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PIEBALD TRIŚAŃKU : THE EURASIAN IN ANGLO-INDIAN FICTION 191

knew equally well that their position in India was dependent on the British. So they developed a psychological dichotomy, in which their resentment against the local British came to be mixed wilh the impulse, which became a habit, to look upon the British in India as protectors and to remain abjectly dependent on them. To this was added another psychological maladjustment. Towards the people of the country, especially to the Hindus, they behaved with an arrogance which was very stupid. But, of course, it was inlelligible, it was derived half from the assurance of British protection, and half from the consciousness that they were partly of the ruling race, or in any case nearer to the ruling race than to the Hindus.¹⁵

In his Verdict on India, Beverley Nichols gives an equally revealing account of his encounter with a Eurasian nurse : ‘Her father was British, her molher Indian. She used to show me snapshots of herself with her father. The molher was hardly ever in the pictures : only once did I catch a glimpse of her, a litlle dark figurę hovering in the background. The page in the album was ąuickly tumed whcn the snapshot came into view.’

‘ I have been out here far too long. * That was one of the favourite phrases of the (Eurasian) girl. ‘I’ve absolutcly lost touch with home.’ They never had been ‘home’ al all, poor creatures, bul they would die rather than admit it. ‘I have Spanish blood in my veins’ : that is another favourite. It helps to account for the dark skin and the black hair. Some girls even pick up litlle Spanish phrases which they introduce into their conversation. They tell you that they leamed it from their grandmolhers.¹⁶ Nichols thus brings out some of the typical fcatures of Eurasian psychology : the half-caste ’s pathctic attempts to repudiate the Indian connection, and pass for a Westemer, and the Mcslizo’s futile yearning for a home which is really not there.

The Eurasian personality, with all its intcresting complex traits stands fully revealcd in almost all its aspects in Anglo-Indian fiction. The Eurasian appears in scveral Anglo-Indian novels, and in morę than a dozen of them, he is actually the protagonist, as in major works like G. A. Henty’s The Tiger of Mysore; Maud Diver’s Ułamani ; Henry Bruce’s The Eurasian (he wrote five novcls on the thcme); John Eyton’s Bulbulla ; F. Tennysson Jesse’s The Lacąuer Lady, Dennis Kincaid's Tropie Rome\ E. W. Savi’s The Beloved Aristocrat\ Rumer Godden ’s The Lady and the Unicom; Lrslie Gillcspie’s The Man from Madura\ John Master’s Bhowani Junction\ Jon Godden’s The City and the Wavc; and Roger Geeve’s The Toad beneath the Harrow. The fact that the First novel in this selective list was published in 1896 and the last appeared in 1969 indicates the continuing interest of the Eurasian theme for the Anglo-Indian novelist.

In describing the personal appearance of their Eurasian characters, most of the Anglo-Indian -ovelists are secn to echo dutifully all the popular notions