[Translator’s note: Sivanath Sastri, scholar, religious reformer, writer and educator visited England in 1888 and stayed there for six months. He was a keen observer and describes in detail his experiences in England in his Atmacharit (September, 2003; Dey’s Publishing; Kolkata), his autobiography. A few snippets translated from Bengali….]
Sivanath Sastri
I was in England for only about six months. There were many places and objects to see besides these. But my travel plans were disrupted as in the last few months of my stay there the burden of some heavy work fell on my shoulders. The matter is this, that the manager of Trubner, a publishing and printing company, one day sent a handwritten book to Miss Collet and wrote that it was the history of the Brahmo Samaj written by a gentleman and that they could print and publish the book if Miss Collet would edit it. Miss Collet read the book and found that there were many errors in it and it shouldn’t be printed. She wrote back: “A leader of the Brahmo Samaj is here at present; if you want to publish a history of the Brahmo Samaj, I could ask him to write it.” Then she pleaded with me to write it. I sat down to write the history of the Brahmo Samaj on her request, making use of the documents she herself collected. For the last two months of my stay in England, I remained busy with that work. So I didn’t have any opportunity to travel a lot.
S D Collet
Whatever I’d write would then be read out for the benefit of Miss Collet. There were few with as much erudition as hers about the history of the Brahmo Samaj. We would make corrections where she thought corrections were needed, and she arranged for a young woman to make a fresh copy of my written article. There is a memorable incident about this young woman that I should record here. When I asked Miss Collet as to who would make a fresh copy of my work, she said, “I’d arrange for a girl who would copy your work and in turn you would pay her one penny for every hundred words.” Then she told me a little about her background. After the death of the girl’s mother, her father changed his ways for the worse. He had begun to show signs of alcoholism and other faults of character. The poor girl was hence compelled to put herself up somewhere else, leaving her father’s house. She earned her living, and every afternoon, for a few hours, she would go to her father’s house, clean the rooms, arrange the things, take care of her father and try to convince him to mend his ways. At night she could not stay in that house.
The incident that I remember in connection with this girl is this: one day the girl came to me in the evening with her copy. I was planning to go out for my evening stroll then. I took the copy from her and gave her the money and then said, “Wait please. I’d go out for a walk, let’s go together.” We went out. Reaching the street I said, “Let’s walk to your home,” and we proceeded towards her place. The distance was about one-and-a-half kilometres. But we remained oblivious of our walk. We began to discuss the history of the ancient Jewish race. I began to tell her whatever was known to me on that subject by reading the Old Testament and a history of the ancient Jews written even before the Old Testament. As we continued, I began to feel that the girl was very knowledgeable about the topic of our discussion and she told me so much on it that I could never have dreamt. Having remained engrossed in our discussion, we reached her residence. We never realized how time elapsed. Then we took an about turn and began to walk towards my home! At last, coming near my house, I brought out my watch and saw that it was close to the hour for dinner and she too needed to go and attend to her other chores. Then she left. When the young woman was gone, I began to think how this girl, who would get only a penny by copying a hundred words, could be so much advanced than than I in her knowledge that our discussion turned out to be such an edifying experience for me. How intense is the desire to cultivate scholarship in this country! I also felt that if the common people engage in scholarly discussions and if the need for knowledge remained intense in them, then that might be one way to keep the sacredness of the man-woman relationship intact. We remained completely oblivious of the fact that I was a man and she a woman for those two full hours when we were engaged in our discussion. We didn’t notice how time flew by.
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