The Forgotten Queens of India

We account for the rise of the modern Indian nation state through the retreat of the British Raj and the decline of the British Empire, but in fact it was more than that: more than a movement for independence among Indians, it was also a movement for republicanism and Indian unity and the end to the many centuries of all the various kingdoms and principalities that had existed as a shifting patchwork in the Hindoostani sub-continent. This was its wider ideological agenda. It was essentially a socialistic national movement - altogether typical of that part of the XXth century - that matched "anti-imperialism" with a liberal egaliatarian nationalist ideology. Independence activists were not only against the British but also, necessarily, against many time-honoured Indian institutions as well. The British Raj had, in fact, been an umbrella over a network of local kings, princes, maharajas, nizams and others. When the Raj ended - more because of the exhaustion of war against the Germans in Europe than because of the merits or methods of so-called 'freedom fighters' in India - the influence of Indian royalty ended as well. Today, the Maharajas have no official power, although many of them continue to be influential, wealthy and widely respected (where they have not degenerated into buffoons or tourist celebrities.) 

A new book, published on the last day of 2015, celebrates the forgotten queens and princesses of the wide lands of Hindoostan. The simple purpose of this post is to recommend it. The book, Maharanis: Women of Royal India, is a collection of exquisite photographs of the women of those royal houses that became officially defunct in 1947. The photographs have been collected from diverse sources and are presented with accompanying essays, mostly concerning the photography and the role of photography in modern Indian history. It is a book, that is, by and for photographers, first and foremost. But it is also a beautiful and timely book for those of us who remain firm in the conviction that royalty and monarchy are worthy expressions of human dignity, embodiments of the sublime, and not just "outmoded forms of inequality" as the envy-driven would have it.

The present writer, in any case, makes no secret of his fondness for royalty as an institution and for monarchy as an element of tradition and government. (The organic principle of monarchy is that the best analogy of the state is a family, not a corporation, not a contractual partnership, not a machine.) This book records and celebrates a dimension of the royal houses of Hindoostan - and some of their marital interconnections with royalty from other lands - that is usually overlooked or has, indeed, been kept from public view. Alas, in contemporary India these women have been replaced by the vamps and tramps of Bollywood - you cannot really abolish aristocracy, you only end up replacing it with secular dynasties and  ill-bred pretenders. 

The photographs are beautiful in themselves, as are the women, but also of interest in the way that royal portraiture developed in India, usually by the adoption of British Victorian conventions. In some cases, though, distinctive Indian traditions intrude, such as conventions borrowed from the traditions of the Moghul miniature, especially among official the court photographers in the larger royal courts in the north of the sub-continent. 

Click on any photograph for an enlarged view.

Thakorani Vijayalakshmi Devi Sahiba of Kotda Sangani, c. 1941 – 1942 

Rani Sethu Parvathi Bayi and Rani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi of Travancore

Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, c. 1960s

Rani Prem Kaur Sahiba of Kapurthala, Hyderabad 1915

Princess Rama Rajya Lakshmi Rana, undated

Princess Rafat Zamani Begum – Bari Begum Sahiba of Rampur, of Najiabad Family, 1960.

Kanchi Bada Maharani Balkumari Devi Rana of Nepal in 1908

Maharani Vijaya Raje Scindia of Gwalior, c. 1940s

Shrimant Maharajkumari Mrunalini Raje Gaekwad of Baroda, the Maharani of Dhar, 1940

Princess Durru Shehvar, Princess of Berar by marriage and Imperial Princess of the Ottoman Empire by birth. c. 1940–1945

Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, also known as Princess Ayesha of Cooch Behar, 1951.

Maharani Sita Devi of Baroda in 1948

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Ginger House in Jew Town

Museums in India can be disappointing affairs that demonstrate more a lack of funding and archival expertise than they do the history and culture of the great lands and peoples of Hindoostan. Indians of a post-colonial mind often fume about artificats that have found a home in foreign museums, but when the same artifacts are returned to the bosom of Mother India they end up in shabby, poorly lit, dusty museums, wrongly labeled and deteriorating rapidly with the humidity and direct sunlight. Even the great collection that was once the Royal Asiatic Society in Calcutta, as the present writer discovered, is these days poorly presented with many displays unimproved since the 1950s. Moreover, the official museums often present tardy collections because the real jewels of Hindoostani history are pirated by a corrupt trade into private hands; the public museums are just so-so because the best pieces fall into private collections.

By far the most impressive collection of Indian artifacts that this writer has encountered during his long sojourn in the sub-continent was not in a museum but in an old warehouse in the back streets of Jew Town in Cochin. The warehouse is called the ‘Ginger House’ because, in former days, it was a store for the Dutch trade in ginger. It fronts directly onto the water and an area that was once a busy dock. Now it is an extensive series of large rooms brimful - overflowing! - with remarkable art objects, statues, idols, and other paraphernalia taken from old temples, churches, mosques and sundry holy places from throughout the length and breadth of India. It is the most extraordinary collection of such pieces imaginable.

It is a private collection with all items for sale. It is said to be “government approved” although it is uncertain exactly what this means. The present author was curious about the legitimacy of purchasing objects from there if they were to be taken out of India. Upon this inquiry a woman of earnest demeanor arrived reiterating that everything is “government approved” and testifying to the soundness of the mailing system. “But what if I buy this Ganesh statue for $10,000 only to find that it can’t be taken out of the country?” the author persisted. “No, no, sir,” she said. “It is packed in a secure crate and sent to your home address.” She explained that their clientele are wealthy collectors from far and wide.

Where does it all come from? It was explained that it had been collected from all over India for a period exceeding thirty years. (So, the author thought, this is where the artifacts pilfered from the temples of Tamil Nadu end up!)

In any case, it is far more extensive and comprehensive - and impressive! - than any public collection, by far. Upon walking in one is simply gobsmacked by the extent and the quality of the work for sale. There are literally entire temples, pillars and all, for sale. In one room there seems to be all the panels and icons and decorations from an entire Catholic church. 

There are signs throughout saying ‘Sorry, no photography’ and yet people were wandering through photographing it right in front of the staff. The photographs below give only an introductory impression of just how extensive, how vast - room upon room upon room, a wonderland, of religious artifacts - is the collection at the ‘Ginger House’ in Jew Town.

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Pamela Colman Smith - A Savant With a Child's Heart

Anyone with even the slightest familiarity with the tarocci or “tarot” cards will be acquainted with the work of Miss Pamela Colman Smith, although they may be excused for not knowing her name. In the early years of the XXth century Miss Smith – an Anglo-American illustrator – was commissioned by the Masonic occultist Mr Arthur Waite to design a complete set of all seventy-eight cards of the traditional tarot deck. She completed this work in a remarkably short period of time between April and October 1909 and some time after this the cards were published by William Rider & Sons of London under the title ‘A Pictorial Key to the Tarot’. They have thereafter been known as the ‘Rider-Waite’ tarot and the name of the illustrator was not included in the title or on the box. This omission was then duplicated in 1971 when the American company US Games Inc. purchased the copyright to the cards and reissued them to the American market, making them the most well-known and popular tarot cards of the modern era. Today, the ‘Rider-Waite’ cards have become infused into popular culture to the extent that they may be regarded as prototypal; there are countless new sets on the market today, each with new illustrations on new themes, but the Rider-Waite cards are, as it were, a standard. It is a great pity then that the illustrator, the person most responsible for the indelible images of the cards, is not better known. It was an injustice she suffered in her own lifetime. Mr. Waite paid her only a token fee for her work and she received no royalties from sales. Born in 1878, she died penniless, debt-ridden and forgotten in 1951. 

By virtue of the ‘Rider-Waite’ tarot, however, Miss Smith – she was generally known as “Pixie” – must be credited as having had a profound impact upon the visual imagination of the modern West. Her tarot cards, rendered in her simple, linear style with Art Nouveau influence, are her masterpiece. The remarkable thing is that she was able to translate the instructions of the verbose and tedious Mr. Waite into compelling images that arrest the imagination and, most importantly, impose themselves upon the memory. No other design of the tarot comes near to Miss Smith’s in this respect. Others are more beautiful and yet others are more symbolically exact, perhaps, but Miss Smith made the tarot her own. She entered into the spirit of the cards and conjured images of a strongly mnemonic concrete lyricism that truly captured something of the zeitgeist of the modern occult revival, a defining counter-modernist trend that shaped early XXth century. 

They bear comparison and contrst to the cards made by Lady Frieda Harris under the instruction of the sinister Aleister Crowley. Superficially, those of Lady Harris have a deeper artistic merit, and Mr. Crowley has packed the designs with Qabbalistic allusions, but finally, compared to the charming directness of the Pixie Smith designs, they are turgid and pretentious. Miss Smith understood one of the keys to the tarot: the images on the cards are essentially caricatures. This is so in the medieval designs and she has retained that medieval flavor. The Crowley or ‘Thoth’ deck is, in contrast, a modernist mess. The same can be said of other more recent designs. They are contrived by comparison. No one quite captures the spirit of the tarot, and renders it modern yet integral, like Miss Smith.

The actual processes by which the Waite-Smith collaboration took place are not certain, but it seems likely that Mr. Waite’s input was largely restricted to the twenty-two Major Arcana. Of the fifty-six pip cards – the Minor Arcana – it is likely that Miss Smith had a very free hand. They, therefore, are her creation, and it is there that we see her genius. Mr. Waite’s Major Trumps display elements of his eclectic and sometimes misleading mash of symbols. Miss Smith’s Minor Arcana is a playhouse of little dramas and quaint allegories that bring the much-neglected minor cards new vitality. The chief inspiration for the Major Arcana seems to have been the XVIIIth century Tarot of Marseilles, while for the Minor Marcana Miss Smith appears to have looked to the Sola Busca Tarot of the XVth century for her model. The illustrator has successfully retained the essence of those earlier decks and recreated them in a new pictorial vocabulary. This is no small achievement. It is an achievement that is too often underestimated by those who like to criticize this tarot and sing the virtues of newer designs that are full of reckless innovations and artistic egoism. Miss Smith’s designs are not technically accomplished, but at least she shows faultless judgment as to how and when to depart from her medieval models and there is no egoism to be seen in the least.

The present writer, in any case, is an outspoken enthusiast for what should rightly be called the ‘Pixie Smith’ Tarot, and more broadly for Miss Smith’s art in general. Her tarot – even where Arthur Waite imposed his cranky symbolism upon the Major cards - is simply unsurpassed. She made the form her own. Her designs define the tarot in this epoch. She was not, admittedly, a great artist by the usual standards, and she was certainly not a successful one in monetary terms or in terms of wide recognition. Had she not made tarot cards for Mr. Waites she might have disappeared into obscurity entirely. But her work is beautiful and distinctive by other standards, with a unique charm, a delightful sense of decorative whimsy, a lovely innocence, an enchanting sense of the fay. Stuart Kaplan, director of US Games Inc., once remarked that had she lived in his day he could have made her a millionaire.

Miss Smith designed bookplates, made illustrations for numerous books and at one stage edited and illustrated her own magazine, the ‘Green Sheath’ which claimed its own ‘school’ of fellow artists. She came into contact with Mr. Waites through the poet W. B. Yeats who employed her as an illustrator for his poems and who inducted her into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Despite this dalliance with the occult, however, she later converted to Catholicism and throughout her later years ran a boarding house for old priests in Cornwall. 

Her real qualifications for illustrating the tarot was her passion for folklore; wrote or co-wrote and illustrated several books on the subject, including one of Jamaican folklore entitled Annancy Stories. It sold poorly but it was the work that first attracted the attention of the Yeats family who were, at the time, looking for an artist to illustrate Gaelic tales. The father of W. B. Yeats, John, once described her work in an extant letter as follows: “Pamela,” he said…

“…is bringing out a book of Jamaica folklore. Her work, whether a drawing or telling of a piece of folklore, is very direct and sincere and therefore original - its originality being its naïveté. I should feel safe in getting her to illustrate anything. She does not draw well, but has the right feeling for line and expression and colour.”

Then he adds in summary:

“I don't think there is anything great or profound in her, or very emotional or practical. She has the simplicity and naïveté of an old dry-as-dust savant - a savant with a child's heart.”

This is a blunt assessment but also a very accurate account of her character and work - nothing great or profound but a savant with a child’s heart. This is the quality that Mr. Yeats recognized in her and that she brought to Mr. Waite’s tarot cards. It is the quality that makes her one of the most endearing of the supposedly lesser female artists of her time. We see this quality in all her work, samples of which are given below. It is her folkish lack of sophistication and her naïveté that made her the perfect vehicle for the spirit of the modern tarot. In the estimation of the present author, at least, Pamela Colman Smith – Pixie Smith – deserves far greater appreciation than she received in her lifetime or since and should be counted as an important artist in her own right. It is fashionable in some circles to disparage the ‘Rider-Waite’ tarot because it is now deemed ‘old fashioned’ or lacking in a contemporary aesthetic. This is a miscalculation of its worth. It is still the best tarot. The inspired naïveté of Pixie Smith lives still. The simplicity of the 'Rider-Waite' designs – the simplisticity of their illustrator – is an original and honest simplicity that taps deep into the medieval roots of the tarot and speaks directly to the modern Western consciousness. Her other work has the same charm and deserves to be celebrated in wider circles today. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black