CALCUTTA DIARIES: An 18th century impression of Governor House in Calcutta

One of the great pleasures of life that Richard Blechynden indulged in was in swapping gossip with his friends about the dalliances of his acquaintances and their sex lives. Even his elderly boss who had married a teenage wife was not spared.

But then Blechynden belonged to a time when promiscuity was a way of life in Calcutta. The architect and superintendent of roads kept a detailed diary — the subject and source of two new books — demonstrating that he was not just a spectator, but an active participant in sexual activities himself.

“The minutiae of daily life and conversation give us an unmistakable flavour of the time, which is otherwise unrecoverable,” says Peter Robb, research professor, history of India, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Blechynden’s diaries form the basic source for Robb’s Sex and Sensibility and Sentiment and Self, recently published by the Oxford University Press.

A friend of 19th century reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Blechynden left behind scores of voluminous diaries in which he noted day-to-day details. He started writing his diaries in 1791 and continued till his death in 1822.

Robb discovered the neatly bound volumes stacked in the British Library, London, in the mid-1990s. Blechynden had copied many of his handwritten diaries with the help of an assistant and bound and preserved them.

Richard Blechynden

The diaries found their way down to another Richard Blechynden, credited with the “invention” of iced tea. Richard (1857-1940), a great grandson of Blechynden, wrote in his will: “Unless I shall have disposed of the diary of my ancestor Richard Blechynden in my lifetime I bequeath such diary to my executors upon trust for the British Museum, the Bodleian Library, India Office or such other body of similar standing as my executors in their absolute discretion shall select.”

If the executors were unable to find a public body of “similar good standing”, the collection “without reservation” should be burnt and destroyed within 12 months of his death, he said. Fortunately for history, the diaries ended up at the British Library.

Robb was impressed by the diaries, and struck by the writing style of Blechynden, who was a regular contributor to the Chronicle published from Calcutta until 1796. “He wrote as if it was a book. He wrote with some humour and since he was a well educated man, language wasn’t a problem,” says Robb.

Blechynden arrived in India from England in 1782 at the age of 22. With a reputation of “roving from flower to flower” — a remark that he attributes to a friend in one of his diaries — his relations with women present a picture of a pre-Victorian Calcutta that was not only tolerant of the indulgences of the sahibs but also the open way in which the bibis, prostitutes and concubines expressed their sexuality. Bibi was often used to refer to a European’s female companions — Indian or otherwise.

“This was not a prudish society. Rather, it was one with rules and conventions that sought to render its blemishes unseen, hiding malfeasance, violence, and fornication, as it were, under powder and wig,” says Robb.

Such were the times, asserts Durba Ghosh, associate professor, department of history, Cornell University. “My own experience of research has been that relatively few Europeans spelled out what they did, with whom, and when. Blechynden’s diaries give us a clear sense that these activities were much more prevalent than they appear,” says the author of Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of the Empire.

She mentions in her book that between 1780 and 1785 “one out of three wills filed in Calcutta included a reference to a native companion or concubine.” In the same period, over half of the children baptised in the city’s St John’s Church were illegitimate.

Blechynden, who was unmarried, had six surviving children. “In a strange way, he was a very principled man,” says Robb. “When he became wealthy, he was clear that he didn’t want to marry as he didn’t want his legitimate child to usurp the rights of other children.”

Robb

From the diaries, it appears Blenchynden didn’t take pride in his sexual appetite, but nor did he consider it a shortcoming. Although his multiple sexual partners caused him pain — apparently both physical and mental — it didn’t discourage him from forming relationships.

From his first bibi, Muckanee, to the last one, Charlotte, he went through a gamut of lovers. Among them were abusive and violent women whom he suspected were sleeping with his employees. One of them abused him publicly and went back to a brothel.

“Irregular cohabitation was fairly common among the early British settlers in Bengal, when norms of moral behaviour were rather relaxed in contemporary England,” explains historian Sumanta Banerjee, author of Under the Raj: Prostitution in Colonial Bengal. The onset of the Victorian era in the 19th century, he adds, led to the imposition of strict segregation and puritanical moral norms on the English settlers.

That Blechynden had a liking for Indian concubines can be gauged from one of his diary entries. “The best of European mistresses must be a bad bargain in this country — if they are ill they must have a European doctor — if they die a European funeral — each of which is very expensive,” he wrote.

But colour was a factor too. “At one point he moves from a very dark woman to a very pale Anglo-Indian woman and then to a European woman. After which he says that he doesn’t feel like going back to having sex with the dark woman,” says Robb. At the same time, the historian adds, he treated almost all his women the same way. “He was prepared to give them equal opportunities.”

But he also tucked away his mistresses within the walls of his house in the city and in his garden house on the outskirts. He was never seen with his bibis in public. When his English relatives mentioned his children from his mistresses, he wrote, “Someone has betrayed me” in his diary.

In her book, Ghosh argues that the British often expressed “ambivalence about racial hybridity”, unsure of the prospects of their children in British or in Indian society. “I think men who lived in the major colonial cities and were elite officials or military officers were careful to keep their Indian mistresses hidden from their peers,” she adds.

Covers of Peter Robb’s books

“Many historical characters of the time — such as Major General David Ochterlony, commander of the British East India Company, and Claude Martin, the founder of La Martiniere — were said to have had multiple concubines,” adds Calcutta historian Debasis Bose, who believes that the prevalence of venereal diseases was a reason why well-to-do Europeans preferred to maintain concubines than visit brothels.

But the diaries of Blechynden, who built a memorial to Colonel Robert Kyd, the founder of the Botanic Garden in Bengal, and set up elegant structures on Middleton Road, record many instances of men visiting prostitutes. He also names one Mrs MacNamara, who helped procure mistresses for men from among other men’s wives and daughters.

Robb stresses that Blechynden’s diaries belie the historical belief that in the early days Indians and Europeans were more tolerant towards each other than they were in the late 19th and 20th centuries. “That’s not true. There was enormous amount of casual racism towards the natives,” says the historian, who is currently working on a new book called Useful Friendships: Indians and Europeans in early Calcutta based on these diaries and other notes.

He says his earlier tomes on subjects as varied as political history, taxation and constitution used to put his wife to sleep after the tenth page. “I hope it will not be the case with these books on Blechynden,” Robb adds with a chuckle.