Dr. Elsie Inglis

The letter was addressed to Inglis’ eighteen-year-old bride, and Sir Frederick goes on: —

‘Shall I send for him or not? I am almost sure I should have done so, had I not heard of your getting hold of his heart. We don’t want heartless men, but really you have no right to keep such a man from us. At the present moment, however, for your sake, little darling, I won’t take him from his present work, but if, after the honeymoon, he would prefer active and stirring employment, with the prospect of distinction, to the light-winged toys of feathered cupid, I dare say I shall be able to find an opening for him.’

Mr. Inglis’ wife was Harriet Louis Thompson, one of nine daughters. Her father was one of the first Indian civilians in the old company’s days. All of the nine sisters married men in the Indian Civil, with the exception of one who married an army officer. Harriet came out to her parents in India when she was seventeen, and she married in her eighteenth year. She must have been a girl of marked character and ability. She met her future husband at a dance in her father’s house, and she appears to have been the first to introduce the waltz into India. She was a fine rider, and often drove tandem in India. She must have had a steady nerve, for her letters are full of various adventures in camp and tiger-haunted jungles, and most of them narrate the presence of one of her infants who was accompanying the parents on their routine of Indian official life.

Her daughter says of her: —

‘She was deeply religious. Some years after their marriage, when she must have been a little over thirty and was alone in England with the six elder children, she started and ran most successfully a large working-men’s club in Southampton. Such a thing was not as common as it is to-day. There she lectured on Sunday evenings on religious subjects to the crowded hall of men.’

In the perfectly happy home of the Inglis family in India, the Indian ayah was one of the household in love and service to those she served. Mrs. Simson has supplied some memories of this faithful retainer: —

‘The early days, the nursery days in the life of a family, are always looked back upon with loving interest, and many of us can trace to them many sweet and helpful influences. So it was with our early days, though the nursery was in India, and the dear nurse who lives in our memories was an Indian. Her name was Sona (Gold). She came into our family when the eldest of us was born, and remained one of the household for more than thirty years. Her husband came with her, and in later years three of her sons were table servants. Sona came home with us in 1857, and remained in England till the beginning of 1858. It was a sign of great attachment to us, for she left her own family away up in the Punjab, and fared out in the long sea voyage, into a strange country and among new peoples. She made friends wherever she was, and her stay in England was a great help to her in after life. When I returned to India after my school life at home, I found the dear nurse of my childhood days installed again as nurse to the little sisters and brother I found there.

‘She was a sweet, gentle woman, and we never learnt anything but kind, gentle ways from her. By the time I returned she was recognised by the whole compound of servants as one to be looked up to and respected. She became a Christian and was baptized in 1877, but long before she made profession of her faith by baptism she lived a consistent Christian life. My dear mother’s influence was strong with her, and she was a reader of the Bible. One of my earliest recollections is our reading together the fourteenth chapter of St. John.

‘She died some years after we had all settled in Scotland. My parents left her, with a small pension for life, in charge of the missionaries at Lucknow. When she died, they wrote to us saying that old Sona had been one of the pillars of the Indian Christian Church in Lucknow.

‘We look forward with a sure and certain hope to our reunion in the home of many mansions, with her, around whom our hearts still cling with love and affection.’

In 1856 Mr. Inglis resolved to come home on furlough, accompanied by Mrs. Inglis, and what was called ‘the first family,’ namely, the six boys and one girl born to them in India. It was a formidable journey to accomplish even without children, and one writes, ‘How mother stood it all I cannot imagine.’ They came down from the Punjab to Calcutta trekking in dâk garris. It took four months to reach Calcutta by this means of progression, and another four months to come home by the Cape. The wonderful ayah, Sona, was a great help in the toilsome journey when they brought the children back to England. Mrs. Inglis was soon to have her first parting with her husband. When they landed in England, news of the outbreak of the Mutiny met them, and Mr. Inglis returned almost at once to take his place beside John Lawrence. Together they fought through the Mutiny, and then he worked under him. Inglis was one of John Lawrence’s men in the great settling of the Punjab which followed on that period of stress and strain in the Empire of India. His own district was Bareilly, and the house where he lived in Sealkote is still known as Inglis Sahib ke koti (Inglis Sahib’s house). His children remember the thrilling stories he used to tell them of these great days, and of the great men who made their history.

His admiration was unbounded for those northern races of India. He loved and respected them, and they, in their turn, gave him unbounded confidence and affection. ‘Every bit as good as an Englishman,’ was a phrase often on his lips when speaking of the fine Sikhs and Punjabis and Rajpoots.

Englishwomen were not allowed in India during this period, and Mrs. Inglis had to remain in Southampton with her six children and their ayah. It was then that she found work in her leisure time for the work she did in the Men’s Club.

In 1863, when life in India had resumed its normal course, Mrs. Inglis rejoined her husband, leaving the children she had brought back at home.

It must have taken all the ‘fortitude’ that Mary Deas had shown long before in Carolina to face this separation. There was no prospect of the running backwards and forwards, which steam was so soon to develop, and to draw the dominions into closer bonds. Letters took months to pass, and no cable carried the messages of life and death across ‘the white-lipped seas.’ Again, one of the survivors says: ‘I always felt even as a child, and am sure of it now, she left her heart behind with the six elder children. What it must have meant to a woman of her deep nature, I cannot imagine.’ The decision was made, and Mr. Inglis was to have the great reward of her return to him, after his seven years of strenuous and anxious loneliness. The boys were sent, three of them to Eton, and two more to Uppingham and to Rugby. Amy Inglis the daughter was left with friends. Relatives were not lacking in this large clan and its branches, and the children were ‘looked after’ by them. We owe much of our knowledge of ‘the second little family,’ which were to comfort the parents in India, by the correspondence concerning them with the dearly-loved children left in the homelands.

CHAPTER II

ELSIE MAUD INGLIS1864–1917

‘Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is His reward. As arrows are in the hand of the mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.’

    Naini Tal, Aug. 16, 1864.

‘My darling Amy, – Thank God, I am able to tell you that your dearest mother, and your little sister who was born this morning are well. Aunt Ellen thinks that baby is very like your dearest mother, but I do not see the resemblance at present. I hope I may by and by. We could not form a better wish for her, than that she may grow up like her dear mother in every respect. Old Sona is quite delighted to have another baby to look after again. She took possession of her the moment she was born, as she has done with all of you. The nurse says she is a very strong and healthy baby. I wish to tell you as early as possible the good news of God’s great mercy and goodness towards us in having brought your dearest mother safely through this trial.’

Mrs. Inglis writes a long account of Elsie at a month old, and says she is supposed to have a temper, as she makes herself heard all over the house, and strongly objects to being brought indoors and put into her cradle.

In October she writes how the two babies, her own and Aunt Ellen’s little boy, had been taken to church to be baptized, the one by the name of Elsie Maude, the other Cyril Powney. Both children were thriving, and no one would know that there were two babies in the house. ‘Elsie always stares very hard at papa when he comes to speak to her, as if she did not quite know what to make of his black beard, something different to what she is accustomed to see, but she generally ends by laughing at him’ – the first notice of that radiant friendship in which father and daughter were to journey together in a happy pilgrimage through life.

Elsie had early to make long driving expeditions with her parents, and her mother reports her as ‘accommodating herself to circumstances, watching the trees, sleeping under them, and the jolliest little traveller I ever saw.’

In December 1864 Mrs. Inglis reports their return from camp: —

‘It has been most extraordinarily warm for the time of year, and there has been very little rain during the whole twelvemonth. People attribute it to the wonderful comet which has been visible in the southern hemisphere. Elsie is very well, but she is a very little thing with a very wee face. She has a famous pair of large blue eyes, and it is quite remarkable how she looks about her and seems to observe everything. She lies in her bed at night in the dark and talks away out loud in her own little language, and little voice, and she is always ready for a laugh.’

Later on Mrs. Inglis writes: ‘I think she is one of the most intelligent babies I ever met with.’

Every letter descriptive of the dark, blue-eyed baby with the fast growing light hair, speaks of the smile ready for every one who speaks to her, and the hearty laughs which seem to have been one of her earliest characteristics.

One journey tried Elsie’s philosophy of taking life as she found it. Mrs. Inglis writes to her daughter: —

    Naini Tal, 1865.

‘We came in palkies from Beharin to a place called Jeslie, half way up the hill to Naini Tal, and were about ten hours in the palkies. I had arranged to have Elsie with me in my palkie, but the little monkey did not like being away from Sona, and then the strangeness of the whole proceedings bewildered her, and the noise of the bearers seemed to frighten her, so I was obliged to make her over to Sona. She went to sleep after a little while. As we came near the hills it became cold and a wind got up, and then Papa brought her back to me, for we did not quite like her being in Sona’s doolie, which was not so well protected as mine. She had become more reconciled to the disagreeables of dâk travelling by that time. We reached our house about nine o’clock yesterday morning. The change from the dried-up hot plains is very pleasant. You may imagine how often I longed for the railroad and our civilised English way of travelling.’

Mrs. Shaw M‘Laren, the companion sister of Elsie, and to whom her correspondence always refers, has written down some memories of the happy childhood days in India. The year was divided between the plains and the hills of India. Elsie was born in August 1864, at Naini Tal, one of the most beautiful hill stations in the Himalayas. From the verandah, where much of the day was spent, the view was across the masses of ‘huddled hills’ to the ranges crowned by the everlasting snows. An outlook of silent and majestic stillness, and one which could not fail to influence such a spirit as shone out in the always wonderful eyes of Elsie. She grew up with the vision of the glory of the earthly dominion, and it gave a new meaning to the kingdom of the things of the spirit.

‘All our childhood is full of remembrances of “Father.” He never forgot our birthdays; however hot it was down in the scorched plains, when the day came round, if we were up in the hills, a large parcel would arrive from him. His very presence was joy and strength when he came to us at Naini Tal. What a remembrance there is of early walks and early breakfasts with him and the three of us. The table was spread in the verandah between six and seven. Father made three cups of cocoa, one for each of us, and then the glorious walk! Three ponies followed behind, each with their attendant grooms, and two or three red-coated chaprasis, father stopping all along the road to talk to every native who wished to speak to him, while we three ran about, laughing and interested in everything. Then, at night, the shouting for him after we were in bed and father’s step bounding up the stair in Calcutta, or coming along the matted floor of our hill home. All order and quietness flung to the winds while he said good night to us.

‘It was always understood that Elsie and he were special chums, but that never made any jealousy. Father was always just! The three cups of cocoa were exactly the same in quality and quantity. We got equal shares of his right and his left hand in our walks, but Elsie and he were comrades, inseparables from the day of her birth.

‘In the background of our lives there was always the quiet strong mother, whose eyes and smile live on through the years. Every morning before the breakfast and walk, there were five minutes when we sat in front of her in a row on little chairs in her room and read the scripture verses in turn, and then knelt in a straight, quiet row and repeated the prayers after her. Only once can I remember father being angry with any of us, and that was when one of us ventured to hesitate in instant obedience to some wish of hers. I still see the room in which it happened, and the thunder in his voice is with me still.’

Both Mr. and Mrs. Inglis belonged to the Anglican Church, though they never hesitated to go to any denomination where they found the best spiritual life. In later life in Edinburgh, they were connected with the Free Church of Scotland. To again quote from his daughter: ‘His religious outlook was magnificently broad and beautiful, and his belief in God simple and profound. His devotion to our mother is a thing impossible to speak about, but we all feel that in some intangible way it influenced and beautified our childhood.’

In 1870 Mrs. Inglis writes of the lessons of Elsie and her sister Eva. ‘The governess, Mrs. Marwood, is successful as a teacher; it comes easy enough to Elsie to learn, and she delights in stories being told her. Every morning after their early morning walk, and while their baths are being got ready, their mother says they come to her to say their prayers and learn their Bible lesson.’ There are two letters more or less composed by Elsie and written by her father. In as far as they were dictated by herself, they take stock of independent ways, and the spirit of the Pharisee is early developed in the courts of the Lord’s House, as she manages not to fall asleep all the time, while the weaker little sister slumbers and sleeps.

Eva, the sleepy sister, has some further reminiscences of these nursery days: —

‘We had forty dolls! Elsie decreed once that they should all have measles – so days were spent by us three painting little red dots all over the forty faces and the forty pairs of arms and legs. She was the doctor and prescribed gruesome drugs which we had to administer. Then it was decreed that they should slowly recover, so each day so many spots were washed off until the epidemic was wiped out!

‘Another time one of the forty dolls was lost! Maria was small and ugly, but much loved, and the search for her was tremendous, but unsuccessful. The younger sister gave it up. After all there were plenty other dolls – never mind Maria! But Elsie stuck to it. Maria must be found. Father would find her when he came home from Kutcherry in the evening, if nobody else could. So father was told with many tears of Maria’s disappearance. He agreed – Maria must be found. The next day all the enormous staff of Indian servants, numbering all told about thirty or so, were had up in a row and told that unless Maria was found sixpence would be cut from each servant’s pay for interminable months! What a search ensued! and Maria came to light within half an hour – in the pocket of one of the dresses of her little mistress found by one of the ayahs! Her mistress declared at the time, and always maintained with undiminished certainty, that she had first been put there, and then found by the ayah in question during that half-hour’s search!’

These reminiscences have more of interest than just the picture of the little child who was to carry on the early manifestations of a keen interest in life. A smile, surely one of the clouds of glory she trailed from heaven, and carried back untarnished by the tragedies of a stricken earth; they are chiefly valuable in the signs of a steadfast, independent will. The interest of all Elsie’s early development lay in the comradeship with a father whose wide benevolence and understanding love was to be the guide and helper in his daughter’s career. Not for the first time in the history of outstanding lives, the daughter has been the friend, and not the subjugated child of a selfish and dominant parent.

The date of Elsie’s birth was in the dawn of the movement which believed it possible that women could have a mind and a brain of their own, and that the freedom of the one and the cultivation of the other was not a menace to the possessive rights of the family, or the ruin of society at large. Thousands of women born at the same date were instructed that the aim of their lives must be to see to the creature comforts of their male parent, and when he was taken from them, to believe it right that he had neither educated them, nor made provision for the certain old age and spinsterdom which lay before the majority.

There have been many parents who gave their daughters no reason to call them blessed, when they were left alone unprovided with gear or education. In all periods of family history, such instances as Mr. Inglis’ outlook for his daughters is uncommon. He desired for them equal opportunities, and the best and highest education. He gave them the best of his mind, not its dregs, and a comradeship which made a rare and happy entrance for them into life’s daily toil and struggle. The father asked for nothing but their love, and he had his own unselfish devotion returned to him a hundredfold.

It must have been a great joy to him to watch the unfolding of talent and great gifts in this daughter who was always ‘his comrade.’ He could not live to see the end of a career so blessed, so rich in womanly grace and sustaining service, but he knew he had spared no good thing he could bring into her life, and when her mission was fulfilled, then, those who read and inwardly digest these pages will feel that she first learnt the secret of service to mankind in the home of her father.

CHAPTER III

THE LADDER OF LEARNING

1876–1885

‘Hast thou come with the heart of thy childhood back:
The free, the pure, the kind?
So murmured the trees in my homeward track,
As they played to the mountain wind.

‘Hath thy soul been true to its early love?
Whispered my native streams.
Hath the spirit nurs’d amid hill and grove,