Category Archives: British Raj India

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Grandpa and the Maharaja of Jaipur

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The book The Henna Artist (by Alka Joshi) includes scenes set in the Indian palace of the Maharaja of Jaipur. That brings alive a 1920s invitation in my possession–from that maharaja to my American grandfather, J.K. Pearce.

This is an invitation to my grandfather from His Highness the Maharaja of Jaipur. The location and time: At Home (the palace) June 1st at 4 P.M. (most likely a year between 1923 and 1926.) The event was a Gymkhana (featuring races and competitions) on the Horse Show Lawn.

While this seems a huge departure from my recent blog posts on vintage sci-fi and Reawakened Worlds, it’s not quite the stretch you imagine. Yes, 1920s historical nonfiction and 1960s science fiction are different genres. But what they have in common is the past.

The connection between the two genres is an abundance of artifacts inherited from my own family. They surround me in my home office.

On one hand, I possess vintage science fiction manuscripts, author-agent letters, and magazines (Galaxy, IF, and others) with short stories written by my stepfather in the ’60s.

Yet I’m also surrounded by 1920s ephemera. That includes photos, film reels, diaries, letters, and unusual objects from my maternal grandparents’ time in British Raj India (1923-1933.)

Sometimes I can’t recall which time period I’m in, particularly 2024!

But back to how Grandpa met the Maharaja of Jaipur, and why a young American man from Washington State was in India to begin with…

Grandpa studied Forest Engineering at the University of Washington, then as an associate professor attended the Pacific Logging Conference. There he met a man who was working in the logging industry in India. That man encouraged my grandfather Ken (J. Kenneth Pearce) to apply for, take over, and expand his position.

So at about age 26, Ken was hired by government of India (then under control of the British.) He assumed a position of high authority in South India which he held for ten years. His job was to oversee elephant logging camps, introduce machine power into the camps, and help establish sawmills. At times he also functioned as a district magistrate.

In India, Ken he was called Sahib and Master Pearce, and Grandma Gladys was his Memsahib.

That felt awkward to them at times. There was great pressure for them to hire many servants. Yet both of my grandparents were highly industrious, hard-working people. They often simply wanted to do the work themselves.

Grandpa worked from sunup to sundown, often shoulder-to-shoulder with his Indian laborers (most who were ex-convicts.) Grandma sewed clothes for herself and Ken. As a physical education teacher, she was hired to evaluate physical education programs in schools in Madras and other cities.

As for the Maharaja of Jaipur–I believe this particular invitation was for just Ken, before Grandma Gladys sailed to marry him in 1926. Then Ken and Gladys lived in Tamil Nadu region until 1929, primarily in Madras (Chennai) and Ooty. (1930-1933 they lived in the Andaman Islands.)

Ken managed logging camps throughout South and Southwest India. The University of Washington archives hold artifacts related to the forestry work of J.K. Pearce in India. However, I hold all his personal mementos from that time and place, plus additional logging ephemera.

Grandma also met a maharaja: the Maharaja of Mysore, who had a summer palace in Ooty (the Fernhills Palace.)

Gladys wrote of a funny (or disconcerting?) event that took place on the palace lawn. Before moving to India, she had saved money from her job as a junior high physical education teacher. On the steamship ride over, during a stop in Asia, she bought her first set of pearls and treasured them.

At the palace, a young child (one of the princes) approached her bedecked with jewels. He pointed at her pearls and demanded to have them. As you can imagine, she clutched them, and gave him a firm “No.” She had worked too hard for those!

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A Sure-footed Dhurzee & a Sly Cook

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Image of eggs by Rachael Gorjestani, used with a diary entry by Gladys Pearce, 1926, in the blog post A Sure-footed Dhurzee & a Sly Cook by Laurie Winslow Sargent.

In 1926, Gladys Pearce, fresh from America, was new to routines in British India. Although she admired the tailor, she let the cook know she was not as naive as he’d hoped.

In my previous post, A Reluctant Memsahib, I shared a little about Gladys being thrust into her new role. She was expected to have servants, as wife of Ken (American forester for the Indian government) even when she preferred to do things herself. Here are a few more fun notes from her diary, revealing what that was like for her.

1926, Gladys Pearce

Today a dhurzee (tailor) came to sew, bringing his hand-model Singer sewing machine. He spread a sheet on the floor of the veranda and sat cross-legged on it, his machine before him.

He made slip-covers for the naked sofa and chair. The machine hummed busily as he turned the wheel with his right hand while guiding the work with his left hand and toes. As for the rest of my help, including the cook:

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A Reluctant Memsahib

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Gladys Gose Pearce (American) as a memsahib in India in the 1920s. Group photo with house servants wearing New Year's garlands.

In 1920s British Raj India, independent, hardworking American Gladys was expected to have servants — whether she wanted them or not.

As I write Gladys’s biography of her years in 1920s to 1930s India, I strive to put in context her role at that time as a memsahib. This was a century ago. She and Ken (Americans) had been thrust into the British Raj system, which they didn’t entirely embrace.

Yet they didn’t entirely reject it, either. As master-servant relationships in general (especially between races and economic statuses) make me uncomfortable, here’s my attempt to look at Ken and Gladys’s roles as objectively as I can.

Definitions of memsahib vary. Merriam-Webster defines it as “a white foreign woman of high social status living in India especially: the wife of a British official”.  (The word “white” is rather telling about attitudes in the time of the Raj. Ugh.)

The Collins Dictionary has a simpler definition: “title for a woman in a position of authority and/or the wife of a Sahib”. That, I think, more accurately applied to Gladys, being American.

Eventually the term encompassed Indian upper class women as well. In Economic and Political Weekly, Memsahib: Who Are You?, Swastika Hore points out: “A time would come when the upper classes of Indians would be addressed as sahibs and their wives memsahibs by people lower down the social scale–evidently a colonial hangover.”

As I include diary entries in blog posts that include references to Ken and Gladys managing servants, readers incorrectly may assume that where there are servants, there must be masters who feel entitled. Conversely, Ken and Gladys were genuinely hard working people who had not grown up with servants nor expected to have them.

A Forester and a Teacher as Sahib and Memsahib

Ken, at age sixteen (in 1915) graduated from high school and worked in logging camps. He studied forestry in college, then worked as an assistant professor before being hired by the British Indian government in 1923 at 25 years old.

In my post Ken in the Raj, he describes his arrival in India, when he obviously enjoyed getting elevated attention and honor. Yet during his following ten years in India, Ken worked tirelessly, often from sunup to sundown, in Indian logging camps and mills. He never expected more work from others than he did himself. His clothes grew so sweaty he sometimes changed his work clothes three times in a day.

As for Gladys, she’d been a working woman before moving to India: a self-supporting junior high school teacher. She also was her own cook and housekeeper. However, in India as memsahib of Ken (an important government appointee) Gladys was suddenly expected to have servants do all her household chores. She was often annoyed at not being able to simply do them herself and her own way.

Once, when expecting guests, Gladys wanted to sweep cigar ashes off her veranda. However, her butler (main servant) Freddy was horrified at the thought of Gladys doing it herself, so refused to find her a broom. He also refused to do it himself, considering it below his caste and dignity to sweep. He insisted he must instead fetch a “sweeper” from another village.

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A Mongoose Surprise

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In 1926 British India, the Adyar Club in Madras (Chennai) had an unusual resident.

Here’s yet another of Gladys’s funny experiences in 1920s India, seeing yet more things unfamiliar to her in America! First, a quick note:

Note: Subscribers to my Sell Your Nonfiction & Parenting by Faith blogs (with email addresses from my old blogs merging with my new this week) may wonder about these history-related posts! Future writing and parenting articles will post here at CrossConnectMedia.com. I hope you’ll also enjoy these quirky excerpts from my nonfiction book in progress based on near-100-year-old letters.

Now back to our Seattle gal, Gladys, and her adventures:

Gladys Gose Pearce, October, 1926

Adyar Club, founded in 1832, is our favorite club. We get to see old friends, new friends, and other people’s romances in the making. We love playing golf there on its mild course with the smooth grounds, kept in perfect condition as a laborer whisks them to perfection after each player departs.

After golf, I like to take a refreshing bath, change for dinner, and have time for a rubber of bridge on the veranda with a favorite drink. Twilight deepens, a brief sunset, short twilight, then it is night. Sometimes a tea and dance at the end of the day is pleasant.

At the club I saw a strange creature with a long tail dart across the veranda, followed by several small ones.