Mother's Chronicles - Book Four

24

Brother Benoybhusan

Dr. K. D. Ghose said of his eldest son, "Beno will be his father in every line of action. Self-sacrificing but limited in his sphere of action."

Sri Aurobindo said of his eldest brother: "He is a very practical man, the opposite of poetic, takes more after my father. He is a very nice man and one can easily get on with him. He had fits of miserliness." And he added, "Manmohan and I used to quarrel pretty often but I got on very well with my eldest brother." Imagine ... Sri Aurobindo quarrelling!

And Manmohan? In a letter to Binyon (8 January 1890), he writes from his lodgings in Earl's Court, "I have been ill — stricken with this malady which is so prevalent in London—the continental influenza. ... I have had to stay indoors for the last week; and it was not very pleasant, as you may imagine. I saw nobody, and felt very lonely and miserable.... Perhaps you don't know what it is to fall ill in a lodging-house.... At last, to my joy, my brother came to see me, who, as you know, is a very matter-of-fact person, with a purely commercial mind, a person who looks at everything from a business point

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of view. And he began comforting me very cheerfully with the reflection that everybody must die some day, remarking how conveniently near the cemetary was (Kemps ford Gardens, I must tell you looks out upon Brompton Cemetary and funerals pass down it every day) and hoping that undertakers did not charge very high, as he had nearly come to the end of his last remittance."

Mano was lonely, to be sure — he was not living with his brothers at the Kensington Club; but his temperament seems to have been different too, less easy-going than his brothers, for instance. "Once Manmohan told me," said Sri Aurobindo relating an anecdote from the Baroda days, " 'I hear you have been living with M. J. Rao year after year.' 'Why not?' I said. 'How could you do that?' he asked. 'I could not live for six months without quarrelling with him.'"

Unlike his brothers, Mano seems to have acquired the habit of living beyond his means. In a letter (12 July 1889) to Binyon he speaks of "many debts to pay," and expresses the hope that his friend did not want "the 10 shillings back which you lent me ... I shall send them as soon as ever I can scrape something together," he promises. He was already at Oxford on a scholarship. When he first went up there Beno accompanied him. Here is briefly, in Mano's Own words, his first day at Oxford: "Christ Church, Sat. night, October 1887. I have eaten so enormous a dinner tonight that I am doubtful whether I should be equal to the toil of a letter.... We started from Paddington, my brother and myself, at —I think it was 10 A.M. and the train puffed up to Oxford through drizzlement of a

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bitter wind and sky at 12." We skip a little.

"At 2 P.M. there was to be the matric ceremony. So we went into the High and had lunch at a Restaurant; then my brother went to see about ordering some of the necessary articles [for M. M.'s rooms] while I proceeded to the Hall to be matriculated. We had to wait some time (about twenty freshmen of us) until all the Dons had assembled . . . the Dean called out the names of scholars first, then commoners. I was called one of the first and approached with somewhat faltering steps to the table. The Dean was very gracious and said in a mild voice—'Mr. Ghose, I hear very highly of you from Prof. Max Müller;' I hope you will prove yourself worthy of your election.' Then I was handed over to my Tutor, Mr. Hobhouse, who again handed me over to the treasurer. The treasurer remarked coldly — 'Where is your fee?'" The sudden question utterly dazed Mano who had thought that he would be given £ 20 out of his scholarship for his immediate expenses! "While a chill perspiration broke over me, the treasurer said blankly, 'Haven't you brought it?' I could only say, 'No.' 'Bring it to me this afternoon.' At which I answered stupidly 'Yes' —tho' I well knew my brother hadn't more than £3 at most in his pocket, and as it turned out there is not more than £10 at the bank just now." Mano was requested to be ready in cap and gown by 4:15 to be marched to the Vice-Chancellor's and be enrolled in the University books. "I

1. The same Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900), philologist and mythologist, who was mainly responsible for giving a racial meaning to the word 'Aryan' -not to be found in the veda or the Indian traditions. he also prepared and and edited the series Sacred Books of the East.

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went back to my rooms agitated more than my wont, and explained the matter to my brother, who was cheerfully sitting by the fire." After much running about, to the brothers' relief some arrangement was arrived at for the money to be paid later. And at 4:15 the freshmen were finally matriculated and enrolled — "and also presented with a Statute-Book by the Vice-Chancellor. But the wearing of cap and gown in all weathers is a cruel practice. I was chilled to the marrow. For it is a bitterly cold air here.... My brother went back early to London; he had hoped to see more of Oxford —but the day was so cloudy and inclement with intermittent rain, quite inimical to sightseeing." Mano did not join any Clubs. "The only thing I have joined is the Junior Common Room where they have debates, cigarettes, stamps, sweetmeats etc."

The scholars at Oxford or Cambridge had to work hard if they did not want their scholarship of £ 80 reduced or taken away. Poor M. M. Ghose had also to contend with his health. He was often sick —no, not with hard work! —for he seemed to have developed "an almost constitutional weakness of the liver, and must be careful of the food I eat. The evil has been of slow growth, probably brought on by the rich and heavy dinners we have at Christ Church." To regain his digestion, he had to undergo strict dieting; but what made him feel even more wretched was the cold in the head that often laid him down. So, all in all, he feared it would be "a horrible disappointment if I fail;" but "should anything happen to cut short my Oxford career," Beno promised him help in finding a job. "My brother is looking out for my interest at the B. M. [British Museum]."

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In 1889 Mano obtained a Second Class in Classical Honour Moderations. But then, in May 1890, he himself cut short his Oxonian career. When Laurence remonstrated with him for that, Mano stoutly defended himself. "My dear Laurence!" he shot back, "What do you mean by these strange and unreasonable entreaties that I should go back to Oxford? If you knew how I loathe the place, and how unhappy I was there, you would not be so anxious to have me there. ... I do not see in what lies the great advantage of a degree. . . . Men who come down from Oxford with degrees find just the same difficulty in getting employment, as those who come without.... If you had read all my correspondence with the College, you would confess that it would be a piece of madness and most ignoble repentance after I have so finally and decisively refused the increase of Scholarship offered me by the College." Quirk of fate! Mano returned to Oxford in January 1893, and, as we have seen, obtained his B.A. a year later.

Mano was unable to endure for long the standard of life his two brothers were leading cheerfully enough. "I and my eldest brother, at any rate, were living quite a Spartan life," said Sri Aurobindo. "Manmohan was extravagant, if you like," he said with an amused twinkle in his eyes. "When I went to Cambridge, I was introduced to a tailor who made suits for me on credit. When I returned to London, he traced me there and got introduced to Manmohan also. Manmohan got a red velvet suit made —not staring red, but aesthetic. He used to go to see Oscar Wilde in that suit." What a dogged tailor that was, my friends! "When we came back to India, that tailor wrote to

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India Government about the arrears that Manmohan had not paid and to the Baroda Maharaja for my arrears. I had paid almost all except £4 5sh. which I thought I was justified in not paying as he had charged double the amount for our suits. The Baroda Maharaja said I had better pay."

Oscar Wilde had taken quite a fancy to the young Indian poet, Manmohan. "Mano used to visit him every evening and Wilde described him in his Wildish way, 'A young Indian panther in evening brown.' Wilde was as brilliant in conversation as in writing," continued Sri Aurobindo. "Once some of his friends came to see him and asked how he had passed the morning. He said he had been to the zoo and gave a wonderful description of it, making a striking word-picture of every animal. Mrs. Wilde who was all the time sitting in a corner put in a small voice, 'But Oscar, how could you say that? You were with me all morning.' Wilde replied, 'But my dear, one has to be imaginative sometimes.'" Sri Aurobindo's narration sent the others into gales of laughter.

Stephen Phillips, the poet, was also a very good friend of Mano's. "My brother Manmohan used to say," Sri Aurobindo recounted one day while on the topic of materialization, "he had heard from Stephen Phillips that the latter's mother visited him when she was on her deathbed at a distant place." A twinkle lurked in his eyes as he added, "But my brother was a poet, you must remember—very imaginative. And, moreover, he was friend of Oscar Wilde's." After the ensuing laughter subsided, Sri Aurobindo said, "When the French heard of Wilde's imprisonment they said about the English people,

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'Comme ils sont betes!' [How stupid they are!]"

Oscar Wilde had taken an 'immense liking' to Mano. It was reciprocated by the latter with admiration. "He is a wonderful and charming being," Mano wrote to Binyon. "You are inclined to think him superficial, I know. You should know him as I do; and then you would feel what depth and sagacity there is behind his delightful mask of paradox and irony and perversity."

When he gave up College in mid-career, Mano tried to reassure his friend Laurence about his prospects of landing a job. "I have been to see Oscar lately," he wrote on 4 August 1890. "Oscar was as charming and affectionate as ever. . . . He upbraided me much for not coming to see him before, and when he heard that I had been going about vainly in search of employment, was very anxious to do something for me."

Expressing confidence in his lucky star, he added, "I have at least succeeded in gaining one valuable friend, since I came to London . . . Lord Ripon has been exerting his influence in my favour in the British Museum business." So he thought he had "the strongest influence" to back him. Therefore he had a "fair chance of nomination after a year or two of work. I intend to do some tutoring work, and writing, in the meantime which will give me enough to live on, with a little help from my brothers ..." Mano was counting on Ara's stipend and Beno's salary at the Club.

As for Benoybhusan, we are unable to sketch in more details of his life in England. We would have liked to, because what transpires from the testimonials of his father and brothers

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is that he was indeed amiable; and despite his 'purely commercial mind' as Mano puts it, he was fully alive to the needs of his younger brothers. Let us be grateful to him for looking after his younger brother, Ara—our Sri Aurobindo.

"He went up for medicine but could not go on. He returned to India [in 1893], got a job in Coochbehar. Now I hear he has come back to Calcutta," Sri Aurobindo said in 1939.

The job in Coochbehar State was that of auditor and finance secretary. Coochbehar was then a princely State, in the north of Bengal, and he also was the prince's tutor. He married Umarani Mitra, rather late in life, in 1913, and had several children. The youngest daughter, Lahori Chatterjee, has been most helpful and provided us with several important gobbets of information, as well as presenting me with a set of her uncle Manmohan's books.

Benoybhusan died on 1^st October 1947.

"He is a very nice man," said Sri Aurobindo.

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