THE STORY OF MY LIFE BY THE LATE COLONEL PHILIP MEADOWS TAYLOR AUTHOR OF 'CONFESSIONS OF A THUG', 'TARA: A MAHRATTA TALE', etc. INTRODUCTION THIS Story of my Life has always seemed to me to be an illustration of Longfellow's catch : What is an autobiography? It is what a biography ought to be. The interest in this case is chiefly literary and romantic. Meadows Taylor has been called, while the word still kept a noble meaning, the last of the Adventurers. Here is a surprisingly well-written record of the wanderer, so frequent in English life since Plassey, who 'runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans'. I was glad to be asked, before sitting down to write about him, why Colonel Taylor should be reprinted at this date by the Oxford University Press. The least thought provides a sufficient answer: For the rare beauty of his character, and as the author of the autobiography and of his three earlier novels, Confessions of a Thug, Tippoo Sultaun, and Tara. Of his other three novels there will be a little to say in the right place. But I have not a word to say for them as literature. Instead of helping Taylor's claim to be remembered they cruelly hamper it. Inferior work can never be merely indifferent; and the three later novels must have put off many who honestly wanted to sample the writer. As to the History of India, that is fully dealt with in a note. The lavish extracts made from it throughout this volume suggest the good things of which it is full-touches springing from Taylor's happy personality, accounts of places and of people he knew. Never will another History of India be attempted by any one with such a loving knowledge of its 44€900 people, although the work does not meet modern standards of accuracy. When in September 1875 Meadows Taylor, just sixtyseven, sailed from his native Liverpool on the unfortunate last trip to India, I, aged eleven, was among the few passengers. These were herded together into the old-fashioned cabin for the first meal. I remember the watery light at the end of day, the heaving of the estuary. For the only time my revolving seat was beside the old man's. In getting into his seat, being then bulky and nearly blind, he collided with me. I was surprised at the suavity, the consideration, with which he turned and apologised. I can see him standing in the dim cabin, wavering, with his face of apostolic beauty, but faded by several years from the time of that in the frontispiece. It was perhaps more like another portrait, printed in the earlier editions of the autobiography, and preserved in glass as St. Peter in one of the windows of Mitford church. Little did I then think that I should ever have the true honour of editing Meadows Taylor. 6 During the voyage he usually sat apart on the deck, a rug over his knees, in some suffering, not caring to be read to, or to speak much. Ah,' he once said, it is hard to have to sit like this, with folded hands, after a life of activity.' One afternoon his ribbon of the Star of India, in which he took a pride, was brought out in response to requests, and shown around. He was tended by a devoted daughter, and by his servant John. I remember John's surprise that the Red Sea was not red. Shure,' he said as the Guy Mannering steamed out of Suez, an' the wather's as green as Dublin.' 6 It is useless to go beyond Taylor's time for the beginnings of fiction in India. He has described Mohammedans much more largely, and possibly with more sympathy, than Hindus. There is an obvious reason for this in the matter of common diet, which seems, if only by illusion, to bring the Moslem world closer to European readers. This is illustrated by two early passages in Taylor, everything passing among natives of India. 'The food of us poor Hindoos would be tasteless to my lord, and therefore we have had the repast cooked by the best bawurchees of the town' (cookers of meat). Again: 'My mind misgives me that we shall be obliged to put up in one |