Mother's Chronicles - Book Four

16

Manchester

Sri Aurobindo was to live in England for almost fourteen years, from 1879 to 1893. Which reminds me of an Avatar of another Age: Rama, the son of King Dasaratha of Ayodhya, was banished from the kingdom by his father for fourteen years. Did Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose know that he was doing the same to his son? We don't know.

But what is known is that he placed his three sons with the clergyman and his wife with strict instructions that they should not be allowed to make the acquaintance of any Indian, or undergo any Indian influence. These instructions were carried out to the letter and Sri Aurobindo grew up in entire ignorance of India, her people, her religion and her culture. In Manchester, apart from the people at home he knew only the Bentleys of York who occasionally visited the Drewetts, and a sister of Rev. Drewett's who used to come to see her family. These visits were returned. And, of course, old mother Drewett lived with them. She seems to have been a woman with a streak of cheerless religiosity.

Manchester was then one of England's main industrial

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centres. Its dreary landscape was dominated by smoking factories and cotton mills, in whose shadows stretched bleak rows of thousands of workers' blackened and cramped quarters. This proud product of the Industrial Revolution, which sold its cotton all over the world, was built on depths of human misery and squalor, which were as much as possible kept out of sight of the residential areas of the wealthy middle class.

A street in the wealthier districts of Manchester at the end of the last century

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Sri Aurobindo was too young to join the Grammar School like his elder brothers, but was taught at home. "I never went to the Manchester Grammar School," said Sri Aurobindo, correcting an erroneous statement, "never even stepped inside it. It was my two brothers who studied there. I was taught privately by the Drewetts. Mr. Drewett who was a scholar in Latin (he had been a Senior Classic at Oxford) taught me that language (but not Greek, which I began at St. Paul's, London) and English, History, etc. Mrs. Drewett taught me French, Geography and Arithmetic. No Science; it was not in fashion at that time."

As he was studying at home the little boy got plenty of time to indulge his own tastes in books. He read the Bible, Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats and others. Young that he was he not only read poetry but composed verses for the Fox Family Magazine.

Percy B. Shelley was a favorite of Sri Aurobindo's. "The Revolt of Islam was a great favourite with me even when I was quite young, and I used to read it again and again —of course, without understanding everything. Evidently it appealed to some part of the being."

The boy was more book-minded than sports-minded. When a biographer stated, "He played cricket well," Sri Aurobindo denied it emphatically. "Never. He only played cricket as a small boy in Mr. Drewett's garden at Manchester and not at all well." Sri Aurobindo spelt out his attitude towards sports to Dilip K. Roy in a letter dated April 28, 1949. "I myself have never been a sportsman or —apart from a spectator's

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interest in cricket in England or a non-player member of the Baroda cricket club —taken up any physical games or athletics except some exercises learnt from Madrasi wrestlers in Baroda such as dand [push-ups] and baithak [deep knee-bending], and those I took up only to put some strength and vigour into a frail and weak though not unhealthy body, but I never attached any other importance or significance to these things and dropped the exercises when I thought they were no longer necessary. Certainly, neither the abstinence from athletics and physical games nor the taking up of those physical exercises have for me any relevance to Yoga. Neither your aversion to sport nor the liking of others for it makes either you or them more fit or more unfit for Sadhana."

When Dr. Ghose left his three young sons in the care of Rev. Drewett, the clergyman asked him, "What about the religious life of the boys?" Replied the father, "Wait till the boys attain the age of discretion; then they could choose their own religion." Over half a century later, Sri Aurobindo adopted the same attitude about us. He wrote to my father on September 29, 1934: ". . . The children. Most of them are too young to have an intelligent will of their own in such matters as yet and in a matter like sadhana there should be no pressure or influence of any kind. The delay will give some of them time to grow towards a possibility of a clear and willed choice."

However, old mother Drewett was a fervent Evangelist, and wished very much to convert the three Indian boys to Christianity 'to save their souls.' But her son would not hear of it. Nothing daunted, the old lady took her chance with the

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youngest. Was he then converted? "What is all this legend?" protested Sri Aurobindo. "I never became a Christian and never used to go to Church. The only thing that happened was that there was once a meeting of Nonconformist priests at Cumberland when we were in England. The old lady in whose house we were living took me there. In such meetings, after the prayers are over all disperse and devout people generally remain a little longer afterwards and it is at that time that conversions were made.

"I was feeling completely bored. Then a priest approached me and put me some questions. I did not give any reply. Then they all shouted out, 'He is saved, he is saved,' and began to pray for me and offer thanks to God! I did not know anything. Then the priest came to me and asked me to pray. I was not in the habit of praying, but somehow I did it in the manner in which children recite their prayers before sleep, in order to keep up an appearance. That was the only thing. But I did not use to attend Church. I was about ten at that time."

By this time, the boys' father had become rather irregular in his remittances, so when the Drewetts emigrated to Australia they passed through Calcutta to collect their dues. Yes, the Drewetts went to Australia. When? The exact date is not known, except that it was sometime in 1884. They left the three boys in charge of the old lady.

We do not hear anything about the activities of the eldest brother, Beno, in Manchester. For instance, when did he join the Grammar School there? Was he also privately coached by the Drewetts, like his younger brother Mano, before entering

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Manmohan and Benoybhusan (probably with

Rev. W. Drewett) in Manchester around 1882

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the School? Because, they were in Manchester by the second half of 1879, and it was only two years later, in the Christmas term of 1881, that Mano seems to have entered the Upper First Form (Classics) there. He left the Manchester Grammar School at the end of the Midsummer Term 1884;¹ in that Term he won a Form Certificate when he stood fourth in his Form Order. Mano did equally well in English and Divinity and Classical subjects. It was at this School that he began writing poetry, and contributed poems to the Grammar School magazine Ulela, as well as to the Fox Family Magazine, to which his younger brother was also a contributor.

It was therefore after the Midsummer term of 1884 that old mother Drewett took lodgings for them in London, at 49 St. Stephen's Avenue, Uxbridge Road, Shepherd's Bush.

Now, pious Christian that the old lady was, every day in London she held family prayers in the chapel and passages from the Bible were read. The three brothers had to participate in them and sometimes Beno would conduct the worship. One day at prayer time Mano was in an insolent mood and he said that old Moses was well served when the people disobeyed him. This made the old lady wild and she said she would not live under the same roof with unbelievers, as the roof may fall down upon them. So she went to live somewhere else. Sri Aurobindo, after recounting the above incident to Purani

1. A copy of Alcestis of Euripides, which he used at the School, bears the inscription: 'M. Ghose, L. C. V., Midsummer 1884, Manchester Grammar School.' From M. M. Ghose's Collected Poems, vol. II.

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and others, added: "I felt infinitely relieved and grateful to Dada.¹ We were then entering upon the agnostic stage in our development. The old lady's son, Mr. Drewett, never used to meddle in these affairs because he was a man of common sense. But he went away to Australia."

Sri Aurobindo explained how meek he was. "In those days I was not particular about telling the truth and I was a great coward virtually and I was weak physically. Only my will was bright. Nobody could have imagined that [later on] I could face the gallows or carry on a revolutionary movement. In my case it was all human imperfection with which I had to start and feel all the difficulties before embodying the Divine Consciousness."

1. Elder brother (= Manmohan).

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