Sentiment and Self Richard Blechynden's Calcutta Diaries, 1791-1822

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The British Library (BL) holds over eighty volumes of diaries and a few other papers left mainly by Richard Blechynden, Calcutta surveyor, architect, and builder. Blechynden's diary has seventy-three volumes. There is a shorter diary by one of his sons, Arthur. The first goal of this and a companion study is to bring Blechynden's diary to attention.

A major connecting theme is the narrative of self through recorded experiences. The setting is early Calcutta (now Kolkata) and hence the establishment of a colonial city and a colonial system. The companion volume, Sex and Sensibility, concentrates on stories about concubines (bibis). This volume provides rich details of the daily life of Calcutta from the perspective of a European and his household. An important subsidiary theme is the British impact on Indians; the focus is on how Indian experiences affected the British.

An intimate portrait emerges, particularly stories of Indian servants and mixed-race children that mark the construction of a new English identity. It was forged by empire and through experience; from ideas of race and duty and from practices of work, petty administration, and law. As manners conflicted, sense competed with selfishness. Propriety and rules were promoted, with ambition but little success. Indians fell short, in the British assessment, but so did the British themselves. From these deficiencies, there emerged new ideas on norms, regulation, and identity.

The first two chapters' main subjects are values, clashes of culture, and race. Servants bring us to employment and law (Chapters 3 and 4). Blechynden's mixed-race children (Chapters 5 to 7) take us there too, and to education as well as social and cultural assimilation (Chapters 8 and 9). For two sons and (in Chapter 1) a cousin, the main issue was a profession. For the daughters, the corresponding touchstone was a suitable marriage. For all, moral and proper behaviour defined their English identity.

I am glad to acknowledge that the British Academy supported some of the research for this book, mainly in London but also in Calcutta. A further year's research leave from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) enabled me to bring the project to fruition. Seminar audiences, most notably at the Jawaharlal Nehru and Oxford universities, made constructive contributions on the early drafts of some sections. Editors and referees of the Indian Economic and Social History Review provided helpful suggestions on an article marking the first journal outing for my engagement with Blechynden's diary 'Credit, Work and Race in Calcutta in the 1790s: Early Colonialism through a Contemporary European View', Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 37. no. 1 (2000), pp. 1-25. A few fragments of the present book appeared in Peter Robb, 'Clash of Cultures? An Englishman in Calcutta in the 1790s' (London 1998). Some sections in Chapters 8 and 9 are incorporated or adapted from 'Children, Emotion, Identity and Empire: Views from the Blechynden's Calcutta Diaries (1790-1822)', Modern Asian Studies, vol. 40, no. 1 (2006), pp. 175-201© Cambridge University Press (reproduced with permission).

I am very grateful to Donald Jaques and Gerald Johnson Fox for information on the Blechyndens, and also to Mr Fox for permission to reproduce a miniature portrait of Richard Blechynden for the frontispiece. I owe a great debt to my wife, Elizabeth, who came eagerly to the British Library to transcribe some of the bulkier materials and sustained me with enthusiasm for what she called a 'soap opera' and an entertainment.

The Blechynden family had held land for generations to the west of Ashford. Thomas Blechynden (1702-1740) had at least two sons, Thomas and Richard, and two daughters, including Jane Harriet (1739-1815). Richard (1732-1775), a sugar broker in London, married Mary Brown Their son, also Richard Blechynden, our diarist, was fifteen when his father died. Blechynden's uncle, Thomas, was the father of William Marmaduke, his illegitimate son was also called Tom. Richard's aunt, Jane Harriet, married James Theobald, who became Richard's benefactor. his 'second father. Theobald (died 1802), a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Society of Arts, lived at 16 Great James Street off Theobalds Row (the name is a coincidence), a newly developing area adjacent to the fields north of Grays Inn (see John Rocque's map, 1745). Richard Blechynden and later his children lived there too.

A Kentish boy, Blechynden first attended school at Eltham (now in Greater London) and was educated in mathematics and astronomy by William Wales, celebrated astronomer and master at Christ's Hospital While serving as a midshipman in 1780, he was taken prisoner when aged twenty, captured by the French and Spanish from a British ship. He found his way back to England from Spain and Portugal via Ireland, wrote an account of his adventures, and bound it up in book form. He was sent to sea again in the East Indiaman Deptford, leaving England on 5 April 1781. undertaking a cadet's usual training in navigation and charts, arriving at Balasore Roads (near the mouth of the Hugli) on 21 May 1782, aged twenty- two. Soon afterwards, he left the ship and made his way to Calcutta.

Blechynden became skilled as a surveyor and architect. He lodged at one stage with Arthur Hesilrige, then a Junior Merchant, and around 1784, found regular employment as unofficial assistant to Calcutta's then surveyor of roads, Edward (Eduardo) Tiretta, a colourful figure (born 1726). Blechynden also worked on his own account, mainly as a civil engineer, architect, and building contractor. He became progressively deaf in one car from around 1788. By 1791, when he started his diary, he had shares in the Chronicle newspaper (for which he wrote until mid-1796).' He lived in rented houses in town, and owned a garden or country house and stables north-east of Calcutta, off the Dum Dum (later Belgatchya) road, three or four miles or about an hour's walk from Tank Square. By 1806, after renovations, it was a very large, lower-roomed house with plenty of grounds and a tank of excellent water.