A LADY OF ENGLAND

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF CHARLOTTE MARIA TUCKER

BY AGNES GIBERNE

AUTHOR OF ‘SUN, MOON, AND STARS,’ ‘RADIANT SUNS,’ ETC.

‘Nil desperandum’ Motto of the Tucker Family

NEW YORK A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON 51 EAST TENTH STREET 1895

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Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

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AUTHOR’S PREFACE

The principal mass of materials for this Biography was placed in my hands last summer by the Rev. W. F. Tucker Hamilton, nephew of Charlotte Maria Tucker (A. L. O. E.), and since then many other relatives or friends, both in England and in India, have contributed their share of help, either in the way of written recollections or of correspondence. A paucity of materials exists as to the early part of the life; but in later years the difficulty is of a precisely opposite description, arising from a superabundance of details. Hundreds of letters, more or less interesting in themselves, have had to be put ruthlessly aside, to make room for others of greater interest. From first to last the long series between Charlotte Tucker and her own especial sister-friend, Mrs. Hamilton, takes precedence of all other letters in point of freedom, naturalness, and simplicity. The perfect trust and unshadowed devotion which subsisted between these two form a rare and beautiful picture.

It has seemed to me, and it may seem to others, that the main question in the Life of Miss Tucker is, not so[iv] much what she did here or there, in England or in India, as what she was. Many a discussion has taken place, and doubtless will again take place, as to the wisdom of her modes of Missionary work, and as to the degree of success or non-success which attended her labours. I have endeavoured to give fairly certain opposite views upon this question, even while strongly impressed with the conviction that no human being is capable of judging with respect to the worth of work done in his own age and generation. Subtle consequences, working below the surface, are often far more weighty, far more lasting, than the most approved ‘results’ following immediately upon certain efforts,—results which are, not seldom, found after a while to be of the nature of mere froth. Nothing can be more unprofitable, usually, than the task of endeavouring to ‘count conversions.’ It is of infinitely greater importance to note with what absolute self-devotion Miss Tucker

entered into the toil, with what resolution she persevered in the face of obstacles, with what eagerness she did the very utmost within her power.

In writing the story of Miss Tucker’s life at Batala, it has been impossible not to write also, in some degree, the story of the Infant Church at Batala. My main object has of course been simply to show what Charlotte Maria Tucker herself was; and Mission work, Mission incidents, Missionaries themselves, come in merely incidentally, as[v] part of the background to her figure. Mention of them is accidental and fragmentary; not systematic. At the same time there is no doubt that nothing would have gratified Miss Tucker more than that any use should have been made of her letters likely to help forward the great work of Missions among the Heathen. Some years before the end, when in severe illness she thought herself to be passing away, she spoke of the possibility that her long correspondence about Batala might be so employed, and earnestly hoped that, if it were so, no one-sided account should be given, but that shadow as well as sunshine, the dark as well as the bright aspect, should be frankly presented. I have endeavoured to carry out her wishes in this particular.

It is to be regretted that at least a few letters from Mrs. Hamilton to Miss Tucker cannot be interspersed among the many from Miss Tucker to Mrs. Hamilton. None, however, have come to hand. Before Miss Tucker went to India she destroyed the bulk of her papers, after a ruthless fashion; and it does not appear that while in India she kept any of the letters that she received.

After some hesitation I have decided to give generally the names in full of those Missionaries, with whom she was most closely associated. I have also decided not to give the names of Indian Christians, with very few[vi] exceptions,—as of the Head Master of the Native Boys’ School at Batala, whom she counted a personal friend; also of one or two Ordained Native Clergymen, and one or two contributors of slight material towards this Life. In many instances it would be very difficult to decide wisely at so great a distance, and without a knowledge of the individuals themselves. It is therefore best to be on the safe side. Many of the initials are the true initials; but many are not even that,—especially in the case of those who are still Heathen or Muhammadan.

In the spelling of Indian words and names I have endeavoured to follow mainly the more modern plan, adopted of late years, except in the case of a very few words which are practically Anglicised. Miss Tucker’s own spelling of Indian words and names varies extremely; the word being often given differently when occurring twice in a single page. The spelling has therefore been altered throughout her correspondence. To avoid confusion in the minds of English readers, I have also taken the same liberty with letters from some others who have not adopted the modern mode.

In conclusion, I have only to express my sincere thanks for the most kind trouble taken by many friends of A. L. O. E. in contributing materials for my guidance.

AGNES GIBERNE.

Worton House, Eastbourne.

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PREFACE

It would scarcely be fitting that this Volume should go forth to the Public without a few words of Preface from one of A. L. O. E.’s own family.

Only my beloved Mother—the ‘Laura’ of these pages—could have penned the words which should adequately tell all that my dear Aunt was to those who knew her best and loved her most fondly. And she, little as she had expected it, was the first of the two to be called Home.

It has, however, been a great satisfaction to me to intrust the preparation of the Life to Miss Giberne; and I am glad to have this opportunity of expressing my hearty appreciation of the literary skill, the sympathy, and the fidelity to truth with which she has accomplished her task.

Averse as my Aunt ever was to any fuss being made about her, nothing would have reconciled her to the publication of a Biography, save the hope that its story might be used of God to stimulate others to consecrate their lives to the Service of Christ, whether in the Foreign[viii] or Home Mission Field. It is in such hope that it is now sent forth, with the earnest prayer that His blessing may rest upon it.

W. F. TUCKER HAMILTON.

Christ Church, Woking.

Note.—Any profits derived by A. L. O. E.’s relatives from the publication of this volume will be apportioned among those Missionary Societies in which she was especially interested.

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PART I LIFE IN ENGLAND

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‘Constant discipline in unnoticed ways, and the hidden spirit’s silent unselfishness, becoming the hidden habit of the life, give to it its true saintly beauty, and this is the result of care and lowly love in little things. Perfection is attained most readily by this constancy of religious faithfulness in all minor details of life, in the lines of duty which fill up what remains to complete the likeness to our Lord, consecrating the daily efforts of self-forgetting love.’—T. T. Carter.

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CHAPTER I A.D. 1771-1835 THE STORY OF HER FATHER

Charlotte Maria Tucker, known widely by her nom de plume of A. L. O. E.,—signifying A Lady Of England,—as the successful author of numberless children’s books, deserves to be yet more extensively known as the heroic Pioneer of elderly and Honorary volunteers in the broad Mission-fields of our Church.

Her books, which were much read and appreciated in the youth of the present middle-aged generation, may to some extent have sunk into the background, as the works of successive story-tellers do in the majority of cases retire, each in turn, before newer names and newer styles; but the splendid example set by Charlotte Tucker, at a time of life when most people are intent upon retiring from work, and taking if they may their ease,—an example of then buckling on her armour afresh, and of entering upon the toughest toil of all her busy life, will surely never be forgotten.

She was the sixth child and third daughter of Henry St. George Tucker, a prominent Bengal Civilian, and, later on, Chairman of the East India Company. All her five brothers went to India, and all five were there in the dark days of the Mutiny. Thus by birth she had a close connection with that great eastern branch of the British Empire, to which her last eighteen years were entirely[4] devoted. People in general go out early, and retire to England for rest in old age. Miss Tucker spent fifty-four active years in England, and then yielded her remaining powers to the cause of our fellow-subjects in Hindustan.

It seems desirable that a slight sketch of her father’s earlier life should precede the story of hers.

Henry St. George Tucker came into this world on the 15th of February 1771. He was born in the Bermudas, on the Isle St. George, whence his name, and was the eldest of ten children. An interesting reference to this event is found in a letter of Charlotte Tucker’s, written February 15, 1890: ‘As I went in my duli to villages this morning, I thought, “One hundred and nineteen years ago a precious Baby was born in a distant island”; and I thanked God for our beloved and honoured Father.’

Henry St. George’s father was a man of good descent, of high reputation, and of a leading position in the islands. His mother, a Miss Bruere before marriage,—probably the name was a corruption of Bruyere,—was daughter of the then governor of the Bermudas, a gallant old soldier, possessing fourteen children and also a particularly irascible temper.

The elder Mr. Tucker appears to have been a man of gentle temperament and liberal views; I do not mean ‘Liberal’ in the mere party sense, but liberal as opposed to ‘illiberal.’ Whatever his own opinions may have been, he did not endeavour to force them upon his children; he did not, in fact, petrify the children’s little fancies by opposition into a lasting existence. It is amusing to read of the opposite tendencies among his boys, one taking the loyal side and another the republican side in the dawning struggle between England and her American Colonies. Long after, Henry St. George spoke of himself as having then been ‘a bit of a rebel’; adding, ‘But my republican zeal was very[5] much cooled by the French Revolution; and if a spark of it had remained, our own most contemptible revolution of 1830 would have extinguished it, and have fixed me for life a determined Conservative.’

He had on the whole a strong constitution, though counted delicate as a child; and his early life in the Bermudas was one of abundant fresh air and exercise. Much more time was given to riding and boating than to books; indeed, his education seems hardly to have been begun before the age of ten years, when he was sent to school in England. Whether such a plan would answer with the ordinary run of boys may well be doubted. Henry St. George Tucker was not an ordinary boy; and he showed no signs of loss in after-life through ten years of play at the beginning of it.

One piece of advice given to him by his mother, when he was about to start for England, cannot but cause a smile. She was at pains to assure him that it would be unnecessary to take off his hat to every person whom he might meet in the streets of London. Henry St. George, speaking of this in later years, continues: ‘But habit is strong; and even now, when I repair to the stables for my horse, I interchange bows with the coachman and the ostlers and all the little idle urchins whom I encounter in the mews.’ One would have been sorry indeed to see so graceful a habit altered. It might far better be imitated. Exceeding courtesy was through life characteristic of the man, and it descended in a marked degree upon many of his descendants, notably so upon Charlotte Maria, the A. L. O. E. of literature.

School education, begun at ten, ended at fourteen. The boy worked hard, and rose in his classes quickly; though at an after period he spoke of his own learning in those days as ‘superficial.’ He had been intended by his father for the legal profession, and many years of hard work were[6] supposed to lie before him. These plans were unexpectedly broken through. One of his aunts, who lived in England, acting impulsively and without authority, altered the whole course of his career. She asked him, ‘Would he like to visit India?’ A more unnecessary question could hardly have been put. What schoolboy of fourteen would not ‘like to visit India’? Young Henry seized upon the idea; and the said aunt, under the impression that she was kindly relieving his father of needless school expenses, actually shipped the lad off as middy in a merchant vessel bound for India, not waiting to write and ask his father’s permission. She merely wrote to say that the deed was done.

Officious aunts do exist in the world; but surely few so officious as this. The deepest displeasure was felt and shown when Henry’s father learned what had happened. But by the time that his grieved remonstrances reached the boy, Henry was fifteen thousand miles away, ‘hunting wild animals on the plains of Behar.’ In the present day a boy so despatched might be sent back again; but in those days India was separated from England by a vast gulf of distance and of time. Any one writing from India to England could not look for a reply in less than a year; and his father was at Bermuda, not even at home, which made a further complication.

The boy’s condition must at first have been forlorn enough. After a petted and luxurious boyhood, he had to live for months together upon salt junk; and his bed was only a hencoop. But there was ‘stuff’ in him, and hardships of all kinds were most pluckily endured. On landing at Calcutta he found himself in a strange country, among strange faces, without money and without work, though happily not quite without friends. His mother’s brother, Mr. Bruere, was one of the Government Secretaries in Calcutta; and in the house of Mr. Bruere and of Mr. Bruere’s pretty little sylph-like wife the young adventurer found[7] shelter for some months, until an opening could be secured for him.

Fifteen years followed of a hard and continuous struggle. As long after he said of himself, he ‘looked the world in the face’ in those days; and while a mere boy of fifteen or sixteen he set himself resolutely to get on. From the first he grappled with the Native languages, showing a vigour and persistency in the study which, many many years later, were visible again in his daughter Charlotte, when grappling with the very same task. Only he was young; and she, when she followed his example, was well on in middle life.

Towards the end of those fifteen years resolution and untiring energy triumphed; and from the age of about thirty Mr. Tucker’s rise to a good position was steady.

In 1792 he became a member of the Bengal Civil Service. In 1809 he was made Secretary in the Public Department. But he had had heavy work and many troubles, and his health began to fail; so the following year, after a quarter of a century of unbroken exile, he set off for England, carrying with him Government testimonials, couched in the warmest terms. These testimonials spoke of his ‘long and meritorious services,’ of his ‘peculiar abilities,’ of his ‘talents and acquirements of the highest order,’ of his ‘unwearied diligence,’ of his ‘unimpeached integrity.’ All this, of one who, twenty-five years before, had landed on Indian shores an almost penniless adventurer, without so much as a definite plan of what to do with himself and his energies!

That very year he was engaged, and the year after he was married, to Jane Boswell, daughter of a Mr. Robert Boswell of Edinburgh, who was related to the well-known biographer of Dr. Johnson. The Boswell family was known to have first settled in Berwickshire as far back as in the days of William Rufus, and afterwards in Fifeshire and Ayrshire at Balmute and Auchinleck. Mr. Robert Boswell’s[8] grandmother, Lady Elisabeth Bruce, was a daughter of the first Earl of Kincardine. Mr. Boswell was a devotedly good and also an able man; a minister, not in the Scottish Presbyterian Church, but in some smaller religious body; and his death took place in a somewhat tragic manner, before the date of his daughter’s marriage to Mr. Tucker. While preaching, he quoted the text which begins, ‘All flesh is as grass——,’ and as he uttered the words he fell back, dead!

A characteristic anecdote is told of his wife,—A. L. O. E.’s grandmother. She had a large family, and was badly off. One day a poor woman applied to her for help; and Mrs. Boswell called out to her daughter Jane, to know what money they happened to have in hand. ‘Only one seven-shilling piece,’ was the answer. Mrs. Boswell’s voice sounded distinctly,—‘Give it, then; give it to the woman.’ ‘But, dear mamma, there is no more money in the house,’ remonstrated Jane. More decisively still came the response, ‘Give it, then; give it to the woman.’ And given it was. The story almost inevitably recalls that of the Widow’s Mite; even though from certain points of view one is dubious as to the wisdom of the act.

Despite the poverty of the family Mrs. Boswell’s daughters settled well in life. One married Mr. Egerton of the High Court in Calcutta; one married Dr. Roxburgh; one married General Carnegie; one married Mr. Anderson; one only, Veronica by name, remained unmarried; and Jane became the wife of Henry St. George Tucker. She was at that time a gentle and beautiful girl of about twenty-one, while Mr. Tucker was already over forty.

Early in the following year, 1812, they went out to India together; and his delight was great in returning to the country where he had toiled so long, and had made many friends. This time, however, his stay in the east was to be brief.

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His first child, Henry Carre, was born that same year; and two years later came his eldest daughter, Sibella Jane. Also in 1814 fell the blow of his Mother’s death, over which, strong man that he was, he wept passionately. Then his wife’s health seemed to be seriously failing; and this decided him to leave the land of his adoption, throwing up all prospects in that direction. In 1815, the first year of European peace, at the age of forty-five, he ‘retired from the active service of the Company,’ travelling by long sea with his invalid wife and his two little ones, and spending some time at the Cape by the way. Before they arrived in England another little one, Frances Anne, had been added to their number.

A home was found in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh; and for some years, till 1819 or 1820, he was well content to remain there, living a quiet home-life, with a little family growing around him. Two more boys came, George William and Robert Tudor,—the former dying in babyhood, the latter growing up to be slain in the Indian Mutiny. Losing the infant George was a dire trouble to his parents; and Mrs. Tucker, believing that he had succumbed to the keen cold of Edinburgh, was never at rest in her mind until the northern home had been exchanged for one in the south. Such a change was not to be accomplished in a day, but in the course of time it came about; and meanwhile the remaining children were a constant source of interest and delight. The ‘baby’ at this date was Robert; afterwards a very favourite elder brother of A. L. O. E. His children, known in the family by the name of ‘The Robins,’ became in later years as her own.