My interest in the British Raj was triggered by the “Plain Tales of the Raj” series of radio programmes and the related book by Philip Mason. The descriptions of life under the British Raj was narrated from personal experience by individuals who were there. The descriptions – all in the contributors' own words – painted a very vivid picture.
I started buying British Raj antiques on eBay. An early purchase was a 1903 letter from Frances Couchman in Calcutta, writing to his wife Isabella back in England. Strangely, this letter was shipped from India. I was then surprised to find and purchase further letters from the same vendor. I have no idea how these letters from India to England came to be on sale in India.
A web-search revealed that Isabella Couchman's papers are lodged in the India section of the British Library in London. The great virtue of this material is that it is as written by the author. Unfortunately, this can mean that it can be very difficult to decipher. Frank Couchman’s handwriting is particularly inscrutable. Heaven knows how he managed to pass his examinations. So it can be a slow and difficult task to transcribe the original words. The greatest problem is with place names and people's names. But even the simplest words can be problematic, particularly if spaced out or split across lines. A second opinion often helps but sometimes it's only after repeated scrutiny that the correct words become obvious.
This creates particular difficulty with the British Library material. They no longer provide a photocopying service and they do not permit photography. Since repeated visits from afar are extremely costly, the only option is to trust in hurried transcriptions without dwelling on words or sections that aren't understood. Consequently there are many words I've had to guess and short sections I've had to omit in some of the passages quoted from the British Library material. And in some cases I can do no more than provide a summary.
Over the years, my eBay searches resulted in a few photos and some correspondence to the Couchmans. Then a fortuitous search of auction sites came up with an extensive archive of Lady Isabella Couchman at an auction house in Guernsey, where Isabella and her sole surviving daughter Verity died. This included albums of photographs. Sadly many of these, particularly the earlier ones, aren't annotated to identify the subjects. I have made best guesses for some of these, based on the chronological sequence.
Apart from sections of her own memoirs, this material primarily consists of correspondence retained by Isabella. So it consists mostly of letters she herself received. Apart from copies of her correspondence to Mabel Dawson, the only copies of letters sent by her are some letters to her brother Patrick, possibly inherited following his death, and a couple to her daughter Verity. So sadly, there are no examples of Isabella’s letters to her husband Frank. There's a large number of her sister Ada's long interesting and often illustrated letters. Long by virtue of her circumstances, filled with the interesting details on the minutiae of colonial life.
Inevitably, the letters present a one-sided story, often with tantalising gaps. There aren't very many letters from the 1930s for instance.
This website is an attempt to make all of this material freely available online.
Note: Some of these letters express views and contain language which are uncomfortable, even offensive from a modern perspective. But it must be remembered that they reflect the prevailing culture of the early 1900s.