A Duography

A DUOGRAPHY *

By S. RAMASWAMI, M.A., L.T.
(Training College, Rajahmundry)

The function of biography was defined once by Sir Sidney Lee, who succeeded Sir Leslie Stephen as the Editor of ‘The Dictionary of National Biography,’ as the truthful transmission of personality. We know however that most biographies are composed on the principle of nit nisi bonum, notwithstanding the fashion set by Lytton Strachey of converting biography into an exercise in post-mortem denigration of one’s older contemporaries. And with a few distinguished exceptions, biographers have tended largely to complete the undertaker’s task, burying their subjects in two or three volumes, as solid as tombs and as revelatory of the inner personalities as tombstones. If purposeful and truthful biographies are rather rare, truthful and purposeful autobiographies are rarer still. The function of autobiography is strictly the same as that of biography–except that the task of transmission of personality is undertaken by the subject himself. Personality is partly consciously and largely unconsciously revealed in autobiography. Sometimes autobiography degenerates into an exercise in more or less unconscious hypocrisy and sometimes it rises to the grandest heights of self-revelation, making the study of auto-biography range between the extremes of vicious self-indulgence and ennobling spiritual self-discipline. Autobiographies of the ennobling kind are rather few altogether, though the few there are are among the finest productions of the human mind, like St. Augustine’s ‘Confessions’, Gandhiji’s ‘Story of My Experiments with Truth’ and Wordsworth’s ‘The Prelude’. There are a few autobiographies of a less distinguished class, portraying not personality of less distinction of mind or heart, but dealing with issues of some what less transcendent human significance. To this class belongs Nehru’s Autobiography which is truly a classic of England prose. Nehru’s Autobiography is indeed more important to an understanding of the inner history of India’s struggle for freedom than Gandhiji’s Autobiography. But Gandhiji’s Autobiography is important for the story of man’s spiritual evolution itself.

There is another class of autobiography, much the largest class, consisting of reminiscences and memoirs of politicians, men of letters, lawyers, businessmen and others. This class of auto-biographers write to justify this or that aspect of their conduct or character, which they believe to be susceptible of criticism, or to portray their times. Sometimes the writing degenerates into mere gossip. And sometimes the writing becomes an irritating exercise in the display of self-importance. Very seldom do we get honest accounts of events in individual lives, or modest accounts of the growth of individual minds, or truly instructive accounts of a personal point of view such as we find in Mill’s ‘Autobiography’ or in that little marvel of self-revelation which Professor G. M. Trevelyan gave us recently.

A Duography is however an innovation in autobiographical writing. It is an experiment in the joint revelation of two personalities, or rather of two selves. Success in this class of writing would seem inherently difficult to achieve. Rarely are ever a happily married couple found in such a state of temperamental harmony as to be able to submerge their separate, individual selves in a joint act of self-revelation. Even two persons wedded to the same ideal cause seldom see things the same way all the while. Everyone is inevitably an Indestructible himself or herself, and the self-discipline required for even the partial self-effacement essential to a duography is rarely achieved. But in the work under review, the Cousinses would seem to have achieved a more than complete harmonization of their separate and highly individual selves and to have justified, by their success, the daring literary experiment they have undertaken. The book tells a clear story and closely constructed. It is a real triumph, from an artistic standpoint, for though the story is of two lives, the blending is so close and so complete that it reads like a single whole. One has to make a slight effort to find out at which point Jim stops the story and lets Gretta take charge. And though there are discernible differences of style, Gretta scoring by her pointed, direct and firm grasp of fact and feeling, and marked clarity and concision of expression, over Jim’s somewhat looser , far looser use of language and occasional pomposity, these differences of style do not affect the smooth and even flow of the narrative, any more than changing scenery affects the flow of a stream. On the contrary, they render the reading more enjoyable, providing an additional element of variety to the varied fare afforded in the book as a whole.

The Cousinses say that they began writing this autobiography after applying their minds to Cellini’s remark that anyone who had reached forty and had done anything worthwhile should write it down. And while with pardonable pride they realized that they had done something worthwhile, Mrs. Cousins in the field of the political and social emancipation of Indian womanhood and both Dr. and Mrs. Cousins in intensifying interest in art and culture in the sphere of Indian education, they also realized that in comparison with what still remained to be done, what had been done seemed as nothing. It is this disarming modesty, this humility in their approach to India; that makes their story so extraordinarily charming. The Cousinses came out to India not to tell India what was wrong with her and how terribly ward she was politically, socially and otherwise, but in the spirit of earnest seekers and servants of her best interests, imbued with a deep and abounding humanity and with that rarest of qualities, imaginative sympathy. They came from Ireland, which had not yet freed herself from British political tutelage. They had played a very prominent part in the remarkable literary Renaissance which preluded the emergence of Ireland as the free, independent nation that she was entitled to be. Their religious and cultural ground and their early life contain sufficient indications of the probable field of their future activity. Young Jim’s early experience of religious fanaticism culminating in religious riots led to those honest, earnest philosophic doubts which are worth so much more than creeds half-heartedly held. He would seem quite early to have developed a truly universal, almost theosophic outlook. He saw, for example, the humorous as well as the depressing side of those who looked, as did a neighbour of his Ma, on the Lord as a Protestant. His artistic soul early rebelled against the hideous narrowness of this attitude, as well as the unlovely cruelty of those who invented dire cruelties in an impossibly cruel Hell as the portion of those who didn’t blindly feed their minds on the dogma of the Church. Young Gretta would seem to have shown equally unmistakable indications of her future interest in Music and Theosophy. She got her first ideas of Mme. Blavatsky from a sketch of her published in W. T. Stead’s ‘Review of Reviews,’ which stood out then as a bold and fearless champion of unpopular causes. The Cousinses dwell with becoming brevity on these episode, which, significant as they were for them, have naturally a more mited interest for us. They dwell, to our great delight, with far greater elaboration on the part they played in the revival of poetry and drama in Ireland. Dr. Cousins is an authentic poet and the mystical strain in him, combined with his rich store of Irish and Indian myths, makes his poetry very rewarding and delightful reading to those who have a taste for these things in poetry, and indeed to all who care for real poetry.

To us in India, the account of their meeting with the truly Wonderful Dr. Annie Besant is significant, because their journey to India followed soon after that fateful meeting. This meeting was to give them a truly rewarding field of activity. Of Dr. Cousins’s work in making Indian education creative, and particularly in getting education to embrace art and the things of beauty in life, there is plenty here told, with that gusto and honest enthusiasm that are so remarkable a feature of Dr. Cousins as man and teacher. There is also a quiet gaiety and subtle humour in the account of various experiences of Dr. Cousins’s as an educator of Indian youth, at a time when Indian youth was ardent for national freedom. Dr. Cousins’s account of the Madras University Academic Council’s ordinary meeting, as, well as of the attitude of the educational ‘authorities’ under the British regime to teachers who took their responsibilities to young men seriously, rings absolutely true. It is, however, noteworthy that, friend of Indian aspirations as he was, Dr. Cousins showed a rare detachment in dealing with a certain Educational Officer’s demand for the dismissal on political grounds of a nationalistic-minded member of Dr. Cousins’s staff in the institution at Madanapalle. Of Mrs. Margaret Cousins, it need only be said that the account here given of the generous devotion and energy she showed in the cause of the emancipation of Indian womanhood says nothing new to those who have studied the events of those glorious years of struggle which preceded the birth of our Republic. Mrs. Cousins thoroughly identified herself with us in those crucial years. It was not an impulse of the moment–a generous fit–but merely the fulfilment on Indian soil of the mission of the Irish and English suffragette in the cause of womanhood itself. Mrs. Cousins threw herself also into the political struggle against the British Raj by fearlessly courting imprisonment in the cause of free speech. Her story of these events, told with charming detachment, makes moving  reading. There have been many foreign friends of India, many generous souls moved to the support of India’s struggle for recapturing her own national soul. But the Cousinses and Dr. Annie Besant, Whose gift to India they were, will be Specially remembered for the utterly simple-hearted zeal which they showed in their support of India’s cause. The most sympathetic students of India’s history, culture, art and music, have been known sometimes to affect a somewhat patronizing air of superiority. Of any such air there is not the faintest trace here. We will not say the Cousinses have penetrated the arcana of our national being. But they have come nearer to it than any foreigners ever have to any national arcana. Altogether, there is in this volume, an abundance of rich and vitalizing matter. There is a generous idealism about it all which will inspire others, we trust, to look upon good causes all over the world as their own. And above all, the book is a true book, rich in humanity; rich in all that renders us kin with the Cousinses and with generous souls all over the world. Everyone in India ought to buy, read and cherish this book.

P. S.     On page 442, Dr. Cousins seems to be in error about the husband of the Irish historian Mrs. Green. It was not H. S. Green but J. R. Green, famous as the author of ‘A Short History of the English People.’ Mrs. Green herself wrote a short account of Ireland, entitled ‘Irish Nationality’ for the Home University Library.
On Page 604, “Shapmochan” is referred to as “Shapmohan”.

* We Two Together By James H. Cousins and Margaret E. Cousins. (Ganesh & Co. (Madras) Ltd., Madras 17. Price Rs. 20/- Sh. 30; $5.)