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When the engagement of Lady Diana Spencer to the Prince of Wales
was announced, genealogists immediately started to trace her ancestry,
but could get no further back than 1818, four generations away from
the Princess. That was the date of baptism of five-year-old Katherine
(Kitty) Scott Forbes in the Bombay Presidency. There was no doubt
about Kitty's father - he was Theodore Forbes, from the impoverished
Scottish gentry who, like many of his countrymen, had sought his
fortune in India. But who was Kitty's mother? Speculation, fuelled by
ignorance, claimed that she was a 'dark-skinned native of Bombay'
called Eliza Kewark who was not married to Theodore, thus making her
daughter illegitimate.
own research into his family's background and suggested to the author
that she might write a novel based on the story of Theodore Forbes and
Eliza Kewark. Luckily Susan Harvard resisted this idea and decided to
carry out her own investigations based mainly on largely unsorted
family papers in the library of Aberdeen University. 'It was there' she
writes 'in Mss 2740 of the Special Collections in King's College
Library, that, against the odds, the details of Eliza's poignant story had
survived...the story of Kitty's parents, though hidden and almost
forgotten, was not lost. It exists still on the worn pages of Theodore's
letter book.. .in letters from his brother-in-law Agah Aratoon Baldassier
of Surat...but above all, in Eliza's letters to Theodore, dictated to a
Parsi scribe in her broken English...and always signed in Armenian
script "Sahiba Forbes" and in English "Your affectionate Mrs Forbes".
Born at Boyndlie in Aberdeenshire in 1788, Theodore joined the East
India Company as a civilian and he arrived in India a young man of
twenty years old. By the autumn of 1809 he was appointed as Assistant
Registrar in Surat and it was here he met and fell in love with Eliza
who came from a respectable Armenian family. The couple were
married according to the Eastern Orthodox ceremony and although no
marriage certificate survives, Eliza refers to the ritual of bride and
groom placing wedding crowns on each other's heads. The newlywed
pair travelled together to Mocha, where Theodore took up the post
of Political Agent. His job was to purchase coffee for the Company
and to monitor merchant shipping at the entrance to the Red Sea. This
was at a time when piracy was rampant and cargo-carrying ships were
as much at risk from pirates in their fast-moving dhows as from tropical
storms. The author was fortunate to visit Mocha and the Yemen in the
1990s. One couldn't do it today. The remains of merchants' houses
were still visible then in the deserted ancient city - elaborately
decorated three-storeyed buildings that hinted at what a rich and
important place it had once been. It was here that the first child was
born to the couple in October 1812. The little girl soon became known
as Kitty and a nurse called Fazagool, who may have come from Africa,
possibly as a slave, was employed to look after her. It was Fazagool
who was later to accompany Kitty on her long sea-journey to England
and to Theodore's parents at Boyndlie.
There is much more one could say about this book which is an
astonishingly accomplished debut by the author. It is beautifully
written, it is subtle in portraying its real life characters and is
particularly good in describing the three cities that feature in the story of Theodore and Eliza; the cities of Surat, which was fast losing its
crown to Bombay, and the Arabian trading centre of Mocha. It also
brings out the discrimination that non-British women started to face in
early 19th century India. Gone were the days when mixed marriages
were accepted and even encouraged as a way of keeping British men
out of trouble. Poor Eliza became a victim of this prejudice as
Theodore realised that an Armenian wife was a handicap to his new
career as a Bombay merchant. The story does not have a happy ending.
Warmly recommended.
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