FICTION.
THE ANGLO-INDIANS.t
MRS. PERRIN'S faithful study of the domestic side of official life in India is not only welcome in itself; it has the added merit of opportuneness. A commission has recently been appointed to inquire into the Indian Civil Service, and only this week a remarkable evidence of the need of such inquiry is forthcoming in the result of the recent joint examination for appointments in the Home, Indian, and Colonial Civil Services published in Thursday's papers. Of the seventy-three successful candidates not a single one has elected for India in the first instance. On the reasons for this preference we can- not say that any light is directly shed in Mrs. Perrin's novel. She does not write with a political purpose or to air any grievance. But in her vivid pictures of Anglo-Indian social life, drawn from intimate personal observation, she has none the less furnished a clue to this decline in the attractiveness of the I.C.S. The drawing nearer of East and West by immensely accelerated means of communication has exerted a distracting influence on officials. The dualism of their family life has become more marked than ever; their oppor- tunities for getting at the back of the native mind are pro- portionately curtailed, and the claims and tastes of their Children only accentuate this detachment. It is in regard to
* The Christian Attitude Towards Democrat/. By Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, LLD. London: Hodder and Stoughton. [Is. net.] The Angio-/ndians. By Alice Perrin. London Methuen and Co. [63.2
this latter point that Mrs. Perrin's novel is most illuminative, for it is in great measure a tale of Anglo-Indians in transition, of Peres et Enfants, in which the younger generation —with one exception—are blind to the magic of the East and eager to return for good and all to the amenities and luxuries and fleshpots of English life. John Fleetwood and his wife are typical Anglo-Indians of the old school. They bad "both been born in India, as their parents were born there beforo them ; bad met and married in India; had passed thirty years of wedded existence together in India, save for rare intervals in England." And now in the evening of their days we find them looking forward, not without misgiving, to the final severance of the ties of a lifetime, while their grown-up daughters, light-hearted, attractive young women, hail the change with enthusiasm, as offering more brilliant chances in the matrimonial lottery than as the wives of officials, no matter how desirable personally. Marion Fleetwood's attitude is frankly worldly. She was fond of Tom Gray, the police officer, and she barely liked Sir Rowland Curtice, the globe- trotting epicure. But behind the "shiny contemptible finish of his person she saw a great English house, a solid position in the world of society, money, power, aggrandizement, all that she imagined she required to render her not only happy but exultant." When her sister Isabel confessed to a tender- ness for an Army chaplain, Marion summed up the situation with relentless logic :-
India's all very well,' she went on, 'for unmarried girls and senior people who can afford to be comfortable and go to the hills in the hot weather, or have hill appointments. Hero we are '3now with practically everything we can want, and I daresay more luxuries than would be possible if we were in England. But remember the other side of the picture for junior married people, horrible little stations miles off the railway—though it's true you would be spared that as a chaplain's wife—screwing and scraping on small pay—you know how seldom anyone has private means in India—years and years of it to go through—the weariness and strain of it all, and the dreadful business when children have to go home of deciding between separation from them or their father. You know I'm right, Isabel,' she concluded, and some day you'll thank me for the warning."
This worldly wisdom is not confined to the Anglo-Indian girl, and, taken in connexion with other drawbacks recently com- mented on in our correspondence columns, may help to throw light on the waning popularity of the I.C.S. as a career. While Marion and her sister Isabel represent +he new and self-protective order of Anglo-Indian woma/ ' their younger sister Fay goes beyond her parents in sionate devotion to India. She could not undee . Marion's failing to appreciate Tom Gray, who knew i.erything there
was to be known about natives and their tendencies, good and bad, who could tell such lovely bazaar stories, and had such a
marvellous collection of Indian birds' eggs. She was so obsessed with India's mysterious spell that she shrank from the very thought of Western life. Her education was sadly to seek on the modern side, but she knew all about Akbar and Indian folk-lore and sport. If the return to England meant a cramped existence to her parents, to her it meant exile. The second half of the book is inevitably less interesting than the opening chapters, with their charming descriptions of life in a hill station, at a native court, in a spacious bungalow in the plains, or on a camping tour of inspection ; but it paints with many effective touches the tragedy of retirement and the ennui of inactivity. How Marion realized her ambition only to recognize its futility; how she utilized her influence to secure Isabel's happiness; and how Fay was rescued from her exile and given back to India, may be read in the sequel. Mrs. Perrin is perhaps a little hard on the stay-at- home English in the main, but with this deduction her out- look is kindly as well as shrewd, and her book is distinctly one of those which engender gratitude to the author.
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