A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo, page 3
Sarojini, Asaf Ali and Syud Hossain formed a trio that was together everywhere, be it Harold Monro’s Poetry Bookshop, Poet’s Club dinners, meetings at Oxford and Cambridge, or calling on Rabindranath Tagore when he visited London. That Sarojini considered Asaf Ali and Syud Hossain to be amongst her closest friends is borne out by a letter that she wrote to her son, Ranadheera, on 8 February 1914. Enclosing a group photograph of a reception that was given to her by the Oxford Majlis** in October 1913, she gives the names of those in the photograph and then says, “Then my own very special group of friends consists of Abur Rahman at my left and Suharwardy next to him—at the back Asaf Ali and Syud Hossain (both of whom live in London)…There are others too but these are my special friends in the group.”9 Once, Asaf Ali and Syud Hossain organised a gathering of over two hundred and fifty literary personalities over a dinner in honour of Sarojini Naidu. An unexpected guest at the dinner was Mohamed Ali who had come to London to protest on behalf of Indian Muslims over the demolition of part of a mosque in Kanpur. Mohamed Ali would later gain fame as a leader of the Khilafat Movement; he and Hossain would again be thrown together in London a few years hence.
Asaf Ali and Syud Hossain were also members of the National Liberal Club (going strong even today) located a short walk away from Trafalgar Square, and overlooking the Thames. “No club has a finer location”, trumpets the website of the club. The club was established in 1882 by William Gladstone, the former Prime Minister of Britain, with the avowed aim of furthering the Liberal cause. It was also one of the first gentlemen’s clubs to allow ethnic minorities as members and it was Dadabhai Naoroji, called the Grand Old Man of India, who had the singular honour of being the first of them. The club had an impressive membership list that included eminent Indians of that time such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer as well as British liberals like H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and G.K. Chesterton, many of whom eventually became close friends of Hossain. Ever since its inception, women were allowed to use the club as visitors, but it was only from 1976 that women were admitted as full members.10 Jinnah was a prominent member of the Club, and he, along with Syud Hossain, Sarojini and Asaf Ali, met there together frequently. Sarojini admired Jinnah and, in Asaf Ali’s words, “With Sarojini Naidu [Jinnah] had an enviably close friendship”.11 Asaf Ali recalls an incident; “On one occasion Sarojini and I debated, in the company of Syud at a private dinner, the comparative merits of Mohamed Ali and of Jinnah. My zealous advocacy on behalf of Mohamed Ali evoked Sarojini’s retort, now proved true: ‘My Mohammad Ali will go further than your Mohamed Ali.’”12 Indeed there were always whispers that Sarojini and Jinnah had a more intimate relationship than what was publicly revealed. Nayantara Sahgal, Nehru’s niece and a close family friend of Sarojini and her daughter Padmaja, in an interview with the author recalled that, “Sarojini and Jinnah were closer than close.”13
Gandhi had moved from India to South Africa in 1893, and had distinguished himself in organising the Indian community there against white racial discrimination. He finally left South Africa in 1914 and was on his way to India when he stopped in London around August/September. The Great War (later termed WW-I) had just begun. As Gandhi describes in his memoirs, “London in these days was a sight worth seeing. There was no panic, but all were busy helping to the best of their ability. The Lyceum, a ladies’ club, undertook to make as many clothes for the soldiers as they could. Shrimati Sarojini Naidu was a member of this club, and threw herself whole-heartedly into the work. This was my first acquaintance with her. She placed before me a heap of clothes which had been cut to pattern, and asked me to get them all sewn up and return them to her. I welcomed her demand and with the assistance of friends got as many clothes made as I could manage during my training for first aid.”14 A reception was hosted for Gandhi and his wife Kasturba at the Hotel Cecil on 8 September which was attended by Sarojini Naidu, Jinnah, and Herman Kallenbach, amongst a host of other Indians, Europeans, and South Africans. Syud Hossain proposed a vote of thanks on the occasion.15 This was perhaps his first meeting with Gandhi, a precursor to many more that would lead to him becoming one of Gandhi’s most devoted admirers.
After five years in England and qualifying as a barrister, Asaf Ali left for India towards the end of 1914 on a wet December morning. He took a taxi to Paddington and found Syud waiting for him there. Hossain insisted on accompanying Asaf Ali to the Tilbury Docks. “As the hooter called the passengers and I said goodbye to Syud, for the first time in the course of our friendship he grew sentimental.”16 Asaf Ali evidently yearned for England and the ribaldry of his friend’s company. His letter to Syud from Delhi in October 1915 is a litany of complaints about his life in India, “The bare problems of existence has now become the subject of infinite cares. Such are the blessings of your birth in a slave country” and then continues, “What about you? Do you still occupy yourself in perambulating through the West-end, for the better part of the evening, and introduce new visitors to Mrs. Solomon or Spaghetti, or whatever that Italian-Hebrew’s name is, every morning at breakfast, and then reoccupy your cosmopolitan bed, in the after-bliss of single life, to sleep over your previous night’s prodigious exertions till 5 in the evening only to find yourself at the club at 7 to see ‘if there are any letters’ for you, and then to resume the happy episode of a somewhat long standing? But have you discovered a comrade for your nocturnal rounds yet, for if you have, I must say I shall feel jealous of him, as I always considered it my exclusive privilege.”17 The bond between Asaf Ali and Syud Hossain had been an intensely strong one; a few months earlier Asaf Ali had penned a note to him, “My dear Syud, Only just a line to remind you that this world is meaningless without you. Yours, Asaf.”18
Despite having come to London to qualify as a barrister, Syud Hossain chose not to become one, but instead continued as a freelance journalist; his articles appeared in leading publications such as New Statesman, Contemporary Review, Pall Mall Gazette, Asiatic Quarterly, New Age and Foreign Affairs. Over time Syud had honed his writing and speaking skills, something that he would use to devastating effect in his future stints in England and the United States. Socialising with the outstanding people of his times gave him a confidence that reputations could not overwhelm. Decades later, Asaf Ali would write in a eulogy to Syud, “He showed such outstanding promise as a wielder of the pen and an effective debater that he was quickly recognized by the Indian residents of established position and reputation in England as the star orator of the younger generation. His forte lay in extempore speaking. He had a poise and dignity of bearing…he was handsome of appearance and even more handsome in his relationship to both friends and adversaries. He lived by certain principles—even when he squandered his personal life as a reckless spendthrift—which rendered him indomitable as a man of speckless integrity.”19
3
A Romantic Interlude
TWENTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD SYUD HOSSAIN was a 5’10” tall, lean, impeccably dressed, charming young man with a flair for stimulating conversation that made women yearn for his company. Sometime in 1914, just before the beginning of the war, he befriended a Mrs Eliza (Ellie) Haigh, (of roughly similar age, she was thirty) whose husband, Percy Barnes Haigh, belonged to the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and was posted at Bombay.
Eliza was a remarkable woman for the times she lived in. She was born on 28 December 1882, the youngest of four children to her parents, George and Martha Moxon. Despite the family having a long tradition of Cambridge scholarship, Eliza was not sent to school as it was thought that the brains of her family had gone to her older brothers and sister. Undeterred, she taught herself, and did so good a job at it, that it got her into Newnham College of Cambridge University. She did two stints at Cambridge; from 1901 to 1903, and again from 1904 to 1905. In 1903, she graduated with a first class honours in the Cambridge classical tripos, one of the few women to achieve this feat at that time.1
After her graduation, she got married to Percy Haigh on 3 February1906 at the All Saints Church, Malabar Hill in Bombay.2 Interestingly, Percy himself was born in India in 1878 in the town of Shimoga, part of the princely state of Mysore in Southern India. The only son of his parents, Percy went to school in the city of Mysore where his father, Henry Haigh, was a preacher at the Wesleyan church. Percy graduated from St. John’s College, Cambridge where perhaps he met his future wife through her brother, Thomas Moxon, who went to the same university. Percy was appointed to the I.C.S. in 1901 and he moved to Bombay. Eliza and he had a son, Austin Anthony Francis Haigh, who was born in August 1907.3 Before the beginning of the war, Percy Haigh was transferred to the military in Poona, and Eliza came back to London leaving her husband behind. She lived for the most part at Kensington Square in London* (a few miles away from Syud Hossain’s house at Holborn) while spending the rest of her days at her brother’s vicarage at Alfreton in Derbyshire of which Thomas Moxon was the Vicar from 1907 to 1916.4 Eliza and Percy seem to have got divorced sometime before November 1927, after which Percy married Marion Alice Armitage.5 Percy retired from the I.C.S. in 1928 and died in March 1942.
Eliza was gifted with a deep intellectual curiosity, and she studied Indian philosophy and Indian music when she moved to India after her marriage. She began her writing pursuits in Bombay and continued with it as a regular contributor to periodicals such as The Nineteenth Century, The New Age, The Contemporary and The Quarterly on her return to England. At one time she was also an examiner for the Civil Service Commissioners. She wrote her only book, The Creative Word, in 1962, shortly before her death on 7 February 1963.6 Hossain and Eliza seemed to have been drawn towards each other by similar intellectual tastes, and the National Liberal Club could have been a possible venue for a first rendezvous in 1914—she mentions attending a meeting there in one of her letters. Eliza was acquainted with Jinnah, Sarojini Naidu and Yusuf Ali (an I.C.S. colleague of her husband) as can be gathered from her letters to Syud. Between 1914 and 1916, Eliza and he frequently met over a meal or coffee, visited each other’s homes, and exchanged letters, postcards and notes on a weekly basis, and very often on a daily basis. It is to the supreme credit of London’s postal service that they were able to fix next day appointments over postcards hastily scribbled to catch the morning delivery.
The letters from Eliza (usually signed as E.A.R.H, standing for Ellie Agnes Ryle Haigh) to Hossain went from the formally friendly to the maudlinly intimate. A few of her letters are yearnings for his attention, but they seem not to pierce his unemotional armour. The letters give an insight into their personalities, their fears, and the maturation of their acquaintance from infatuation to companionship.7
The first letter was from Ellie to ‘Mr. Hossain’ on 11 May 1914 asking for a meeting. The next letter on 27 May is to ‘Syud dear’ asking to meet again.
On 6 July she is a little peeved with Syud and says, “…I rather thought you might have telephoned this morning. Perhaps you did not think of it.”
On 8 July she is ill and complains to ‘Syud dear’ about her ‘most diabolical pains’. “Do reassure me. Don’t think I’m angry. I’m not—the least little bit. It was mostly bad luck and I quite see that. If you were here now I could make you feel that there is not the smallest cloud between us. Write to me; waive your objections to being articulate, be nice in a way and try to remember that I am solely in need of comfort. It is so little to give and means so much to receive. Surely Nemesis is appeased!…I heard from Mr. Kennedy about the unfortunate bill. Bad luck. I’m extremely sorry. Afraid this will be a blow to Mr. Jinnah.”
Her pain continues to be unbearable. She is upset with Hossain and writes a long letter to him on 10 July, “I cannot get away from the circumstances—you are the last, the very last of all to whom I would turn for help in times of need. I will take care not to be your victim in any form in the future. I will protect myself against it: for you would not.” She carries on in this vein for another two pages wallowing in self-pity.
In a long undated letter, (circa July 1914 based on the context, and the preceding and subsequent letters) she writes with deep feeling at Syud’s apparent uncaring attitude, “Syud dear, I telephoned today to the Dalcroze School and learnt that your application form had not been received. [In Dalcroze Eurhythmics, music is experienced through movement—the teaching and learning process engages body, mind, and emotion ]. I said that it had been posted on Monday, but Mr. Ingham was quite certain that it had not arrived. This is puzzling & I hardly know what to do…
Forgive my writing in pencil. I tried to get up this morning but was so completely exhausted that I had to get back to bed again and have been a good deal worse all day…If you care to know the truth—I was deeply disappointed at your visit yesterday. It gave me pleasure to see you, of course, but I missed all the things I was hoping for & seeing, & I was really too exhausted to enter into a discussion about it. I found it simpler to acquiesce—You seemed to think your coming was amply sufficient & that no more was necessary. Also no further anxiety was due from you on my behalf as the account had been balanced by the attentions you had shown me on Monday & Tuesday & in coming yesterday. No word that you hoped to hear that I should improve or that you intended to enquire. Does it seem to you a little thing that I should be completely laid up on a sick bed for a week by your action—& not for the first time either?… Not one word that it saddened you to see me look tired or done up, not a syllable of pity or consolation,—only a desire to be done with—the thought of it because you prefer to see me look well. I can’t help feeling it, I cannot help a grievous disappointment because I had hoped & expected that I should see a real difference this time.
…It is an unbecoming & undignified thing for me to crave these things from you,—things which should be given freely & voluntarily. It hurts me more than you think that I am driven to mention them. You begged me to let you know if anything was ever on my mind & not to brood. I have been brooding all day & have found it intolerable. Otherwise I had no intention of writing.
The situation is too much of a strain for me. I had hoped yesterday would be the beginning of a better understanding. It has made me despair for the future. I do not know what to say about Sunday. I only know I dare risk no further misunderstanding or hurt. Decide for yourself if it is better to come or not. I will let you know if I am too ill to see you by Saturday evening. This is almost incoherent & illegible, but I am worn with fatigue & pain. Please make allowances—understand me please in my one thing. If the situation does not mend I shall end it, in the near future whatever it may cost me to do so. E.A.R.H.”
Syud Hossain seems to be suffering from depression and is thinking of joining the armed forces as the war is on. Eliza, in her letter dated 17 August says,
“Syud dear, Many thanks for your letter. I am sorry for the depression. It seems very black just now, blacker than it ought to be. About enlisting, are you serious, or is it a whim?…I never thought of you as a man with the fighting instinct…
In my last letter to you, Syud dear, I was more expansive than is usual with me,—than I have ever before. I revealed myself to you without reserve, gave all the love and sympathy that I have to give at your disposal. Was it too much to expect that this should at least receive acknowledgement? I don’t want to be exacting or to scold—indeed you must not think it of me—I realise your wish to guard your freedom of mood—but it might occur to you that these things can hurt. Also forgive me again for criticizing—but you have made me care, if you know how much. It was no matter of chance: you deliberately chose that no opportunity of avoiding such a discovery should be allowed to me. Have you then the right to speak of being ‘put out of the rag?’ as a possible happy solution of your difficulties?…
I had a letter from India today which troubles me greatly. It makes me again doubt where my duty lies. I almost think I shall write and settle matters by telling about you (without mention of your name) tho’ it is hard. I suppose I am quite sure?
I am married but I won’t trouble you with my worries, nor with reports about my health. Try and shake off your depression. You are not seeing things in their true perspective.”
The above letter gives a hint of Eliza’s troubling marital issues and she is perhaps caught between her husband and Syud Hossain. She has evidently been meeting him covertly, and now wants to reveal everything to her husband.
Two days later, on 19 August she writes, “I miss you so much,—always. It is incredible that it is not yet a fortnight since you saw me off. I should like to come to London for a day or two to attend to several odds and ends of business, &, (incidentally!) to spend as much time as possible with you. I am only deterred by the fact that I have exactly 8 ½ in my purse to last me until the 29th…but if I’m with you I should be at peace…”
Eliza, in many of her letters, complains of being short of money.
On 28 August 1914, she writes from her brother’s vicarage after returning from a trip. “You’re an ungrateful boy—didn’t deserve so prompt a message from me on arrival. I had exactly three minutes to catch the post in, and I used these three to sending you a card!” She then talks about a girl named Ida who is with her; Ida needs a police permit as she is an ‘alien enemy’. Eliza also says, “My Baby is a dear. I hope you love him. He sends you greetings as also does Ida.” The baby being referred to is her son, Anthony, then seven years old.
