LORD BEVERIDGE'S PARENTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 463, 7 May 1948, Page 11

LORD BEVERIDGE'S PARENTS

INDIA CALLED THEM. By Lord Beveridge. George Allen and Unwin. ECAUSE that monumental and indispensable work gave to Englishmen "the pride of lives obscurely great," Henry Newbolt wrote some verses in praise of the Dictionary of National Biography. His phrase "obscurely great" is recalled by Lord Beveridge’s biography of his father and mother, Henry and Annette Beveridge. You might read a libzyary of books about India without coming upon the name of Henry Beveridge, who spent the best years' of his life as a judge in Bengal. Had William his son, now Lord Beveridge, who is at present the guest of New Zealand, not written their story, it is pretty certain it would never have been told, No one could have done it so well, for he brought to the task not only literary skill but filial affection and understanding, and he had the fullest access to a large body of family documents. It is the life-story of two remarkable people and a picture of their setting in India and middle-class England. It is a footnote to the history of British rule in India, written from an angle which historians cannot afford to neglect — the daily life, official and private, of an English civil servant and his wife. Our drama in India was not enacted entirely in the Council Chamber. Henry Beveridge went to India in the eighteenfifties and served for over 30 years. Al-

ways a close observer of Indian life, he returned to India in his retirement as a student. He was 93 when he died. From the beginning he was liberal in his attitude to the Ihdian problem. He thought Britain should move more quickly than she was doing towards selfgovernment. For his marriage ceremony in India, he insisted on going before the Indian registrar; to have tried to get a European specially appointed for the purpose would have been "an insult to. the Bengali nation." Like her husband, Annette Akroyd was brought up among books, and remained, also like him, an avid reader and student all her life. After receiving the highest education a woman could get in England in those days, she came under the influence of an Indian reformer, and went out on an educational mission to Indian women. She at once noticed and disapproved of the social gulf between Europeans and Indians, but her work in Calcutta brought her disillusionment, and she never went as far as Henry in respect to Indian emancipation. This and other differences between them make their married life all the more remarkable. They were both highly intellectual and scrupulously honest-and very human. In the staider setting of England theirs would be a charming and moving love story. Against the background of Indian social and public life, the daily domestic round and the duties of a judge, it is unique. India was "burned into" Henry Beveridge, as it has been into so many Englishmen who have served her. He was one of the first candidates chosen by competitive examination and went out in the Mutiny year, so he was introduced to India at the beginning of a new era. It was a period of transition. Britain saw self-government as a goal indefinitely far off and Indian aspirations grew. It saddened Henry to observe the growth of Indian bitterness. Lord Beveridge says Henry and others worked "for a purpose which has not been accomplished." But with more wisdom than was shown, could it have been fully accomplished? In a measure every man’s life is a failure, and so is every system of government and every administration of that system. Lord Beveridge has written this biography with exceptional skill. The letters between husband and wife may be a little too intimate here and there for some tastes, but with this possible exception his discretion is as admirable as his easy arrangement of a crowded record and as his literary sense. Altogether this is an outstanding biography.

A.

M.