PART FOUR: "An Evening at the Club" (pp. 159-198 )
Color Keys: Theme & Character, Narration, Plot Event, Glossary

Paul Scott on the Narrative "DEVICE" of the Raj Quartet:
"Use of The Writer - sometimes called The Stranger or The Traveller (according to circumstances.)  RARE APPEARANCES BUT ALLOWS FOR THE FLEXIBILITY NEEDED IN THIS FOUR VOLUME HISTORY OF AN AGE AND A PERIOD.
"Interviews, letters, extracts from works or accounts written or tape-recorded by THE CHARACTERS (who have been approached for information) PLUS THE WRITER'S OWN RECONSTRUCTIONS.
"THE WRITER NOT PRECISELY ME.  SO THAT I MANAGE TO ACHIEVE DETACHMENT AS WELL AS INVOLVEMENT."  (Scott, "Notes" 167).

"An Evening at the Club (Writer recording his evening there in 1964, with survivors of 1942)" (Scott, "Notes" 167).

"There is a description by a narrator of an evening spent in the club twenty years after the events which once filled it with the chatter of the British colony [Part Four]" (Scott, "Method" 65-66).

[NARRATION: - Unnamed Narrator:]
Contemporary Mayapore is described, particularly formerly British enclaves: the cantonment, the maidan (field where events such as cricket and polo matches, and the War Week parade of 1942, are held), and the formerly white-only Gymkhana club (161-165).  The current situation of British who stayed on after independence in 1947, as well as contemporary Indians is presented.

During an “Evening at the Club,” the unnamed narrator dines with aging Indians such as Lili Chatterjee and Mr. Srinivasan, who recollect the Mayapore of 1942, and the racist policies of club.  The unnamed Narrator is interested in changes—as well as the lack of changes—in the club “since Daphne Manners’ time” (173). 

[NARRATION - From the evening's  interview with Mr. Srinivasan, the unnamed Narrator learns more about the history of Hari Kumar and his relatives (174-177):]. 
Srinivasan was the family lawyer that Hari’s rich bania (merchant) uncle Romesh Chand sent for when Ronald Merrick arrested first arrested Hari at the Sanctuary (176).  Srinivasan also directs the unnamed Narrator to the club’s “Member’s Book,” 1939-1945 (p. 179), helping him interpret its evidence of the racist and classist policies of the “old Gymkhana club” needed to “maintain its air of all-white social superiority” (181).  1942 entries also include the names of District Superintendent of Police Ronald Merrick and his guest Miss Daphne Manners, and in Feb. 1942 the signature of “a Captain Colin Lindsay” (182). 

In “the imagination” of the unnamed Narrator, Colin Lindsay’s dated entry is connected to “his old friend Harry Coomer [Hari Kumar] who round about this time was found drunk by Sister Ludmila in the waste ground where the city’s untouchables lived in poverty and squalor” (182).  

[THEME & CHARACTER:] The unnamed Narrator further imagines how Hari Kumar might have felt:  from this and other such British enclaves like the maidan “there issues a darkness of the soul, a certain heaviness that enters the heart and brings to life a sadness such as might grow in, and weigh down (year by year until the burden becomes at once intolerable and dear) the body of someone who has become accustomed to but has never quite accepted the purpose or conditions of his exile . . .” (182).

Mr. Srinivasan takes the unnamed Narrator on a tour in his Studebaker, and tells him of the time when Deputy Commissioner Robin White stuck his neck out and tried to get the Minister for Education, Srinivasan, and Desai—all Indians—admitted to the Gymkhana club for a drink in May 1939 (185-189, 191-192)

He describes Robin White (187-189) and the “All-India Congress” (189-190), and explains why that night White tried to gain his Indian colleagues admittance to the club cemented his friendship with Robin White, helped him understand what “men like Robin White stood for…against all narrow opposition” and made him loved the club (191-192).  Mr. Srinivasan also discussed the attitude of young Indians, who know little about British-Indian history, the irony that many “dislike black people” because of the color of their skin, and “still equate fair skin with superior intelligence” (193). 

The tour in the Studebaker leads the group to Tirupati Temple (194), the “sanctuary of the sleeping Vishnu” (196).

Later on, they pass Chillianwallah Bagh, where Hari Kumar had once lived with his Aunt Shalini (Mrs. Gupta Sen), now dead (196-197). 
     “And young Kumar?  Where is he now?  Srinivasan shrugs.  Dead perhaps” (197).
As the group drives back, they pass the Bibighar in silence, “but the silence is commentary enough.  Bibighar.  After a time even the most tragic name acquires a kind of beauty” (198)
[THEME:]  Part IV ends with the thematic image of “the girl who ran in the darkness” (198).

Works Cited

Scott, Paul.  The Jewel in the Crown. [First published 1966.] The Raj Quartet  Vol. 1.  Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998.  [Page numbers given above, unless indicated otherwise, refer to this edition of Jewel in the Crown.]

Scott, Paul.   "Method: The Mystery and the Mechanics (1967)."   My Appointment with the Muse: Essays, 1961-75.  Ed. Shelley C. Reece.  London: Heinemann, 1986.  51-69. 

Scott, Paul.  "Notes for Talk and Reading at Stamford Grammar School (1975)."  My Appointment with the Muse: Essays, 1961-75.  Ed. Shelley C. Reece.  London: Heinemann, 1986.  165-170.