A Lady of England 62

A Lady of England 62

It was only by an exceedingly systematic mode of life and endless toil

that Miss Tucker could get through what she did. She was always up

very early,--at 6 A.M. in winter, at 4½ or 5 A.M. in summer,--and her

day was carefully apportioned out. Six weeks’ holiday in the year was

permitted by the Society under which she worked, and she would seldom

take more than a month of this in the hottest weather, that she might be

able to get away for a few days at some other time, without infringing

on her full ten months and a half of work. Often part of her so-called

holiday was spent in looking after or in acting as companion to somebody

else,--or in undertaking work during the absence of other Missionaries

from their posts. The marvel is, not that after a few years she should

have grown to look older than she was, but that her health could in any

degree have stood so great and constant a strain. Few people in the prime

of life could have done and endured what she did and endured in the

evening of her days.

 

Very early after her arrival in India, as stated in a previous chapter,

the Natives seemed disposed to credit Miss Tucker with an astonishing

number of years; but too much must not be thought of this. It arose from

the fact that a grey-haired English lady out there is a complete _rara

avis_--a sight seldom to be seen. Miss Wauton’s first impressions of her,

jotted down as follows, do not give the impression of a very old lady,

dearly as Charlotte Tucker loved to describe herself in those terms:

‘Tall, slight, with lofty brow, sparkling eye, face constantly beaming

with love and intelligence; genius in every look; figure frail and

fairy-like, agile and graceful; very brisk movements and light tread.’

Hardly like a hundred years old! After a few years had passed she did no

doubt age rapidly.

 

Mention has several times been made of Miss Tucker’s readiness to give;

and when one recalls the abounding generosity of her father, not to speak

of the story of her grandmother on the Boswell side giving away to a

beggar the last coin in the house, one can hardly be surprised at the

generous tendencies of Charlotte Tucker’s character. She had the gift of

liberality by inheritance; and she cultivated her gift as a matter of

principle. Giving was at all times a real delight to her. A quotation on

this subject from Mr. Beutel may well come in here:--

 

‘Miss Tucker was always very liberal. Wheresoever there was

need or distress that she heard of, she gave substantial help

immediately. I well remember, for instance, after I had taken

over charge of the Boys’ Orphanage, one time there were between

thirty and forty boys to be fed and clothed, and no money left

in hand. As soon as Miss Tucker heard of it, she immediately

sent me £10; and I must confess such a blessing rested on that

money, that I never came into similar straits during the twelve

years that I had charge of the Boys’ Orphanage.

 

‘And again, before we settled at Clarkabad, there was a great

scarcity of grain, in consequence of the failure of crops among

the Zamindars. They had very little to eat, and no seed-corn to

sow. All wanted some help, and I had no money in hand.... When

Miss Tucker heard of it, immediately she sent us Rs.300; and

our greatest need was at an end.

 

‘Again, in 1889, when a dear friend of mine, Pastor and Teacher

in the United States of North America, with whom I had come

out to India in 1869, had decided to return to India as a

Missionary, in order to join and to help me in the multifarious

work at Clarkabad, and he found that the money in hand was

insufficient to pay for his and his family’s voyage from

Germany, and Miss Tucker heard of it, she immediately sent

me £100, with the direction to forward that sum to him, on

condition that he had not left Germany again for America. This,

however, had already taken place in the meantime, and the money

was returned to her.

 

‘Again, in 1892, after we had returned to Kotgur, where there

was a great scarcity in the district, and many poor people had

hardly one meal a day to eat, and Miss Tucker heard that I gave

relief work to some forty or fifty people, she sent me another

Rs.100.’

 

These are merely a few among innumerable instances which might be

quoted; though generally the gifts were so quietly bestowed that few or

none except the recipient knew about the matter. It was not, however,

only in money that she was generous. The very necessaries sent for her

own use, the very clothes sent for her own wear, would be given freely

away to the first person who seemed in need of them. Mrs. Hamilton,

learning something of this, at one time tried in despair calling her

gifts ‘loans,’ in the hope that they might be thus secured for Charlotte

Tucker’s own benefit. In later years, when a parcel arrived from England,

Miss Tucker would sometimes not allow her Missionary companions to see

what it contained, that she might feel more free to give away as she felt

disposed.

 

The Rev. Robert Clark speaks of Miss Tucker as ‘an English Christian

Faqir,’--a curious use of the term, which he applies also to one or two

other Missionaries. The original idea of ‘Christian Faqirs,’ sometimes

referred to in Miss Tucker’s own letters, was of Native Faqirs, who, on

becoming Christians, kept still to their old mode of life, going about as

before, teaching Christianity instead of false religions, and not begging

any longer, but receiving a small sum for their support from Englishmen.

Mr. Clark, in speaking of A. L. O. E., doubtless uses the word in

reference to her peculiar mode of entering into Indian ways, Indian

customs, Indian thoughts,--as, for instance, sitting on the floor among

them, instead of on a chair, travelling in an ekka like them, and so far

as she was able living their life,--as well as to the rigid simplicity

and self-denial which she cultivated.

 

After alluding to the manner of her earlier English life, and contrasting

it with the manner of her existence at Batala, where ‘two chairs were

placed on two sides of a table in a large and almost unfurnished room,’

Mr. Clark continues: ‘Miss Tucker ate very little. She always told us

to tell her beforehand if we were going to see her, in order that she

might have something to place before us. There was then no railway; and

everything had to be brought from Amritsar once or twice a week. The

bread often became _very_ hard. She sometimes said, “Do try this piece;

it seems a little softer.” Her guests were thinking all the time of her

tender gums, and of her teeth which were no longer young.’

 

On first going to Batala Charlotte Tucker had had the idea in her mind of

inaugurating there a sort of ‘Zenana’ of maiden Missionary ladies,--a

close retreat, from which the foot of Man should be utterly and always

excluded. Probably this was part of her desire to imitate the ways of

Natives. Some judicious combating was needed to break her loose from it;

though when once a gentleman-Missionary had actually arrived, theories

went down before the spirit of hospitality.

 

Once again it should be noted, that when in her letters she writes home

enthusiastically about all her comforts and luxuries, these descriptions

must be taken _cum grano salis_. She had not the slightest intention of

misleading anybody; but she was very anxious to put a brave face on the

matter; moreover, she was a Missionary Miss Sahiba, and she might not

grumble. Everything was for her right just as it was. But another side to

the question did exist.

 

In the year 1879 Mrs. Elmslie, being at home, paid a visit to Mrs.

Hamilton; and one day she could not help remarking, ‘When I see how

comfortable you are here, and think of your sister, it makes me sad.’

Her tone was almost reproachful; for she was mentally comparing A. L.

O. E.’s barely furnished rooms with the abundance of comforts in this

home. Evidently she thought Miss Tucker badly off, and wondered why her

friends did not assist her more. Explanations naturally followed; and

when she learnt the true state of the case, when she heard the amount

of Charlotte Tucker’s comfortable little income, she was astonished.

The manner of life steadily followed out was, in fact, no matter of

necessity, but purely a matter of principle. Miss Tucker counted a life

of rigid simplicity worthier her vocation as a Missionary than one of

greater ease could have been. She therefore kept to a certain sum of

money yearly for her own expenses, while giving much away in addition;

she made her clothes last as long as it was possible for them to hold

together; she had hardly any furniture in her rooms; and she refused

all luxuries, including some things which in India are commonly reckoned

_not_ luxuries, but absolute necessaries.

 

The following particulars have been kindly supplied to me by Miss Wauton

and others.

 

Her style of living, at all times extremely simple, was particularly so

at the time that she shared a home with Mr. Baring. She scarcely, indeed,

allowed herself even the most ordinary comforts. Her bedroom furniture

consisted of a native bedstead, a small table, a wardrobe and two

chairs, with a piece of thin matting on the floor, and one or two thin

‘durries.’[89] Always an early riser, Miss Tucker never liked her Ayah

to find her still in bed. When she first got up, she used to heat a cup

of cocoa with her little etna, for her ‘chhoti hazari.’[90] Miss Tucker

always disliked very much being waited on, and preferred to do things for

herself. She treated the servants very courteously, always addressing

the Ayah as ‘Bibi ji’; and any little thing offered to her at table was

accepted with a ‘Thank you,’ or declined with a ‘No, thank you,’ spoken

in English, as there is in Hindustani no equivalent for the __EXPRESSION__ of

gratitude.

 

Together with her marvellous activity of mind and of body was seen a

wonderful amount of patience under suffering or discomfort. In the very

hot weather she would say to her companions, ‘Let me be the first to

complain of the heat’;--and of course she never did complain. She used to

ascribe her good health in Batala to the absence there of three things,

generally counted indispensable by Europeans in India. She had, first, no

_doctor_; she had, second, no _gari_; she had, third, no _ice_. The want

of the latter must have been a serious deprivation. The lack of a gari,

or carriage, was supplied by her duli, by the native ekka, and by her

own walking-powers. As for doctors,--she had, when ill, to go to them,

like other people, and to be grateful for their help. Doctors were not,

however, favourites with A. L. O. E. She was perhaps a little hard upon

them; since, on the one hand, she professed not to trust their skill; and

on the other hand, she looked upon them as rather cruel than kind, in

trying to keep her longer upon Earth, away from the Home where she wished

to be.

 

Miss Wauton says:--

 

‘All she had was put at the disposal of others. Every book sent

out was lent round to the different Mission circles, or in any

place where it might give pleasure or profit. She always had

some interesting book on hand, and kept her mind richly stored

with knowledge, being specially fond of history. She allowed

me once to be present when giving an English History lesson to

a class of Baring High School boys. I could have wished myself

one of them, to have had such teaching constantly! She was very

independent of intercourse with other minds, yet thoroughly

enjoyed social pleasures. I never saw any one so carry out

the precept--“Rejoice with them that do rejoice.” Nowhere

did she seem so much at home as at the wedding-feast; and no

wedding-party seemed complete without her.’

 

But though she could be the life and soul of a wedding feast--perhaps

especially of a Native wedding feast,--Miss Tucker was not in all cases

an advocate of marriage. The Rev. Robert Clark speaks of her as--‘jealous

of the marriage of any of our Lady Missionaries, especially to those

gentlemen who were, as she said, “outside of the family.”’ He adds: ‘In

her verses on the duties and qualifications of ladies for Missionary work

in India, the last couplet was, I think, as follows: