Manmohan Ghose : (1869-1924), known in the family as Mano, was just eight or nine, when his elder brother Beno (Benoy Bhūshan) & his younger brother, Auro, were admitted to the Loreto Convent School at Darjeeling. As his daughter Lotika later put it, “In the shadow of the Himalayas, in the sight of the wonderful snow-capped peaks, even in their native land the children were brought up in alien surroundings.” In 1879, Dr Ghose transplanted the three brothers in Manchester in the care of Mr Drewett in the hope that at least one of them would get into the Indian Civil Service. Manmohan & his elder brother Benoy were admitted to the prestigious Manchester Grammar School in 1881. When Mr Drewett left for Australia he left them in his mother’s care, & they moved to London. In May 1884, the first year St. Paul’s took in any Jewish or non-white boys, Manmohan & his two brothers took its entrance exam; in September, he was admitted as a paying scholar & Sri Aurobindo elected to one of the 23 vacant Foundation Scholarships. At St Paul’s Manmohan became close friends with his classmate Laurence Binyon, bonding over their love for the Classics & Matthew Arnold. He also became friendly with Binyon’s cousin Stephen Phillips & Oscar Wilde whom he met at the Fitzroy Street settlement. After the three brothers were thrown out of her house by Mr Drewett’s mother (in 1885/1886) for not respecting Moses during their catechism classes at home, they were given shelter by James Cotton. In July 1887, while in Upper 8th Form at St. Paul’s, Manmohan won an open Classical Scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, & left St. Paul’s. Next July Binyon joined Manmohan at Oxford where he went up on winning an open Classical scholarship to Trinity College. The yearly £80 that Manmohan’s scholarship provided (the same amount as received by Sri Aurobindo from his scholarship) proved too little for his life-style for he preferred a rich social life & wrote to his father for funds promising to try for an appointment in the British Museum. Actually, he had grown so enamoured of English poetry & England herself that he yearned to settle there. In a letter to Binyon, he wrote that though his father wanted to see him return as a barrister “a thing which is quite distasteful to my nature”, but he had consented to his staying back but, opposing the idea of giving up his scholarship in the prospect of getting the Museum appointment, had promised him in his letter: “I will try my best to give you a year or two at the University where you can learn Sanskrit, & improve your classics, get facility in writing & speaking & make interests & form friends. When you have done that it will be easier for you not only to get an appointment in the Museum but to ensure a rapidity to your promotion. Perhaps if you can do that & have a home for your brother & sister in London they will have excellent facilities for education.” We don’t know what effect Dr. Ghose’s letters had on Benoy, but Manmohan’s poetic nature, not to forget his love of everything English, recoiled from accepting the ideal. “I must leave my unhappy nation to her own woes”, he had confided in Binyon, “she will go the way she is destined.... I shall bury myself in poetry simply & solely.” ― Manmohan passed from Christ Church with 2nd Class Classics Moderations in 1889, & collaborated with Binyon, Phillips & Arthur Shearly Cripps (who later became a Christian poet-missionary abroad) on Primavera an anthology of poems published by Blackwell, Oxford, in 1890. While James Cotton reviewed it in Academy, Wilde reviewed it in the Pall Mall Gazette with the remark that “Ghose may some day bind India to us by other methods than those of commerce & military strength.” Since he had also befriended many members of the ‘Rhymers’ Club’ such as Lionel Johnson (q.v.) & Ernest Dowson, he was invited by Dowson to contribute to The Book of the Rhymers Club that was published in 1892, but he was unable to share the cost of the expenses. For the same reason, he could not but ‘stay back’ in London even after the death of his father in December 1892. It was Benoy who, after returning to India sometime in September 1894, sent him the fare for his passage back to India. Manmohan returned to India in 1893, & took a series of teaching posts at Patna, Bankipore, & Calcutta. In 1897, he was appointed Assistant Professor at Dacca College & full Professor in 1901. But neither of them put their heart into what their father had expected of them, namely, helping their two youngest siblings; that responsibility, along with helping others in the family, fell to Sri Aurobindo. ― In 1908-09, ruffians of British CID harassed this blameless anglophile no end solely on a whimsical letter by Arthur Wood (see St Paul’s School) then an ICS goon in Bombay Presidency, to its HQ in Shimla accusing Manmohan rather than babyish Aurobindo of leading the revolutionary bunch arraigned in the Alipore Bomb Trial. ― After the death of his wife, Mālati Banerjee in 1918, his health deteriorated & he aged prematurely. For 30 years Ghose had cherished the dream of returning to England. Until the end, says Binyon, Manmohan’s “delight was in European literature…; blinded, broken in health, & prematurely aged, he…continued to compose poetry, & he looked forward to accomplishing a cherished dream of returning to England, the beloved nurse of his youth. His passage with his daughter Lotika was taken for a date in March 1924, but after a short illness he died on January 4th. As he lay dying Lear & Macbeth were read to him at his own desire.” His daughter left for London & met Laurence Binyon, who helped her edit Songs of love & death, which was published in 1926 with an “Introductory Memoir” by Binyon, by Basil Blackwell, Oxford. A reader of Manmohan’s Love Songs & Elegies & Songs of Love & Death, G. Simpson felt, “would readily take them as the work of an English poet trained in the classical tradition”. [Published Works: With Laurence Binyon, Arthur Shearly Cripps & Stephen Phillips: Poems, by Four Authors (Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose, & Arthur S. Cripps) Oxford: B. H. Blackwell, 1890; Love-Songs & Elegies, in the Elkine Mathews Shilling Garland series, 9 (April 1898); with Binyon, Image, Coleridge, Victor Plarr, & Romney Green in The Garland of New Poetry by Various Writers, London: E. Mathews, 1898; Songs of Love & Death, ed. with introduction by Laurence Binyon, 3rd Ed., Calcutta Univ., 1968; Collected Poems, ed. by Lotika Ghose in 4 vols. (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1970-77; Selected Poems, ed. by Lotika Ghose (New Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 1974). Reviews: Oscar Wilde, Pall Mall Gazette, 24 May 1890 (Primavera); Athenaeum, 24 May 1890; (Primavera) J. A. Symonds, Academy, 9 August 1890 (Primavera); Hobby Horse, 5, 1890 (Primavera); Queen, 10 Jan 1891; J. Freeman, London Mercury, April 1926 (Songs of Love & Death)]
... Death, a book of poems by Manmohan Ghose. "At the back of the room, behind the rest, sat a young Indian with thick hair falling about his forehead, and dark lustrous eyes. It was he who had startled us with his impassioned tones. Where had he come from? How had he mysteriously joined us? Perhaps I deceive myself, but to my memory this was my first sight of Manmohan Ghose —an unaccountable apparition... on Manmohan Ghose till all our heads were turned to the strange new-comer on that particular morning is not so improbable as it may seem. But of Ghose's background I scarcely knew anything. His enthusiasm for literature sufficed my curiosity." Manmohan was already well versed in Greek and English literature when he joined St. Paul's School, London. Aravinda A. Ghose and Manmohan Ghose were... appeal vibrated with such intensity of tone through the silent and astonished class room. Its dramatic emotion was something un-English! We were not used to such things." The 'apparition', Manmohan Ghose, had entered St. Paul's School in the VII form as a Capitation Scholar. Binyon and Ghose became very close friends as time went on. Their friendship ripened into a lifelong one. And this has ...
... feature is the idea implied that because the Congress professes to discharge this duty, it may justly call itself national. Nor is this all; Calcutta comes to the help of Bombay in the person of Mr. Manmohan Ghose, who repeats and elucidates Mr. Mehta's idea. The Congress, he says, asserting the rights of that body to speak for the masses, represents the thinking portion of the Indian people, whose duty... above all a future member of the Viceroy's Council, would never have been a very easy task for a timid man like myself. But when he is reinforced by so respectable and weighty a citizen as Mr. Manmohan Ghose, I really cannot find the courage to persevere. I shall therefore amend the obnoxious phrase and declare that the National Congress may be as national as you please, but it is not a popular body... mass of the population, but if it has not already abandoned, it ought now at least to abandon the Page 23 pretension as quite untenable. And indeed when Mr. Pherozshah Mehta and Mr. Manmohan Ghose have admitted this patent fact—not as delegates only, but as officials of the Congress—and have even gone so far as to explain the fact away, it is hardly requisite for me to combat the fallacy ...
... 1936 On Some Indian Writers of English I should very much value your assurance that, scant though my stock is, I need not feel inferior to the other Indian poets who have written in English—Manmohan Ghose and Harindranath and Sarojini. I don't altogether appreciate your request for being declared by me "not inferior" to other "Indo-English" poets. What have you to do with what others have achieved... over-sensualised decadent that makes for death, and the spiritual which may bring rebirth. At present the decadent tendency may be stronger, but the other is also there. 24 January 1935 Manmohan Ghose I have not read much of my brother's poetry except what he wrote in England and in the early years in India before we ceased to meet. That was very cultured poetry and good in form, but it seemed... own work, but how is it that you have omitted Harin himself? Surely he has published things that are bound to remain? Also, how was it that Oscar Wilde and Laurence Binyon could give praise to Manmohan Ghose? Has he done nothing that could touch Sarojini's level, though in another way? I did not speak of Harin because that was a separate question altogether—besides, whether in criticising or in ...
... linguistic structure of English, formalistic, thematic, psychological and cultural matters of India. There is an important document that testifies to this fact: a letter written to his elder brother, Manmohan Ghose. He wrote this letter, says he, "only to justify, or at least define my standpoint; perhaps also a little to reassure myself in the line of poetical art I have chosen." 11 The influence... 10 He certainly knew some of it in translation, but poetry cannot really be known except when it is read in the original language. "Supplement, SABCL, Vol. 27, p. 148. 12 Perhaps Manmohan Ghose was thinking of the poems of Meredith, Swinburne and Stephen Phillips. Sri Aurobindo himself has recognised the influence of these poets on his early poetic formation. He even says that the af... Sri Aurobindo was composing a poem on Savitri and Satyavan. However there is a strong probability of its being true when we see in what glowing terms he writes about Savitri in his letter to Manmohan Ghose which was certainly written just after the composition of Love and Death (1899): "Surely Savitri that strong silent heart, with her powerful and subtly-indicated personality, has both life ...
... the accused, Manmohan Ghose, printer, Page 354 personally had no wish to move the High Court against his conviction, as he feared an enhancement of the sentence, and the appeal appears to be preferred in the interests of Arabinda Ghose at the instance of Girija Sundar Chakravarty, former manager of this paper. It is believed that if, by any chance, Manmohan Ghose should be acquitted ...
... order to be at once brushed aside. Nor did the author on whom Murry passed judgment Show such , Indianness. But the fact is significant that Murry jibbed at the poems of Manmohan Ghose on the score of temperament , Manmohan Ghose had been taken to England in his early boyhood and had ' passed through an English school and university. Reading him, Murry praised his knowledge of English verse-technique ...
... APPENDIX Wordsworth I did not come to appreciate the poetry of Wordsworth in my school days, it happened in college, and to a large extent thanks to Professor Manmohan Ghose. In our school days, the mind and heart of Bengali students were saturated with the poetry of Tagore: In the bower of my youth the love-bird sings, Wake up, O darling, wake; ... final verdict, namely, that the poetic delight is akin to the Delight of Brahman. But even the moon has its spots, and in Wordsworth the spots are of a fairly considerable magnitude. Manmohan Ghose too had mentioned to us these defects. Much of Wordsworth is didactic and rhetoric, that is, of the nature of preaching, hence prosaic and non-poetical although couched in verse. Ghose used ...
... Appendix I WORDSWORTH* I did not come to appreciate the poetry of Wordsworth in my school days, it happened in college, and to a large extent thanks to Professor Manmohan Ghose. In our school days, the mind and heart of Bengali students were saturated with the poetry of Tagore: . In the bower of my youth the love-bird sings, Wake up, O darling, wake; ... their final verdict, namely, that the poetic delight is akin to the Delight of Brahman. But even the moon has its spots, and in Wordsworth the spots are of a fairly considerable magnitude. Manmohan Ghose too had mentioned to us these defects. Much of Wordsworth is didactic and rhetoric, that is, of the nature of preaching, hence prosaic and non-poetical although couched in verse. Ghose used to ...
... are reproduced and discussed in Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research , volume 12 (1988), pp. 86–87, 89–91. Page 693 from the manuscript: To my brother Manmohan Ghose these poems are dedicated. Tale tuum nobis carmen, divine poeta, Quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per aestum Dulcis aquae saliente sitim ...
... stood forward far ahead of the mass of his contemporaries. It was the lack of steadiness and persistence common enough in men of brilliant gifts, which kept him back in the race. His brother Mr. Manmohan Ghose, a much less variously and richly gifted intellect but a stronger character, commanded by the possession of these very qualities a much weightier influence and a more highly and widely honoured ...
... work on. A judge's, mind is different. NIRODBARAN (after Sri Aurobindo's walk) : Did you say Theatre Road was your village? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, I was born there in the house of the lawyer Manmohan Ghose. It was No. 4, I think. NIRODBARAN: Dilip says that that brought about his contact with you. (Laughter) PURANI: Have you read that criticism by Joad of Gerald Heard? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes ...
... of a struggle to achieve it, in place of the futile ambling Congress methods till then in vogue." — From Sri Aurobindo's letter to Barrister Joseph Baptista on January 5, 1920. 118. Mr. Manmohan Ghose. Page 97 power of shallow rhetoric, and deputed by the sort of men that are turned out at Trinity College, Dublin? At any rate that is not what History tells us.... Just as the main ...
... letters is considerably enlarged and covers three volumes: 22, 23 and 24 (See 41, 42, 44). SABCL: Letters on Yoga, Vols. 22,'23, 24 64. AN OPEN LETTER TO HIS COUNTRYMEN Manmohan Ghose, Calcutta, 1909 First appeared as "An Open Letter to My Countrymen" in the Karmayogin, July 31, 1909. Subsequently included in Speeches (See 82). SABCL: Karmayogin, Vol. ...
... pronounced on the culpability or innocence of the writing in the Karmayogin on which I am indicted." ¹ On 7 November judgment was delivered at the Calcutta High Court on the Karmayogin and Manmohan Ghose, the printer of the journal, was acquitted. (He had been convicted by the Chief Presidency Magistrate.) The article in question, "To My Countrymen", was considered not seditious. After the removal ...
... Krishnadhan's life. Page 27 II Sri Aurobindo was born around 5 a.m., that is, about twenty-four minutes before sunrise, at the house of Dr. Krishnadhan's friend. Barrister Manmohan Ghose in Theatre Road, 10 Calcutta, on 15 August 1872. Benoy Bhushan and Manmohan had preceded Sri Aurobindo, who was thus the third son of Dr. Krishnadhan and Swarnalata Devi. The time of unfolding ...
... into the trap. The warrant of arrest was suspended for a while, but the bureaucracy, having presumably learned the wrong end of the lesson of the Bande Mataram case of 1907, decided to prosecute Manmohan Ghose, the printer of the Karmayogin, for the publication of the seditious article (the open letter of 25 December) contributed to the paper by Sri Aurobindo. The author himself having made a flight ...
... England if you only go to the right part. I stayed one whole Summer at Mallock Bank, and from there had a splendid walking tour —My brother, I, and another gentleman 1. Collected Poems of Manmohan Ghose, Page 145 A view of the Lake District early this century took the train to Monsel Dale and walked from there into Castleton Valley, slept at a very comfortable ...
... to make a name in our literature." Oscar Wilde's glowing review had its impact, and Primavera ran into a second edition in no time at all. At the Memorial Meeting held after the death of Manmohan Ghose in January 1924 Tagore, in his presidential address, paid him rich tributes. Speaking of his long-standing relationship with the late Manmohan's family he said, "I was in England when Manmohan ...
... keep calm and reticent. I used to sit by him and had the natural advantage of studying some of the remarkable traits of his spiritual life at close quarters." He also mentions meeting Poet Manmohan Ghose at Subodh Mullick's house. Manmohan was often accompanied by one of his students, Sailendranath Mitra. The latter was wonderstruck to see how even in the thick of Sri Aurobindo's political activities ...
... brother, Barindra Kumar, was born in England. We shall come to him in due course. "I was born in the lawyer Manmohan's house on Theatre Road," Sri Aurobindo replied in 1940 to a query. Lawyer Manmohan Ghose was no relation of Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose's, but they were such friends that the latter named his second son Manmohan. M. M. Ghose's wife also bore the name of Swarnalata. The two Swarnalatas were ...
... tted phrases has led him into a serious difficulty. "In all ages and all countries" is a very big expression, and Mr. Mehta will be exceedingly lucky if it will stand a close scrutiny. But Mr. Manmohan Ghose at least is a sober speaker; and if we have deserted his smooth but perhaps rather tedious manner for a more brilliant style of oratory, now at any rate, when the specious orator fails us, we may ...
... few more taxes, a few more rash interferences of Government, a few more stages of starvation, and the turbulence that is now religious will become social. I am speaking to that class which Mr. Manmohan Ghose has called the thinking portion of the Indian community: well, Page 50 let these thinking gentlemen carry their thoughtful intellects a hundred years back. Let them recollect what causes ...
... a notebook of his own in which he had copied poems of rare poets who were usually omitted in academic studies, for instance, the War-poets, our Indian poets like Sarojini Naidu, Toru Dutt, Manmohan Ghose. He tried to inculcate in us the beauty of form, structure, rhythm. But alas the rhythmic beauty of English poetry was alien to my Bengali ears in spite of my composing lots of English poetry ...
... great Bengali politician, had left his property to his grand-daughter Esha. He founded the newspaper Bengalee. 3 . Esha was Dilipda’s niece. 4 . Latika Ghose, daughter of Manmohan Ghose, Sri Aurobindo’s second brother. 5 . Sachin, most likely Dilipda’s cousin. 6 . Tajdar Begum was a sadhika of the Ashram who came from the Royal family of Hyderabad. She was ...
... take advantage of being the Mother's son. He knows too that being physically born from her is not the sole claim to being her child. To him the invocation which Sri Aurobindo's elder brother, Manmohan Ghose, made to his own mother in a moment of high poetic vision would come most naturally: Augustest! dearest! whom no thought can trace, Name murmuring out of birth's infinity. ...
... the late nineteenth century, especially in her style and diction. The jewelled phrases and the preciosity were peculiar to her age and there is hardly any other Indo-Anglian, except probably Manmohan Ghose, who competes with her in this regard. Even he, in a poem like London, reveals a certain masculinity of diction which is wedded to a robustness of outlook. Indo-Anglian poetry had already ...
... Western scholars. Yet the subject-matter and thought of the major portion of these poems is entirely Indian. What then made Professor Spiegelberg make this remark? Laurence Binyon speaking of Manmohan Ghose in his Introduction to Songs of Love and Death remarks about the latter: "What struck me most was his enthusiastic appreciation of Greek poetry, not so much the books prescribed in school as ...
... L Lalan the Fakir 84 Laocoon 18 London 10 Lombards 50 M Macbeth 19 Madhuchchanda 8 Madhyama 13 Mahabharata 103, 104 Mamata 9 Manmohan Ghose, Prof. 92,102 Mantra 25 Manu 5 Marcellus 23, 24 Matthew Arnold 102 Medhatithi Kanwa 8 Michael Angelo 19 Milton 9, 16 Mitra 1, 4, 5, 31 Montevideo 55 ...
... signature. Briefly, this is how the case had evolved. On 18 June 1910, the Chief Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta had pronounced the article 'To My Countrymen' as seditious. He sentenced Manmohan Ghose, the printer of the Karmayogin, to six months' rigorous imprisonment. Two weeks later, the Magistrate directed that Babu Arabindo Ghose "should be proclaimed an absconder Page 171 ...
... AUROBINDO: He may have got that right. He says, "The place where Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta has not been fix yet. Nobody has tried to fix it, and it should be done." I was born in the lawyer Manmohan Ghose's house on Theatre Road. (Then Sri Aurobindo began to read and put marks in various places. He stopped at a place.) Have I said anything against immolation of the Satis anywhere? PURANI: Not ...
... too long at Oxford for this reason, tho' it would be an advantage if I could get a degree." Manmohan Ghose's father was perhaps stern, but he was a reasonable man too. As Sri Aurobindo said, "He had great hopes of his sons, expected us to be Civilians, 1 and yet could be quite reasonable. When Manmohan wrote to him that he wanted to be a poet, my father made no objection; he said there was nothing... remittances from Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose had become irregular, and as time went on they grew increasingly Page 153 rare, till finally they almost stopped. Thus, for years, the three brothers were thrown mostly on their own resources as their father was unable to provide them enough for their most necessary wants. When the question of Manmohan's entering the University arose in... salary of five shillings a week and lodgings in the Club's office at 128, Cromwell Road. They lived there from September 1887 to December 1889. 1 In an undated letter about that time Manmohan describes the office of this Club. "I write to tell you my new address to which we have just moved from St. Stephen's Avenue. I will show it to you some day. It is very different from the old place, but I ...
... acknowledges that he owed his own love for children to his father and to Rajnarain. In 1924, after the death of Sri Aurobindo's brother Manmohan, Rabindranath delivered the Memorial Address. "First, I looked upon poet Manmohan Ghose's maternal grandfather as one very near to me. It was from him that in my boyhood I first heard an interpretation of English literature, and he it was who... river in its course Dives into ocean, there its strength abides Not less because with vastness wed and works Unnoticed in the grandeur of the tides. Aurobindo Ghose. Page 86 ...
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