Sunday, June 18, 2023

The life and death of a recluse

 

Que Sera Sera

My memories go back 60+ years, when, as a 7-year old, I lived with my parents and two siblings in a provincial town. My sister had just been born. My father was unemployed and we relied on my mother’s meager salary to see us through. To make ends meet, mother even stitched all our clothes.

My school was more than a mile from home, and I trudged to school and back, crossing a railway line and walking along a busy road. Most students rode bicycles, and hundreds would be cycling along the road each morning. I passed the houses of three classmates on my way to school. One, who lived barely 500-yards from school, was driven there every day in a Hillman. I don’t remember ever being offered a ride.

We lived in a small rented house. Tiny veranda, sitting room, two bedrooms, and a small kitchen. No electricity or running water. An outhouse for a toilet, and water drawn from a well shared with a number of other houses.

My father tried to make some money by breeding German Shepherds and raising turkeys to be sold at Christmas time. But, a rabid dog bit the mother dog, so she and her puppies had to be destroyed. Unable to shoot his own dog, my father requested a policeman to do the job.  Adding to his woes, all the turkeys were stolen one night. Those were hard times.

Our landlady, Mrs. Ferdinando, lived nearby, and she had a teenage daughter. Every afternoon, they would listen to “Housewives’ Choice”, a request program on Radio Ceylon. On Sundays, it was “Sunday Choice”. Because their radio was turned-on at a high volume, we enjoyed Hank Locklin, Dean Martin, Jim Reeves, Hank Snow, Eddie Arnold, Harry Belafonte and other popular singers from home. Doris Day’s Que sera was the hottest single, and we heard it a number of times every day.

Roy and I also spent a lot of time in the large, lovely house in front of ours, where the Kuruppu family - parents, a son and a daughter, resided.

We were poor and they were well off. They had electricity, even a fridge! Mrs. Kuruppu was a kind person, and her children, Dilip and Malki, were welcoming to Roy and me. Dilip was a year older to me, and Malki two years younger. Dilip was considered very intelligent, literally a walking encyclopedia, and spent most of his time with books. He brooded, seemed shy, and perhaps had poor social skills. His parents had bought him many toys to distract him from books, and my favorite was a beautiful Hornby train set, “Made in England”, the Rolls Royce of toy trains. It had a green wind-up engine, wagons, stations, signals, bridges, and lengthy, winding tracks.

Especially during the month-long school holidays in April, August, and December, Roy and I spent hours at the Kuruppu home. We played mostly with Dilip’s toys, especially the train set, while he watched. We also chased butterflies in the lovely, spacious garden, breaking off the golden pupae and collecting them in jam jars.

Malki’s personality was the opposite of Dilip’s. She was cheerful and mischievous. Being closer to Roy in age, they played together often. She was proud of her school work, and showed me the gold stars on her report card. Today, my granddaughter Nelum reminds me of the Malki I knew.

Mrs. Kuruppu played the piano, and also taught music and elocution. So, their house was filled with music all the time. She liked us, and we often enjoyed the delicious cakes she baked and the wonderful desserts she made. I am sure we often had meals at their place.

About two years later, we moved to another house closer to the school that brother Roy and I attended, and to my mother’s place of work. A few years later, Dilip also joined the school, but he was very much the shy loner, and we never spoke again. Years later, I came to know that Dilip had become a lawyer. When I drove past their former home, I saw that it had become the office of a finance company. I did wonder what had happened to the Kuruppu family but did not follow up.

Malki – 60 years later

The year was 2017. Upon her return to Sri Lanka from the States, my sister Beaula volunteered to cut hair at charitable homes. One day, after a visit to a home, she was talking about a lonely woman who did not socialize with others, and who appeared to be from a well-off family. She mentioned the woman’s name, Malki, and I knew at once that this was our old friend.

About two weeks later, Beaula and I visited the Berkshire Home, a lovely, old bungalow away from town, where Malki resides. The residents live in a cheerful, caring environment, all placed there due to being mentally or physically handicapped.

My sister had already mentioned to her that George and Roy were her brothers, and Malki recognized me at once.

We talked. Or, I asked and she answered, looking away and never meeting my eyes. She had been brought to the Home about ten years earlier, after her mother passed away. Other than an occasional visit by a cousin, she had no visits from relatives. Malki had attended prestigious girls schools. Later, she had taught music and elocution, like her mother. Her father had died more than twenty years ago, and her mother in 2006. She had not seen her brother Dilip since coming to the Home.

Although some visitors to the Home knew off the Kuruppu family, and had even studied music or elocution from Mrs. Kuruppu or Malki herself, the manager of the Home told me that no one appeared to be interested in her family, least of all about Dilip.

 

Later, I learned that Malki was on psychiatric medication. Her teeth are in bad shape, but there were no other outward signs of poor health. Malki is well liked at the Home, because, at the slightest invitation, she would sit at the battered upright piano and play favorites songs from the 60s and 70s. At my request, she played Que sera sera, but I could barely recognize the tune.

When I asked to see a photo of her family, Malki told me she had none. I was saddened because, for ten years at the Home, she didn’t even have a photo of her family to remember them and find some comfort. I thought she would be very lonely, and decided to meet Dilip and get a photo. When asked, Malki gave me his address, repeating it mechanically.

Dilip – After 60 years

Dilip still lived in the old neighborhood, at a house not far from where the Kuruppu family had resided in the 1950s. Knowing his mental background, I didn’t expect to see him living in comfort. But, not in my wildest dreams did I anticipate the neglect and squalor I encountered.

The house, almost at the end of a quiet, narrow lane, was large but run down. I stood near his padlocked gate and yelled “DILIP”. An apparition emerged, a withered, bent old man in a filthy, strung-up sarong, staring bleakly out at me through dirty spectacles. The specks of white on the bony chest, which I first assumed was paint, turned out to be spilled grains of rice. I thought it was a servant, but I barely opened my mouth again before the man said “George Braine”. It was Dilip, and he had recognized me after 60 years.


I was in shock, but managed to carry on a short conversation with him. He clearly remembered our childhood days, even the name of the dog that had to be put down (“Rani”). He knew that my brother Roy had passed away. I told him that I had seen Malki, and he quickly said that she was sent to the Home because she had a breakdown. He had never visited her. I asked him how he spent his time, and asked him if I could bring some reading material. When I mentioned The New Yorker magazine, he perked-up, talking about Harold Ross and Tina Brown, former editors of the magazine, and also James Thurber and a few other cartoonists and writers.

He did not unlock the gate for me, saying that someone had threatened him, and a burglar who had tried to break-in.

A few days later, I returned to the Berkshire Home, photographed Malki, and videoed her at the piano.

Later, I visited Dilip, armed with a pile of old New Yorker magazines and some snacks. This time, he quickly unlocked the gate for me, and I walked into a dark, damp, filthy hovel, the scattered furniture coated with grime, the entire floor and even the beds piled with garbage. One room was littered with empty 2-liter Coca Cola bottles. Another, with mounds of old books and papers piled high on the bed and the floor. The electricity had been cut off, and the roof leaked. The two toilets were horrors. Dilip’s life seemed straight out of a dark Gothic novel.

We sat and talked. His only income is Rs. 14,000/ per month, from a bank deposit. He said he had life interest ownership of the house, and that it would belong to a female cousin upon his demise. (This is the cousin who had taken Malki to Berkshire Home.) “What about Malki?” I asked, and Dilip then said she had co-ownership of the house. He talked briefly about his life as a lawyer. (I don’t think he ever argued a case, and perhaps only handled paperwork.) He talked about the time Malki became unbalanced, saying it was when she was told, wrongly, in the 1960s, that her father had passed away. He also mentioned a drunkard uncle. I got the feeling that Dilip had been swindled out of a large amount of money, apparently by a woman.

I showed him the video of Malki playing the piano, and asked him if he would like to visit her, or even move to Berkshire Home.  He emphatically declined, claiming that he was a loner and preferred his “gay, bachelor” life. I detected a high degree of resentment towards Malki. He occasionally attended church (not true, as I learned later). When I offered to bring someone to clean-up the house, he said “No, No” and claimed that he cleaned the house himself. Not true; it has not been cleaned in years. As for meals, his lunch was supplied by a neighbor, he said.

With the doors and windows firmly closed, the air was fetid, and I began to feel nauseous and wanted to leave. But Dilip was eager to chat, so I stayed a while longer.

Malki’s photos were on the wall, and Dilip allowed me to borrow them to be copied and given to Malki. He found a leaflet of a memorial service that had been conducted for Mrs. Kuruppu, and autographed it for me, recalling “fond memories of those halcyon days in 1957”. I left with a mental list of items for Dilip when I next visited.

On the way out, I met a neighbor, who had lived there for more than twenty years. They remembered the time when Mrs. Kuruppu, Dilip, and Malki lived together in the house. With Mrs. Kuruppu’s passing, the life they knew was gone. Malki was taken away to the Home, and Dilip became a recluse. The neighbor told me that some people had tried to take him away, there had been much shouting, but he had refused to be moved.

I drove straight to the Methodist Church in town (the Kuruppus were Methodists). I spoke at length with the pastor, showing him the photos of Dilip’s house, explaining his plight, and urging the church to intervene. A few days later, I drove the pastor to Dilip’s house, and asked if the church could help in cleaning up the place and help in other ways, too. The pastor turned my request down, saying that his congregation consisted mainly of elderly men and women who were unable to perform any physical labor.

I then approached two of the Lions Clubs in town, but they did not respond. I wondered if the Kuruppu family had a dark past that the townspeople were familiar with, and I wasn’t. I had been away from Sri Lanka for more than 30 years, and upon my return, resided more than ten kilometers from the town where Dilip lived.

 

 

Keeping an eye

The first step was to rid the house - of four bedrooms, two toilets, a spacious sitting room, and a kitchen - of all that accumulated filth. I brought two workers, with rakes, hoes and baskets. Wearing face masks and gloves, they worked till late afternoon, clearing the accumulated Coca Cola empties, the books and papers, the old mattress ,pillows, and bed sheets. Without electricity in the house, they worked in semi-darkness. We realized that the tiled floor was caked in filth, which had to be scraped off. We piled all that filth in the garden and made a huge bonfire.

I had brought a new mattress, sheets, pillows, and a sarong and T-shirts for Dilip. When cleaning the house, we realized that the water service came only up to a tap in the garden, and Dilip collected a trickle for toilet use. Obviously, he had not washed or bathed in years.

Unable to persuade Dilip to move, or to get the church and the Lions Clubs to help him, and his adamant refusal to leave the house, I realized all I could do was visit him with food and reading material. And, for the next two years, whenever I was in Sri Lanka, that’s what I did.

He would first wolf down all the pastries I brought, and then we would chat, seated on rickety chairs on the dilapidated veranda, the only place with some light. He was pleased with the newspapers, magazines, and books I had brought. He wanted me to order some law books, some from the UK, so that he could begin a magnum opus on the legal system in Sri Lanka. A pipe dream. I also noticed that the interior of the house, which we had cleaned only a couple of months ago, was back to its filthy state.

I left Sri Lanka in late 2019, and could not return for two years due to the covid pandemic. Dilip did not have a phone, so I could not call while I was away. When I went to Dilip’s house December 2021 and yelled his name as usual, no one came to the door. The few houses on his lane were all quiet, the people hunkered down because covid was still spreading.

Back in Sri Lanka in February this year, I again stopped by Dilip’s place, only to see that his house had been completely razed. Not a brick was standing. A neighbor, who had moved there recently, had heard that the man who lived in the house had passed away.

How did Dilip die? Was he alone? Who discovered him? After how many days? In that dark, fetid house, the nights would have been dreadful. The covid lockdowns would have worsened his isolation. But, at last, he was at peace.

An old friend, a gentle, soft spoken doctor, had died alone in the USA, and was discovered after seven days when the police broke down her door. A retired professor in Hong Kong, a former colleague, was found days after he passed away, alone in his apartment. So, Dilip’s passing resonated.

The Kuruppus had been an old, respected family for generations. A road in town is named after the family. Dilip’s father had been a civil servant, with a degree from a top British university. Dilip’s plight, and to a lesser extent that of Malki’s, two children lovingly brought up by doting parents, is indeed a tragedy.

"Que será, será
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours to see
Que será, será
What will be, will be"

(Note: Names of people and places have been changed.)

GEORGE BRAINE

Ceylonese planters, too, died at Gallipoli

 

Ceylonese planters, too, died at Gallipoli

By GEORGE BRAINE

My sister and I were at the Beach Cemetery in Gallipoli, where 285 British Commonwealth troops are buried. Our Turkish guide was listing the countries from where the fallen were from, and Ceylon was not mentioned. I was wondering around, peering closely at the gravestones, when I spotted three graves of riflemen from the Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps. I shouted out that Ceylonese were also buried there, and the guide came running to check. From now on, he assured me, Ceylon would be among the countries he listed.




The Beach Cemetery

The three graves, of A. Forrest, G. Middlemiss, and H.A. Carlisle, are located next to each other. The first landing by the Corps at Anzac Cove was on April 25, 1915, so these three had succumbed within about ten days of the landing.




Fascinated by its location sraddling Europe and Asia, I was fulfilling a longstanding wish to visit Istanbul, taking my sister along. We enjoyed the sights, savored the fabulous cuisine, took a day cruise, witnessed the Whirling Dervishes, and returned again and again to the Grand Bazaar. We also met with old friends. The only excursion away from Istanbul was to Gallipoli.

I am not an Australian or a New Zealander, nor do I have an ancestor who fought at Gallipoli, but the annual ANZAC commemoration ceremonies, and the near reverential tones in which Gallipoli is referred to, made me curious. So, we took the 10-hour strenuous roundtrip by coach to Gallipoli from Istanbul.

During World War I, Turkey was an ally of the Germans, and the purpose of the Gallipoli campaign was to force Turkey out of the war. Winston Churchill, as the First Lord of Admiralty, spearheaded the effort, which eventually cost 120,000 British casualties (killed or wounded), half of them from illness due to the extremely unsanitary conditions. An untold number died in the ships that were sunk. The debacle led to Churchill’s resignation.

The Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps (CPRC) was formed in 1900, and consisted mainly of European tea and rubber planters, all volunteers. During World War I, eight officers and 221 other ranks embarked for Egypt, and were trained there. Eighty of these troops were sent to Gallipoli, the first group landing there on April 25, 1915. The troops were mainly used as the ANZAC commander’s bodyguard. In addition to the three buried at the Beach Cemetery, three more, who died on board hospital ships on the way home, are said to be buried in Colombo.

One CPRC soldier who survived was Herbert Brett, who planted at Pannala, in the NWP, on a coconut estate named Yakwila. He was a close friend of my English grandfather, who was also planted nearby. Brett, like many others in the Corps, joined the British army, was commissioned, eventually rising to the rank of major. He landed at Gallipoli on May 29. After the battalion he commanded was decimated (out of 500 soldiers, only 18 men and one officer were left), Brett surrendered to the Turks on August 6, and was mistreated as a POW. He did not return to Ceylon.

The 31 Allied cemeteries at Gallipoli are managed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and are situated in beautifully landscaped, picturesque locations. All are meticulously maintained, and some have intriguing names like Pink Farm, Twelve Tree Copse, Canterbury, Johnston’s Jolly, and Lone Pine. Of the 22,000 Allied troops buried at Gallipoli, only about 9000 have been identified.

In addition to the huge casualties suffered by the UK, the French suffered 27,000 casualties, the Australians, 28,000 (8700 dead), and the New Zealanders 7400 (2779 dead). The total Allied deaths were around 44,000.

Due to the heavy casualties they suffered, Australia and New Zealand regard the Gallipoli campaign as a baptism of fire, leading to their emergence as independent countries.

According to one estimate, despite their victory, 325,000 Ottoman (Turkish and Arab) troops died during the eleven-month campaign. Of this number, 85,000 were combat related and 240,000 were due to sickness. A staggering 1,965,000 were permanently wounded, sick, or missing.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) rose to prominence as a commander at Gallipoli, became the founding president of Turkey in 1923. Despite the massive losses his country had suffered at Gallipoli, Atatürk made a magnanimous speech in 1934, which contained the following words:

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

The Memorial at Anzac Cove, with Atatürk’s words

Friday, September 23, 2022

Irrepressible Julia Margaret Cameron, at peace in Bogawantalawa

Some years ago, my sister, BIL, and I drove to the Dimbula area, visiting Anglican churches and graveyards looking for evidence of our ancestors. At the quaint St. Mary’s church at Bogawantalawa, we found the grave my grand uncle, Frank Wyndham Becher Braine, who had died on March 9, 1879, at only 11 months. We may have been the first family members to visit his grave in more than a hundred years.


St. Mary’s, Bogawantalawa

That graveyard is also the resting place of a husband and wife, Charles Hay and Julia Margaret Cameron. Julia, during and after her lifetime, has been described as “indefatigable”, “a centripetal force”, “a bully”, “queenly”, “a one-woman empire”, “infernal”, “hot to handle”, “omnipresent”, “a tigress”. She was “impatient and restive”, for whom “a single lifetime wasn’t enough”. Who was this remarkable Victorian? Why is she buried at Bogawantalawa?

Julia was born in Calcutta, in 1815, one of seven daughters of James Pattle of the Indian Civil Service. They belonged to the Anglo-Indian upper class, and were all sent to France - their mother Adeline Marie was of the French aristocracy - for their education. The sisters were well accomplished and known for their “charm, wit, and beauty”, and “unconventional behavior and dress”: they conversed among themselves in Hindustani, even in England. They served curry. They all married well, four spouses being fellow Anglo-Indians in the civil service and military.

Julia lived at various times in England, France, back in India, South Africa, in India again, on the Isle of Wight, and finally in Ceylon. Travel to Cape Town in 1835 was for her health, after recovering from serious illnesses. Charles Hay Cameron, a distinguished legal scholar from Calcutta, was also in Cape Town, perhaps after a severe bout of malaria. They met, and married back in Calcutta in 1838. Charles was twenty years her senior. Together, they raised 11 children, five of their own and the rest adopted.

Julia’s introduction to London’s artistic and cultural milieu came in 1845, at her sister Sara Prinsep’s residence in Kensington. Sara conducted a salon at home, where poets, artists, writers and philosophers such as Tennyson, Rossetti, the Brownings, Longfellow, Trollope, Darwin, Thackeray, Henry Taylor, du Maurier and Leighton were regular attendees. Julia’s “hero worship” of these luminaries began at that time.

“Dimbola”

In 1860, the Camerons moved to the Isle of Wight, to a home named “Dimbola”, obviously after Dimbula in Ceylon, where Charles Cameron had invested in vast coffee and rubber plantations. He had served on the Colebrooke-Cameron Commission (appointed in 1833) to assess the administration of Ceylon and make recommendations for administrative, financial, economic, and judicial reform. The poet Henry Taylor, a close friend of Julia, wrote that Charles had “a passionate love for the island [and] he never ceased to yearn after the island as his place of abode”.

Incidentally, an English planter named Herbert Brett, known to my family, named his British home “Yakvilla”. He had once been the manager of Yakwila Estate, near Pannala in the NWP.

“Dimbola” had been purchased because it was next door to Tennyson’s home, and a private gate connected the two properties. Better known as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, he had become Britain’s Poet Laureate by then. Julia and the poet addressed each other by their first names. When he refused to be vaccinated against smallpox, Julia supposedly went to his home and yelled at him: “You’re a coward, Alfred, a coward!”

Soon, the Cameron and Tennyson families began entertaining well-known visitors to the Poet Laureate with music, poetry readings, and amateur plays, creating an artistic ambience similar to that seen earlier at Sara Princep’s home in Kensington. in keeping with Julia’s personality, the activities could be indefatigable. “Mrs. Cameron seemed to be omnipresent—organizing happy things, summoning one person and another, ordering all the day and long into the night, for of an evening came impromptu plays and waltzes in the wooden ballroom, and young partners dancing under the stars”, wrote Anne Thackeray, the novelist’s daughter. Even Julia’s generosity could be overwhelming. Henry Taylor expressed this best: “she keeps showering upon us her ‘barbaric pearls and gold,’—India shawls, turquoise bracelets, inlaid portfolios, ivory elephants”.

Photography

A turning point in Julia’s life came in 1863, when she was already 48. Charles was in Ceylon, and Julia was bored. A daughter gifted her a camera to keep her “amused”. A clumsy affair in those early days of photography, it consisted of two wooden boxes, bound in brass, one of which slid inside the other, with a single focus lens. The timber tripod was unwieldy. Images were recorded on a heavy, rectangular glass plate measuring 11 x 9 inches.

Julia took to photography with her usual energy and enthusiasm, converting a chicken coop to a studio. If the camera was clumsy, the process of photo development was even more complicated and challenging, with the use of chemicals – collodion, silver nitrate, potassium cyanide, gold chloride (even egg white was used) – and the need to work quickly. Julia’s hands and clothes are said to have become black and brown with the chemicals. The process was riven with trial and error.

Julia managed to coerce illustrious visitors to Tennyson’s home to pose for her. They included Longfellow, Trollope, Darwin, John Herschel, Robert Browning, the painter George Watts, Thackeray, Carlyle, and Lewis Carrol, and Tennyson, of course. Her photograph of Tennyson is shown on this page. The men were photographed in pensive moods, intended to capture their “genius”. She also photographed women for their beauty, and children as “innocent, kind, and noble”, a prevailing Victorian notion.

Posing for a portrait was no easy task: the subject had to be within eight feet of the camera, and had to remain still for around 10 minutes. Julia chose not to use head supports. Here is a vivid description of a photographic session with Julia: “The studio, I remember, was very untidy and very uncomfortable. Mrs. Cameron


Tennyson, photographed by Julia Cameron

put a crown on my head and posed me as the heroic queen. … The exposure began. A minute went over and I felt as if I must scream, another minute and the sensation was as if my eyes were coming out of my head … a fifth—but here I utterly broke down …” No wonder Tennyson called Julia’s sitters “victims”.

Showing sound business acumen, Julia copyrighted, published, exhibited and marketed her work. Harper’s Weekly, writing on a London exhibition in 1870, noted that “many art critics to go into raptures over [Julia’s] work as something beyond the range of ordinary photographic achievement”.

For the sake of brevity, I have focused on her portraits. She also photographed individuals and groups of people depicting allegories, religion, and literature; illustrations for Tennyson’s Idylls of the King being especially noteworthy.  In Ceylon, her subjects were mainly ordinary people and plantation workers. Her career wasn’t long – only 12 years – and despite criticism of her work for technical imperfections and the numerous challenges she faced, Julia produced about 900 photographs. An incredible feat.

To Ceylon

From the early 1840s, Charles had bought up sprawling extents of land at Ceylon at bargain prices, and was thought to be the biggest landowner in Ceylon. The 1850s and 60s were the best years for coffee. But, in addition to being absentee landlords, the Camerons faced other problems: extremes of weather, a shortage of labor, transporting the coffee to Colombo on poor roads, incompetent managers, and, finally, the devastating coffee blight.

Charles was in poor health - “receiving visitors in his bedroom or walking about the garden reciting Homer and Virgil” - and had not worked since 1848, and the expenses of supporting a large family and their lifestyle at “Dimbola” had forced the Camerons to borrow heavily. In 1864, Charles admitted to being virtually “penniless”.

Charles was keen to move to Ceylon, but Julia was not. Attempting to change her mind, he wrote her a moving, lyrical description of his “Swiss cottage” bungalow and the surrounding plantations in Ceylon. In Ceylon, the cost of living would be cheaper, and he was confident that his health would improve.  Later, Julia wrote that Charles’ passion for his Ceylon properties had “weakened his love for England”. Lord Overstone, their main creditor, was pressuring them to sell Rathoongodde (Rahathungoda), their plantation in the Deltota area managed by son Ewen. 

Finally, Julia gave in, partly because four of their sons were already in Ceylon. Charles’ health is said to have magically improved. In 1875, when she was 60 years old and Charles was 80, they left “Dimbola” for Ceylon, taking a maid, a cow, Julia’s photographic equipment, and two coffins, packed with china and glass. Henry Taylor noted that they had departed for Ceylon “to live and die” there, and that Charles had “never ceased to yearn after the island as his place of abode”.

Their son, Hardinge, the Governor’s private secretary, owned a bungalow on the river at Kalutara, on the western coast. Julia and Charles divided their time in Ceylon between Kalutara and their plantations in the hill country. Julia soon fell under Ceylon’s spell, writing that “the glorious beauty of the scenery — the primitive simplicity of the inhabitants & the charms of the climate all make me love Ceylon more and more”.

When the botanical painter Marianne North visited the Camerons at Kalutara, Julia went into a “fever of excitement” at having found a European subject. She dressed North up “in flowing draperies of cashmere wool” (despite the intense heat), with “spiky coconut branches running into [her] head” to be photographed. A remarkable photo taken by Julia shows North standing at her easel on the spacious verandah of the Kalutara house, with a bare-bodied “native” holding a clay pot over his shoulder.



Julia must have been busy during this period, because North noted that “the walls of the room were covered with magnificent photographs; others were tumbling about the tables, chairs, and floors”. In contrast to the distinguished personalities she photographed in England, her subjects in Ceylon were ordinary “natives” and plantation workers. But, only about 30 photographs from Julia’s Ceylon period have survived. The architect Ismeth Raheem, who has conducted extensive research on Julia, has stated that some photographs given to the Colombo Museum appear to be lost.

After a visit to England – four weeks of “turmoil, sickness, sorrows, marriages, and deaths” -  Julia developed a dangerous chill (pneumonia?) upon her return to Ceylon. She died on 26 January1879 at Glencairn Estate. Charles and four of her sons were with her. Her coffin was drawn by white bulls and also carried by plantation workers to St. Mary’s. Charles died a year later and was also buried at St. Mary’s.

Back to the Braines

My great, great grandfather, Charles Joseph Braine, arrived in Ceylon in 1862, as the manager of Ceylon Company, which I believe is the predecessor of Ceylon Tea Plantations Company that eventually owned and managed vast acres of tea as well as rubber and coconut. By 1880, he is listed as the first owner of Abbotsleigh Estate in Hatton. (In contrast with Charles Cameron and Herbert Brett, who named their homes in England after plantations in Ceylon, Charles Joseph named his plantation in Ceylon after his property, Abbotsleigh, in England.)

The Camerons arrived in Ceylon in 1875. British planters, away from home and often stationed in remote plantations, socialized mainly at two locations: their clubs, and at church. I have no doubt that Charles Joseph Braine and the Camerons had met at the club, perhaps even during Charles’ previous visits to his plantations, and at church, especially when the Camerons stayed at the nearby Glencairn Estate, managed by their son Henry.

St. Mary’s Church, Bogawantalawa, was dedicated in 1877. Although Charles Cameron wasn’t religious and did not attend church, Julia did, traveling perhaps on horseback or bullock cart like the families of fellow planters. The Camerons gifted three stained glass windows to St. Mary’s, and that is obviously where Julia worshipped and both she and Charles wished to be buried.

Charles Joseph Braine’s son, Charles Frederick (my great grandfather) arrived in Ceylon in 1869, at 19 years of age, six years before the Camerons did, and worked at Meddecombra Estate in the Dimbula area. Later, he was the manager of the vast Wanarajah Estate. He, too, may have met Charles and later Julia Cameron. Braine must have worshipped at St. Mary’s, because, as I stated at the beginning of this article, his infant son was buried at St. Mary’s churchyard in March, 1879, only two months after Julia was buried there.

My grandfather, Charles Stanley, was born in Ceylon in 1874, and, as a child, is likely have met the Camerons, or at least Julia, at church. He has an angelic appearance in an early photograph – “innocent, kind, and noble” – the type of child Julia preferred to photograph, and I like to imagine Julia tousling his hair! Hence, although no records exist, three generations of my ancestors are likely to have been acquainted with the Camerons, and perhaps worshipped alongside her at St. Mary’s.

The legacy of the Camerons

Julia Margaret Cameron is acknowledged now as one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. Her work has been exhibited in important galleries and museums in the UK, the USA, Japan, and elsewhere. The photographer Stephen White, who calls Julia a “revered figure” in the history of photography, wrote in 2020 that an album of Julia’s photographs was valued at £3 million. Each of her prints are said to be worth about $50,000.

The Cameron home on the Isle of Wight, “Dimbola”, is now owned by the Julia Margaret Cameron Trust, and consists of a popular museum and galleries. It has a growing permanent collection of Julia’s photographs, and is dedicated to her life and work.

When I visited St. Mary’s church in 2012, looking for evidence of my ancestors, the churchyard was covered in weeds. Stephen White, who visited St. Mary’s Church in 2017, lamented that the grave of “a woman whose photographs still stirred thousands with their beauty, and whose name was spoken with reverence by lovers of photography around Europe and the States” could be so “forlorn … unattended [and] unadorned”. A photograph of the grave that accompanies his article indeed shows a neglected gravesite, the curb cracked. The more recent photo shown here, from the Thuppahi’s blog, displays a better maintained grave.

Ismeth Raheem wrote that the house on Glencairn Estate where Julia died had been demolished in 2021.

While Julia is the better known of the Camerons, Charles made a lasting impact on Ceylon as a member of the Colebrooke-Cameron Commission, which, among other contributions, provided a uniform code of justice for the island. His on and off association with Ceylon was much longer, about 50 years at the time he died. A romantic at heart, he loved Ceylon with a passion.






Recently, Ismeth Raheem and Dr. Martin Pieris have brought out a short film, “From the Isle of Wight to Ceylon”, based on substantial research on Julia’s life. Finally, in Sri Lanka, Julia Margaret Cameron appears to be receiving the recognition she fully deserves.





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Charles & Julia Cameron’s gravesite at St. Mary’s churchyard

Friday, June 10, 2022

Duncan White, and the returned Trinity Lion

 

Duncan White, and the Returned Trinity Lion

For the 125th anniversary of Trinity College, Kandy, The Old Boys Association published a 135-page commemorative volume titled Memories of Trinity, containing short pieces written mainly by old boys. Consisting mostly of humorous anecdotes about teachers and students, the volume was edited by five old boys, including Lakshman Kadiragamar, who also happened to be the President of the OBA at that time. Kadiragamar also wrote the Foreword. The cover depicted a water color painting by Stanley Kirinde of the Hantana peak seen through the college chapel.



Kadiragamar also wrote a piece titled “The school we knew” for the volume, in which he recalled the visit of Duncan White, the Olympic silver medalist, an old boy of Trinity, to the school. This was in 1948. A holiday was declared, and a general assembly was held. White walked down the school hall, to quote Kadiragamar, “dressed in his Olympic blazer and grey slacks, the silver medal around his neck … The Principal made a speech, and then, … he took from his pocket and presented to Duncan White the Trinity Athletics Lion. Duncan White was speechless, visibly moved and tearful”.

The Lion had been awarded to White in 1938, when, still a schoolboy, he had been selected to represent Ceylon at the Empire Game in Sydney. Later, the Lion had been withdrawn over a disciplinary matter. Kadiragamar wrote that “we felt the Lion in his pocket meant more to him than the medal round his neck”.

The Trinity Lion is the most prestigious award a sportsman can achieve at Trinity College, Kandy. Being a rugby school, most Lions have been awarded to rugby players. Many cricketers, too, are Lions. The very first Athletics Lion was Duncan White’s in 1938. Kadiragamar himself won the Athletics Lion in 1948; like White, he was a hurdler. He captained Trinity at cricket and also played rugby for the school.

On 4th February, 1948, when Ceylon’s independence was proclaimed, four young men - Duncan White, Lakshman Kadiragamar, M.A.M. Sherrif and Oscar Wijesinghe - representing the Burgher, Tamil, Muslim, and Sinhalese communities, brought scrolls to Independence Square to be presented to Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake.


As for the “disciplinary matter” that nearly cost Duncan White his Lion, I have no clue.