answer were repeated many times; but at last
there was a pause, and then a gentler knocking. ‘who is there?’ came once more
the relentless question. But this time the reply was different. ‘Your wife, Albert’.
And the door was immediately opened.

4.3.2 Glossary
plain sailing (figurative) : simple and easy course of action
peerage (Britain) : to confer a title like duke, marquis, earl, viscount,
baron etc.
Lord M : Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister,
Privy Purse : allowance of money from the public revenue for
the Sovereign’s private expenses.
Teutonic cast : having Germanic tastes.
tenor : general meaning or drift.
equerry : officer in attendance on a member of a royal family.
mentor : adviser and helper; an experienced person.
St. Paul’s : cathedral in London.
apportioned : divided or distributed.
Check Your Progress 1
i) Explain the meaning of ‘Politically, he was a cipher’. (about 50 words)
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ii) Who were the two most influential people in Queen Victoria’s life? Lytton Strachey’s –Queen
Victoria
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iii) Why did the English aristocracy not approve of Albert?

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iv) Who decided to support Albert and how did he go about it?
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v) In what ways were the Queen and Albert different?

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(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit.)

4.4 DISCUSSION
In this section, we shall discuss Strachey’s technique as a biographer and the
portraits of Albert and Victoria that emerge from his skilful and artistic
presentation.

4.4.1 Strachey’s Technique

What are some of our first responses to Strachey’s technique? It is but natural
that individual responses will differ. However, we have recorded some of our
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Biography and Autobiography observations here. We hope you will respond to these critically, relating them to
the text.

The first thing we notice about Strachey’s technique is that he not only presents
external details but also reflects on the inner thoughts and feelings of the
characters. It is a case of psychological probing deduced from the facts at hand.
It is from the historical situation that Albert’s predicament and his personal
response to it, is reconstructed. The fact that Lord Melbourne and Baroness Lehzen
exercised such strict control over the Queen’s political and personal life as well
as the prejudice that the English had against foreigners, put Albert as a German
prince in a difficult situation after his marriage to the English Queen. The extent
of this difficulty and its impact on Albert’s mind has then been sensitively recreated
by Strachey.

The second important fact to strike the reader is the rigorous and in-depth
scholarship that has gone into this work. Strachey has sifted the significant from
the redundant and composed a piece of immense intensity and brevity. The factual
sometimes mingles with the fictional. This is particularly true of the anecdote
when Albert locks himself in a room following a disagreement with his wife. On
hearing a knock upon his door when Albert asks “who is there?” the response is
“The Queen of England”. It is only when the reply is “Your wife, Albert” does
he open the door. It is questionable whether such an incident took place. Moreover,
were these the exact words exchanged? Strachey himself acknowledges that
this story may be ‘ill-authenticated and perhaps mythical…’ Not only does
Strachey reconstruct the incident imaginatively but he also gives it a dramatic
treatment.

While in this instance the dialogue is imagined, at other points in the passage
one may also find the actual words spoken by the Queen. We notice that even
the speeches attributed to the Queen:

The English are very jealous of any foreigner interfering in the government
of this country and have already in some of the papers expressed a hope
that you would not interfere. Now, though I know you never would, still, if
you were a peer, they would all say, the Prince meant to play a political
part.

This is not an imaginary construct but the actual words reported from sources
like the Letters 1. Thus there is an attempt to keep as close to authentic evidence
as possible.

The text you have just read focuses on Albert, yet Strachey while portraying his
character especially highlights his relationship with the Queen. At the same
time we can reconstruct the political scenario of Victorian Britain. The cultural
prejudices of the British people against foreigners and their resistance to external
interference are clearly predicated. But alongside these effects we are aware of
the all-pervasive presence of the Queen. Even in this brief passage, we find a
vivid portrayal of Albert as he looked, felt and thought during the early days of
his marriage.

4.4.2 Portrait of Albert

Albert appears to us as a tall shy young foreigner, who was awkward in a society
162 that he knew was hostile to him. The insular and snobbish British aristocracy
dismissed him on the grounds of his un-English looks and his lack of equestrian Lytton Strachey’s –Queen
Victoria
expertise. But Albert was not intimidated and carried no very high opinion of
the English either. He lacked friends he could trust, even though he found
confidantes among his subordinates Seymour and Anson. It was not that he was
not a warm person — it seemed more a case of a foreigner minding his p’s and
q’s. He did not want to transgress the social norms of this alien land even if it
made him appear stiff and unfriendly. That Albert passed through a phase of
extreme tension and uneasiness is clear from the fact that he had to contend with
formidable rivals such as Lord Melbourne and the Baroness Lehzen. While Lord
Melbourne directed the Queen’s political life, Lehzen had complete control over
domestic and private affairs. This left Albert with hardly any role in the royal
scheme of things. The reader is made to empathize with his mental state to the
extent that when Lehzen is ousted from the royal household, there is a tangible
feeling of relief.

Up to this point in his life, Albert had always had his own way. Now he was
increasingly forced to subjugate his will to that of Victoria’s. He tried to discuss
politics with her but she evaded such discussions. Nor did she encourage Albert’s
intellectual and artistic aspirations. For his part, Albert could not share the Queen’s
enthusiasm for dancing or for her other frivolous interests. He played chess
instead. While the Queen loved London he yearned for Windsor and the fresh
country air. One can almost sense the humiliation that this sensitive man must
have initially felt at the hands of one who was his intellectual inferior. Little
wonder then that he lacks the vitality of his wayward wife and appears serious
and impassive.

Yet Albert was not easily crushed. With an ally and friend like Baron Stockmar
to support him, he emerged as a personage of some stature in his own right.
Stockmar built him up by appealing to his ‘sense of duty and his personal pride’.
Gradually his influence increased as the Queen fell more deeply in love with her
husband. The quarrels continued but Albert could no longer be trifled with. That
he would not open door to the ‘Queen’ provides ample evidence of this.

This then is the picture of Albert that emerges from our reading of the passage:
he appears serious, clever, well-informed and virtuous. He is not ambitious and
has no interest in politics or political power for himself. He is human enough to
be easily discouraged but with the necessary support manages to surmount his
inherent reserve. He loves to play the piano, walk and paint and one wonders
how this sensitive man with simple interests would ultimately mould his wife to
adopt his lifestyle. It was only with patience and firm handling that he won her
affections.

4.4.3 Portrait of Victoria

Victoria emerges as a young girl, fresh and vital, determined to enjoy every
moment of life. This image is quite different from the formidable portrait that
one usually sees of Queen Victoria. Strachey understood his fascinating subject
in all her complexity and has captured the process of her development. She is
depicted not just as a wayward young monarch but also as a woman deeply in
love. She is also a shrewd politician who knows the mind of the English public
and aspires to rule over it one day. She cannot then offend their sentiments. It is
for this reason that she cannot allow Albert a role in the government of the country.
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Biography and Autobiography The lighter pleasures of life had great attraction for Victoria, Her favourite form
of enjoyment was to dance through the night or to look at books of engravings.
She did not look forward to serious conversations nor did she have intellectual
aspirations. In a lightly ironic tone, Strachey portrays her as an unexceptional
person who slowly but surely acquires a stature that earns her the love and
reverence of her beloved subjects.

Do you think Victoria was like other women of her time? The answer is clearly
no. In her marriage she is the one who has the upper hand. As a monarch she can
afford to indulge her whims and fancies while Albert is the one who must make
the adjustments, She has the additional advantage of being on her home ground,
whereas Albert is the outsider. In spite of all these factors, the marriage is a
success. And this success is based on one vital emotion: the love that she felt for
her husband. Albert’s death was one tragedy that she never could get over.

4.5 PROSE STYLE

Virginia Woolf hailed Queen Victoria as a ‘masterpiece of prose’ and subsequent
generations have concurred with this assessment. Strachey is undoubtedly a
master craftsman of English prose. He narrates and describes with equal ease,
creating past events as if he had actually witnessed them. He looks at the past in
an unsentimental and detached way writing in a prose that is playfully frank
without being malicious. For example, he tells us ‘Victoria, no more than Albert,
was in the habit of playing second fiddle’. Nor is he in the habit of mincing
words and we learn of Victoria’s ‘arbitrary temper’ and ‘her obstinacy’.

The tone that Strachey adopts is that of an equal making lightly satirical tongue-
in cheek comments such as ‘A Queen’s husband was an entity unknown to the
British Constitution’. Who is the irony directed at? It is these light touches that
make the book that in different hands may have become a ponderous treatise,
eminently readable. Such comments draw the reader into a community of shared
experience thus introducing a note of intimacy. The predominant tone is an amused
rather than a critical one.

The clash of the two personalities and cultures is highlighted in simple antithetical
statements ‘She loved London and he detested it’. The statement is straightforward
and effectively sums up the situation. Strachey does not indulge in long-winded
juggling with words but comes straight to the point. This directness and brevity
have become the hallmark of Strachey’s prose style.

You must have noticed that the overall style is simple and idiomatic with no
attempts at inserting literary or learned allusions ‘....his married life would not
be all plain sailing’ and ‘Politically, he was a cipher’, introduce figurative and
metaphorical expressions to the prose investing it with a certain informal quality.
If you read the passage aloud, you will notice that it has a rhythm that sweeps
you along without letting the interest flag. There is sufficient use of alliteration—
‘his wife’s existence was supervised by a third person...’-and this contributes to
the rhythmical quality of the prose.

Longer sentences alternate with fairly short ones to project the effect of variation
within the main theme. The sense of continuity is maintained as one paragraph
leads to another, the transition being made by connectives such as ‘But...’ and
164 ‘Nor....’.We can almost ‘watch the sun rise behind St. Paul’s...’ with the young
Queen. The prose is vividly evocative, yet one is never allowed to lose sight of Lytton Strachey’s –Queen
Victoria
the fact that one is not reading fiction but a well-researched and rigorously
evidenced work of history. ‘Albert... was invariably observed to be nodding on
the sofa at half-past ten....’ Notice the use of the word ‘observed’. Strachey is
reporting observed facts and not simply imagining them. He does not conjure
conversations but gives the impression of a direct exchange by placing the
necessary stress on the significant word. The Queen excuses her reluctance to
talk politics with Albert saying ‘that when she was with him she could not bother
her head with anything as dull as politics’. Strachey does not sacrifice authenticity
to the interests of dramatic presentation. The strategy seems to highlight the fact
that the historian and artist could co-exist in the same person especially if the
person happened to be Strachey. Thus the prose operates at two levels. On the
one hand it is a historical work, at another it is also a piece of literature. The
reader thus responds to it intellectually as well as emotionally and it is perhaps
for this reason that reading the biography is such a rich and rewarding experience.

Not only does Strachey inform us about the life and times of Queen Victoria, he
also amuses and delights us with his mildly ironic comments and anecdotes. The
final anecdote in the passage is narrated with the masterly expertise of a
consummate story teller. In a few sentences the whole scenario of conjugal discord
is evoked. Its resolution following the desired response ‘Your wife, Albert’ sums
up the human dimension of the drama at the same time exposing the vanity of
power and rank. This constant process of ‘debunking’ is achieved by Strachey’s
overall style that Michael Holroyd describes as ‘whimsical, teasing, half-admiring,
half-mocking....’
Check Your Progress 2
The following passage is an extract from Hilary Spurling’s biography of the
novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett entitled Secrets of a Woman’s Heart (1984). Read
the passage and answer the questions that follow:

Ivy’s last novel had been giving trouble long before illness forced her to lay it
aside (“My next novel is in a lamentable state and belongs to the future. I am
sorry it is so’, she wrote to Victor Gollancz on 21 August 1964....)

Well before her first fall, she told several people that, though she had got the
characters, she did not yet know what was going to happen to them and that she
had never found a plot so elusive before. She kept her ‘little book’-or rather the
growing pile of flimsy, tattered school exercise books, thirty in all by the end
stuffed under a cushion with chocolate boxes and newspapers at the end of the
sofa (where the pile was discovered the day after she died by Elizabeth Sprigge,
a faithful visitor in these years, and later author of the first memoir). All Ivy’s
manuscripts were endlessly rewritten, crossed out and gone over before being
copied in a neat schoolgirl’s hand quite different from the loopy black scrawl in
which she wrote letters and composed her first drafts. But the twelve notebooks
which contain the fair copy of this last novel 116 are still miserably expressive
of labour and effort. They are written in a mixture of both hands, in parts
indecipherable and so disturbed that her final revisions are strung out like a
chain of islands across a swamp of alterations. Five or ten lines left standing on
a page criss-crossed with interpolations, corrections, deletions, as many as three
or four alternative versions scored through or scrubbed out; and the twelfth
booklet, labelled ‘Next!’, has been dismembered altogether, containing little more
than often incoherent notes on scraps or sheaves of loose paper. 165
Biography and Autobiography i) What impression do you get of Ivy Compton-Burnett from this passage?
(100-150 words)
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ii) Comment on the style of the passage. (100-150 words)

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(Check your answers with those given at the end of this Unit.)

4.6 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit, we have discussed:
Strachey’s technique as a biographer in relation to a selected passage from
Queen Victoria;
the portraits of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria that emerge from our
reading of the passage;
the main features of Strachey’s prose style.

4.7 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress 1
i) This means that he had no political influence in the court of Queen Victoria
and was allowed no say on matters of the state.

ii) In the Queen’s public life it was Lord Melbourne the Prime-Minister who
had the major influence while in her private life Baroness Lehzen was all-
powerful.

iii) The English aristocracy did not approve of Albert because of his un-
English looks and manners. He was shy and awkward and did not mix easily
in London society.

iv) Baron Stockmar decided to build up Albert into a person of stature. He

knew Albert was not assertive and needed constant encouragement to come
forward. By calling upon the Prince’s sense of duty and self-respect, the
Baron managed to achieve his aim.
166
v) The Prince was a man of intellectual pursuits who did not care for the Lytton Strachey’s –Queen
Victoria
frivolous social occasions that his wife loved. He hated London while she
loved it. He would rather paint, walk or play the piano. But the Queen had
no interest in such pursuits and would rather talk shop to officials than
enter into these.
Check Your Progress 2
i) This is a very human account of Ivy Compton-Burnett. She is described as
a sensitive person who seems a bit shy and embarrassed about her own
writing. This is clear from the fact that she had kept her book stuffed under
cushions. She is also frank enough to admit the difficulty that she had over
her character portrayal and plot construction. As a novelist, she emerges as
a painstaking and conscientious writer who revised and re-revised her work
till she was perfectly satisfied with it.
ii) Your comment should give examples of:
a) a simple flexible style;
b) how authentic facts are provided—there is no attempt to put her on a
pedestal;
c) a sympathetic tone.

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Biography and Autobiography