CHAPTER IX
LAST DAYS
IN a family where that dread disease, consumption, had already carried off a sister, it was but natural that the father should watch his remaining daughter with keenly observant eyes. Shortly after the publication of Toru’s first book, his anxiety was quickened by signs of ill-health, though at times there seemed to be marked improvement. This was a characteristic deception of the disease, which, before long, too clearly showed its firm hold upon its second victim. When Toru’s own doom was evident to her, with the heroism common to great souls in face of death, she set herself the more determinedly to make her mark in literature. By the end of March she was too ill to write, but she still read, and took an eager interest in all the latest books from Europe, and in the doings of the Paris ‘Société Asiatique’.
We have seen that she attempted a translation of Mademoiselle Bader’s book, but her illness increased so seriously that Dr. Thomas Edmonston Charles was obliged to be in constant attendance.
Great is our admiration for a man like Robert Louis Stevenson, whose life was one long, heroic fight with disease. Great should be our tribute to Toru, alert to the end, who died with her books strewn around her.
Writing to Miss Martin on August 13, 1877, Mr. Dutt says:
‘Toru has received all your letters up to the last which bears date the 10th of July. They have been a source of great comfort to her during her long and painful illness. I am very much obliged to you for these letters, because they cheer up Toru wonderfully when she is desponding most, and she looks forward to their arrival with intense eagerness. Pray continue to write to her, though she may be unable to send you replies yet for some time. I am sorry to say as yet she is no better. The fever for the last two or three days has been stronger than before and she is dreadfully weak, incapable even of walking from one room to another. Of course in her present state, the doctor does not recommend a sea voyage, though it would be the best thing for her the moment she is strong enough to bear the fatigue of it. I leave a little space on purpose, in case Toru should like to add just a line for you.’
In a weak and trembling hand, Toru wrote as follows:
‘My own darling Mary, accept my fondest love, Toru Dutt.’
Further details of her last days are supplied by Mlle Bader, who writes:
‘One day she gave me the hope of seeing her in Paris, where she wanted to consult the best physicians, but it was in vain that the poor father who had already lost two of his children tried to snatch the last of his daughters from the hand of death. Her illness increased rapidly, and her state was such that it would not permit her removal to Europe. On the 30th of July, full of the delusions frequent in complaints of the chest, she hoped to the last and wrote to me in a weak hand: “I have been very ill, dear Mademoiselle, but God has granted the prayer of my parents, and I am slowly improving. I hope I shall be able to write to you at length before long.” But she wrote to me no more, and she could have repeated to me the sweet line she had once written in a letter—that melancholy and bitter-sweet line—
Adieu then, my friend, whom I ne’er have beheld.’
Mlle Bader said: ‘I wrote to Toru to congratulate her on her sudden recovery, also I asked her to convey my congratulations to her parents. I enclosed a flower that belonged to a bouquet placed in front of my statue of Notre-Dame des Victoires. It was a rhodanthe, a pretty pink and silvered plant that never dies. Alas! when I sent this souvenir to my friend she had been dead a few days, and with what bitterness her parents would read my congratulations on her recovery! And my flower, intended to be the symbol of an everlasting and living friendship, became a flower for a grave!’
The end came suddenly in the evening of 30th August, 1877, at her father’s house at 12, Manicktollah Street, at the age of twenty-one and a half, when the tender and eager spirit of Toru passed to eternal rest, ‘firmly relying on her Saviour Jesus Christ, and in perfect peace.’ She was buried in the C. M. S. Cemetery in the Upper Circular Road, Calcutta, by the side of her beloved brother and sister, and on her tombstone appears the following inscription:
TORU DUTT YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF GOVIN CHUNDER DUTT, BORN 4 MARCH, 1856, DIED 30TH AUGUST, 1877. BE THOU FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH AND I WILL GIVE THEE A CROWN OF LIFE. Rev. ii. 10.
In conveying the sad news of his bereavement to Miss Martin, Mr. Dutt wrote, on August 31, 1877:
‘Your letter to Toru’s address was delivered to me this morning. Toru has passed from the earth. She left us last night at 8 p.m., and her end was perfect peace. She loved you very much. I have no doubt, loves you still. I shall send you hereafter one or two trifles to keep as reminiscences, but do not find myself able to write just at present. The Lord bless you for all you have been to my beloved child. Kindest regards to your parents from self and Mrs. Dutt, and believe me ever to remain,—Your most sincere friend,
‘GOVIN CHUNDER DUTT.’
To Mlle Bader he wrote:
‘She has left us for the land where parting and sorrow are unknown. Her faith in her Redeemer was unbounded, and her spirit enjoyed a perfect peace—the peace beyond all understanding. “It is the physical pain of the blister that makes me cry,” said she once to the doctor; “but my spirit is in peace. I know in Whom I trust.” There was never a sweeter child, and she was my last one. My wife and I are left alone in our old age, in a house empty and desolate, where once were heard the voices of our three beloved children. But we are not forsaken: The Consoler is with us, and a time will come when we shall meet in the presence of our Lord, not to be parted again.’
In not unnatural wonder, he asked:
‘Why should these three young lives, so full of hope and work, be cut short, while I, old and almost infirm, linger on? I think I can dimly see that there is a fitness, a preparation required for the life beyond, which they had, and I have not. One day I shall see it all clearly. Blessed be the Lord. His will be done.’
Further reminiscences occur in Mr. Dutt’s acknowledgement of sympathetic letters from Miss Martin and her father:
November 26, 1877.
‘I received your very kind letter of the 3rd October and its enclosure, the letter from your father, some days ago. Yes, you are right, Toru was ready, and ready for a long time to meet the Blessed Saviour. You know she left us on the 30th August at 8 in the evening. Her end here was very peaceful and happy, and her mother and myself will never, never forget the expression that was on her face when all was over. Such a glory there was on it. She reckoned you as her first and best friend, and was rarely so happy as when she got a letter from you. When it was decided by the doctor that we should go to England, she purchased some tussore dresses for you to take with her and give them to you when you met each other. That meeting, the Lord has willed it—is never more to be on earth. But I thought it right to send you these dresses purchased expressly for you, and also her Cashmere shawl, to be kept as a remembrance of her. I could write to you much more about our darling, but I have to enclose a letter to your father. . . .’
That Toru’s loss was no easier to bear as the months went by is shown by other letters written to Miss Martin in 1878:
‘I cannot tell you how precious to me are all your reminiscences of Toru, and the short quotations you give me from her letters to you. She always considered you her first friend, as dear to her as a sister, and she wrote to you more unreservedly and openly than she ever did to anyone else, I believe. I am become so grey now that I almost doubt if you would recognize me at first sight. Mrs. Dutt and I find it very difficult to drag on our chain, now that the sunshine of our house has gone. But the Lord will send me and her both rest and deliverance in His own good time. You are always in our hearts and in our prayers. . . .’
‘. . . I am always very glad to hear from you. Sometimes for days and days, my heart seems brass or iron, and I almost envy my wife her softer woman’s nature, but a perusal of one of your letters always brings the mist into my eyes, and I find much relief. . . . Toru’s MS. French novel has been received by Mlle Bader, and she thus writes of it in her latest letter to me from Paris: “It is extraordinary that a young Indian girl should have so admirably mastered our language. Our dear Toru put into her dramatic and touching story the same grace, candour and pathos, which were the sources of her poetic inspiration. . . .” Toru’s horses Jeunette and Gentille still continue to be our pets. We give them work just enough to keep them in health; and Mrs. Dutt is never tired of caressing them, as well as Toru’s favourite cat, “Bag” or “Tiger”, which, poor thing! sleeps in my wife’s bed. It used to answer Toru’s call like a dog, and it was piteous to see how it pined for days and days after she left us. . . .’
In another letter he writes:
‘. . . Yes, I am myself surprised at the amount of affection which dear Toru had inspired in people who had never seen her, and had known her only by her books. You say, “it must be a great comfort to you and Mrs. Dutt to see the affection for Toru which the perusal of her books brings.” Mrs. Trevor Grant, a lady whom I have never seen and whom Toru had never seen, writes: “There really must have been something unusually lovable and attractive about her, for most of those who have read her books seem to have retained a personal affection for her.” Mrs. Trevor Grant wrote that charming notice in the Englishman newspaper, which I sent you some time ago. Then again, M. Victor de Laprade—the eminent French poet—writes to Mlle Bader: “The attachment of the young Hindu lady for our dear France has made me love her warmly. She was a poet, and her heart had high aspirations and was generous like yours.” Did I send you the short but very beautiful notice of “Le Journal de Mlle D’Arvers” in the Revue de France for February 15, 1879? . . .’
From now on, Mr. Dutt’s chief comfort lay in seeing to the editing of his daughter’s works, both French and English, and in knowing how much they were appreciated. Writing again to Miss Martin on January 12, 1881, he says:
‘. . . I am glad you like the new edition of the Sheaf. Mlle Bader writes to the same effect, Mrs. Trevor Grant and also Professor Cowell. The latter wrote: “We have received the copy of the Sheaf, the new edition. It is beautifully got-up; and the picture at the beginning wonderfully recalls them. It is certainly an astounding book. What a mind of poetic insight and power Toru had. I fear her very intensity of nature ‘overwrought the tenement of clay’. It was the sword of fine temper wearing away the sheath. Still one cannot but feel that a keen bright insight, like hers, intensely enjoyed her intellectual life, though it was so short on earth. I dare say you remember Ben Jonson’s lines in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, about the short-lived lily being ‘The flower of light’”.[^1] With the testimony of such dear friends, I am fain to be content, for, do you know, I have not yet received a single copy of the new edition myself!’
Some short time after her death, the Calcutta Review published eight sonnets from one of her favourite poets, Gramont. The last of these sonnets, the chief thought of which is the moral victory of the Christian over physical weakness, may well be taken as typical of the authoress’s own experience.
In paying a tribute to her genius, a writer in that magazine remarked:
‘She wrote in English with all the delicacies and good taste of a highly educated Englishwoman.’
Other publications, both in England and in India, joined in the general chorus of praise. The President of the Paris ‘Société Asiatique’—a society in which Toru Dutt had been deeply interested—Monsieur Garcin de Tassy, wrote his appreciation as follows:
‘On the 30th of August, there died in Calcutta, Toru Dutt, a young Hindu girl scarcely twenty years old, a little prodigy who knew, not only Sanskrit, her sacred tongue, but also English and French, which she could read and speak perfectly, which is not altogether astonishing since she had been brought up in Europe. But what is more remarkable, she had published English poems, bearing the stamp of genius, at a time of life when girls are still in school.’
To quote Mlle Bader once more:
‘If the remembrance of her own life belongs to her parents, the fame due to her works belongs to the literary world. England and India claim her glory, and I like to believe that France also will keep ever green the memory of the young foreign girl who, when our country was humiliated, wished to belong to her in language as well as in heart.’
M. James Darmesteter said:
‘To us French people, she is doubly dear, for her own personal value, and for the love she professed for France. She has a right to a mention in the history of our literature, since she has herself inscribed her name in it, and she must remain in our memory as a fragile and sweet figure impersonating the Hindu genius such as it might have been under the wing of French Government.’
We close with a final testimony in the words of Mr. Edmund Gosse:
‘It is difficult to exaggerate when we try to estimate what we have lost in the premature death of Toru Dutt. Literature has no honours which need have been beyond the grasp of a girl who at the age of twenty-one, and in languages separated from her own by so deep a chasm, had produced so much of lasting worth. And her courage and fortitude were worthy of her intelligence.’
After Toru’s death some lines signed ‘R. K. M.’ appeared in the Statesman on February 17, 1879. The writer represents England, France, and India in turn claiming Toru as her own. Death intervenes, and the respective voices are silent. The composition is faulty and full of mixed metaphors, but the sentiment is beautiful, and for the rest, our readers must decide for themselves.
This song-bird with its music right royal, Though it come from far over the sea, Is mine own, for its heart true and loyal And its feelings were moulded by me. I nursed it,—cries England,—and I claim it; I fed it; it has drunk at my breast; It loves me; and sure no one can blame it; ’Tis my bird, and with me it shall rest.
Nay, sister; it is mine; by this token That it loves me the best, for I know When my bright sword at Sedan was broken It sickened and sank under the blow. It has throbbed,—answers France,—at my story, Its eye flames at the name Eighty-nine; It has warbled the songs of my glory; ’Tis my bird,—yes, it surely is mine.
It was born in my womb;—shall another Then my brightest and best take away? Can ye give it the fond love of a mother? If ye cannot, with me it shall stay. Oh aye cherish your song-birds, ye nations, England thy Brontës and France thy George Sands! Leave me but mine, in my desolations, Only her own, India asks at your hands.
Truce to vain strife! ’Tis all out of season, I carry our song-bird back to its nest, Question me not;—’twere highest of treason, This is God’s will, and that Will is the best. Back to its home,—and smiling, the Reaper Bearing the song-bird, for burden, upsprings! A long trail of light—then a darkness deeper, And a silence that followed the rush of his wings.